Turkish Islam and the Secular State: The Gulen Movement.

• Author: Balci, Tamer
• Position: Book review

Turkish Islam and the Secular State: The Gulen Movement. Edited by M. HAKAN YAVUZ and JOHN L. ESPOSITO. Syracuse: SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2003. Pp. 280. $24.95. Paper.

The Gulen movement, a non-political Turkish Islamic group, has attracted only limited scholarly attention until recent years. Since the movement has deliberately kept a distance from politics, it has not received as much academic attention as have politically motivated Islamic groups. The Gulen movement concentrates its activities in the field of education rather than in politics; and scholars have paid more attention to the movement only since the large number of schools the movement operates received media attention in the mid-1990s. The movement's adherents have established over three hundred schools around the world, from Turkey to Siberia and the Philippines. The majority of schools are located in the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia, with its large ethnically Turkic population.

This book is a compilation of papers presented at a conference on the Gulen movement hosted by Georgetown University. Each of the well-written articles in this book informs readers about the origins of the Gulen movement, its development, and its current position in Turkish society. While the authors concentrate on different aspects of the Gulen movement, they all share the common conviction that this movement is a modern manifestation of Islam which builds bridges not only among religions but also between democracy and Islam. As opposed to traditional Islamic scholars, both Gulen and his teacher, Said Nursi, believe that Islam and democracy can co-exist peacefully and a democratic political environment is a necessity for Islam to flourish, and that under the conditions of our age, democracy is a refuge for Muslims. Gulen has been a strong advocate of intercultural and interfaith dialogue.

In the introduction, the editors give a brief summary of the rise of both secularism and Islamic movements in Turkey in the twentieth century. The first chapter includes Yavuz's narrative and analysis concerning the life and ideas of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, who was the founder of the Nur movement and also the father of many of Gulen's ideas. Since Said Nursi believed that healthy social change would occur only after individuals possessed Islamic consciousness, he concentrated on the individual development of Muslims. He refrained from politics, believing that the politicization of Islam would harm...