Last Updated on Tuesday, 11 December 2007 04:04 by Ton Notten, Today's Zaman Tuesday, 11 December 2007 03:56
A few months ago I was bit surprised to be asked to become a member of the editorial board and thus to share in the preparation of the Gülen conference and chair one of the panel sessions, on "Anatolian Muslim-ness in Practice," subtitled "Gülen's Initiatives for Dialogue and Education."
Of course, I tried to figure out what the backgrounds might be of the organizers, Leeds Metropolitan University and the Dialoog Academie in Rotterdam, and what might be the allegedly inspiring ideas of Mr. Fethullah Gülen - in order to get cleared up what could be the reasons for inviting me. And of course there was a second question: What might be our affinities, and what could I contribute!?
1. The first is kinship. I already knew Leeds University; I was once there. It is a huge university of applied learning and practice and innovative research which may be a bigger version of its Rotterdam look-alike, one of the two universities where I have professorship.
Since 2002, my field of teaching and research at Rotterdam has been "Growing Up in the City," a nice interdisciplinary theme which has to do with parental education support, youth policy, community-school arrangements, vocational education, recreational facilities, housing and urban regeneration, multicultural issues and so on - and all these from the perspective of Rotterdam. Rotterdam is the second-largest city in the Netherlands and also the poorest one, with a low-educated population. Above all, since the mid-1970s Rotterdam has hosted the most diverse and multicultural composition of the country's population.
In between my Rotterdam habitat and Leeds I met Professor Simon Robinson, who is a very nice and above all eloquent colleague.
2. Moreover, the Rotterdam Dialoog Academie - an organization promoting inter-faith dialogue - seems a very sympathetic initiative which was previously unknown to me. I'm devoted to its ideas, as I will now clarify.
I earned my Ph.D. 20 years ago with a thesis on the applicability of Jürgen Habermas's theory of "communicative action" (1981, his bipartite book, at 1,200 pages, was referred to as the "blue monster") in the field of adult education and its scientific support. This German philosopher and social scientist is really one of the grandsons of the Enlightenment.
For me, his idea of dialoguing refers to one of the ambitions of the Gülen conference as well. More than 40 years ago I studied theology, its Roman Catholic version in particular. In one of the first lessons I heard was about the death of God, which was a bit disappointing for me. In the mid-1960s the idea of "peaceful coexistence" became a somewhat secularized and a bit holistic version of the former "isolated" religious world visions and at the same time an ecumenical rapprochement was started (not with all three Abrahamic religions, however).
My step-over from religious studies to the social sciences was an attractive and nearly self-evident one at that time. Its scientific label was "andragology," or adult education science - which is to this day for me both a fascinating and a hazardous science. It is about researching and supporting adult-learning practices and/or improving the conditions of adolescent and adult lives; about arranging learning environments and educational facilities, offering social support, community development, developing human resources, social work and so on.
These have been my core subjects of interest at Vrije Universiteit Brussel since 1998 - and before that from 1974 until 1994 at the University of Amsterdam: description, analysis and innovation in particular. And teaching students about it; half of them were so-called "mid-career-students" of over 30 years. These kinds of theories and practices can be recognized by their huge ambitions and hence they are susceptible to ambiguity and skepticism.
I like all three: ambition, ambiguity and skepticism. I always supported the idea of skepticism in theory and optimism in action - as Max Horkheimer, Albert Schweitzer and Noam Chomsky wrote in their time.
3. So far my associations with Leeds and the Dialoog Academie. Now the third one, which is a bit more difficult. Until a few months ago, I had never heard about Mr. Gülen and his ideas about "peaceful coexistence." Although - or probably just because - the need for peaceful coexistence among people of various cultures and religions has long been recognized verbally, his name and fame are connected during this conference with those of Socrates, Daoism, Sufism, Rumi, Immanuel Kant, Spinoza, Tariq Ramadan, the followers of Don Bosco and even the present pope and so many (many) others. In the conference handouts I read the following sentences by conference chair Dr. İhsan Yılmaz:
"Fethullah Gülen is an Islamic scholar and peace activist whose ideas have inspired many people to undertake charitable works, especially in education and dialogue. By focusing on Gülen's ideas and practice, this conference aims to explore the appeal and impact of the Gülen movement's worldwide initiatives to help people respond creatively to the profound social changes that are taking root everywhere."
