Author Promotes Friendship of Cultures Through Gülen Ideals
Jill Carroll said learning the ideals of Turkish scholar Fethullah Gülen was like finding a new continent she didn't know existed.
Carroll, a professor of humanities and religious studies at Rice University and author of "A Dialogue of Civilizations: Gülen's Islamic Ideals and Humanistic Discourse," spoke Saturday at the W.T. Young Library during an event sponsored by the Interfaith Dialogue Organization.
Carroll's book promotes the Gülen's ideals, which revolve around coexistence and friendship among cultures, said Mehmet Saracoglu, president of the Interfaith Dialogue Organization and a mining engineering graduate student.
"I don't think there's much to be gained in terms of creating coexistence by ignoring differences in our religious world views," said Carroll, associate director for the Boniuk Center for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance at Rice University.
Acknowledging religious differences doesn't mean that the followers of these religions will never be able to have a relationship, Carroll said.
"We can have connectedness and a relationship with people that are vastly different from us," she said. "We just have to find the points on which we can have that and we have to be committed to sit there long enough to find it, and that's really the challenge."
Carroll said she tries to find a middle ground between perspectives because "we can't change everyone."
"That's what we ultimately try to do," Carroll said. "In the sacred world, it's called evangelism. In the secular world, it's called advertising. In our personal lives, it's called marriage."
Different religious views may seem odd or irrational, but everyone needs to respect each other, Carroll said.
"You don't respect that belief because you think it's weird, but you respect that person and their right to believe it, their integrity in believing it and their intentions to give their life to something that's meaningful for them," she said.
Carroll said the central challenge is to live together amidst radical differences.
"My hope," she said, "is that this little book can be the beginning of what can be a much longer, much more exhausted and much more sustained conversation from all the different sectors of life and knowledge so we can create a future for ourselves." (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
- Created on .