Another author had written, "Gülen's conviction is that humanity ultimately will be led to peace and unity by recognizing and accepting social, cultural and religious diversity, an exchange of mutual values and union in collaboration."
Of course, I don't know Mr. Gülen fully through these three quotes, but he seems to me a charming and tenacious inspiration, if not "the gentle voice of rationality," as Sigmund Freud once wrote. Mostly, I'm interested in concrete contributions to solving urban youth, integration problems and the like. Andragogical ones in particular, of course.
This threefold issue - Leeds, the Dialoog Academie and Fethullah Gülen - shows more connections to my personal and scientific interests than I had at first assumed. I am interested in education and adult education in particular; I like the dialogical perspective, both as a practice and as a way of researching, and I'm interested in ideas and in support systems which can be helpful for people to develop themselves.
Dialogue and education were some of the central issues of this conference and also of the ones that will follow in the future as well. Probably even education to dialogical competence. Let me give you my threefold thought on this subject.
1. Dialogue refers to participation, and both of them need education in the broadest sense of the word - as might be presented as a triangle of learning. Following the philosophy from Immanuel Kant (Truth, Good and Beautiful) to Habermas, we can distinguish between three types of learning and their related ways of participation and social integration: functional learning, social or moral learning and expressive learning.
These types deserve continuous logical and critical clarification and strengthening. The first is related to the core aspects of societal integration: school education, housing and work. The second refers to political participation (elections, e.g.) and juridical rights (to apply to court, to defend your civil rights) and the third one has to do with the rights to express one's religious and cultural feelings and convictions.
Every aspect of integration and participation (functional, moral and expressive) asks for different and interrelated ways of clarification and strengthening, being the ambitions of both philosophical and social scientific criticism. Once in the 1970s, for instance, the multicultural integration debate in the Netherlands was focused on the third aspect, the cultural one, exclusively - which proved to be, two decades later, an example of neglecting newcomers in their rights and obligations for functional integration. Instead of challenging them to integrate fully in our society (functionally, socially and expressively) - nowadays we see the necessity of supporting newcomers in their functional integration at first.
2. The present debate in the Netherlands over 30 years of integration policies and practices can be labeled as inappropriate and even a bit lazy. In my country, at the start of the millennium, there was a growing unrest, if not aggressiveness, stirred up by right-wing politicians and intellectuals, some newspapers and television networks, against the more or less liberal look at those urban issues like poverty and unemployment, social exclusion, the lack of "social competence" and other ethnically related issues like early school dropout, discrimination and mistrust and the more or less self-acquired resentment under vulnerable youngsters, the so-called "at-risk youth."
This unrest has some real and even horrible background, like Sept. 11 (2001) and the murders of Pim Fortuyn (2002) and Theo Van Gogh (2004). I'm not sure, however, about the aims of these critics. Their unrest wants to mobilize the public. The public debate sounds very loud and it lacks nearly all elements related to openness, patience and inquisitiveness - and even the aspiration to persuade the discussion partners. The debate about national identity, for instance, is inspired by a negative attitude against Europe, even more by attempts to feed the distrust against religious and ethnic minorities in the country. A new kind of nationalism is in advance. The so-called ideal speech situation, which we know from the work of Habermas and his followers, is fully absent. That's why I fear that the theatrical debates of this moment lack any intention to contribute to solving the really existing urban problems. Some hype-debaters are idly standing by and they are not interested in any participation or solidarity. And, finally, migrant risk youngsters, their parents and the related social professionals are not at all involved in these debates. They are nearly non-participants, outsiders, as well.
3. As a conclusion: Dialogue and participation are not exclusively verbal or mental or moral issues. They are materialistic as well. One cannot communicate or participate in an ideal speech situation (Habermas) without a job, without appropriate housing and when one is undereducated - as there are comparable risks when human rights are neglected or even oppressed - and finally, people need freedom of religion and conviction. Dialogue and participation need necessary facilities, or support systems. And public debates about these issues require things other than organizing moral panics - they need contributions to practical and political solutions, they need social commitment.
My conclusion: There is no reason left for me to be surprised that I was asked to become a member of the editorial board of this conference, to share in its preparation and chair one of the panel sessions. I see that some core issues of the conference have been mine for two or even four decades.
* Professor Ton Notten is an instructur at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Rotterdam University
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