Fethullah Gülen, Turkey's Most Famous Preacher
Meet the man who’s in a category with the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Mother Teresa… but is almost unknown in the West. This highly influential Muslim writer and preacher has inspired people across Turkey – and now the world – to build top-notch schools, engage in interfaith dialogue and champion religious freedom.
Dr. B. Jill Carroll, Executive Director of the Boniuk Center for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance at Rice University in Houston, Tex., author of A Dialogue of Civilizations: Gülen’s Islamic Ideals and Humanistic Discourse
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Below is the full text transcription of this program.
Maureen Fiedler: Turkey is a country that is literally a bridge between the West and the Muslim world. It's cultural and political identities represent both worlds. It is 99% Muslim with a staunchly secular state. In Turkey, two schools of thought predominate politically. One promotes and protects secularism, and the other promotes a tolerant and modern Islam. Enter, Fethullah Gülen. He is a Muslim preacher, thinker and activist, famous throughout Turkey. To his admirers, he is a profit of tolerance. To his secularist critics, he is the Trojan horse of an Islamic state. His movement has built hundreds, yes hundreds of top notch schools, as well as hospitals and universities, all nonprofits. Gülen supporters regularly seek and promote interfaith dialogue with Christians, Jews, and others, and they believe in fundamental religious freedom. When I visited Turkey recently, I was stunned to discover this Fethullah Gülen – a highly influential thinker, the ideological opposite of Osama Bin Laden in the Islamic world, and yet a man almost unheard of in the West. I came away convinced that we need to know this man and his thinking. My guest has studied Gülen and his movement. She is Dr. B. Jill Carroll, Executive Director of the Boniuk Center for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance at Rice Univeristy in Houston, Texas. Her new book on Gülen is called A Dialogue of Civilizations: Gülen's Islamic Ideals and Humanistic Discourse. She joins us today from Houston - great to talk to you again, Jill. First, most Westerners have never head of this man. Does he have any equivalent in the West that you can think of?
Dr. Jill Carroll: I don't know if there's an equivalent exclusively in the West. I think there are people known around the world that he would be in a category with. Those people would be people like His Holiness the Dali Lama, perhaps Desmond Tutu, the late Mother Teresa - people who are very committed to their own faith path, they are deeply rooted in their own particular faith tradition but have a message that's much more universal than that, and I think Mr. Gülen is in that category.
MF: I know you visited Turkey for the first time about four years ago. Were you as stunned as I that this man was so little known in the West?
JC: Amazingly stunned. I consider myself a knowledgeable person and as a scholar of religious studies, I keep up with religious movements, both historical and contemporary. Then when I visited Turkey and saw the impact, I felt like I had come upon a continent that I didn't know existed. I have to say though, I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw.
MF: Why do you think people in the West should care about this Muslim preacher?
JC: I think we need to care about any person or group of people who are trying to create a world where all people, regardless of their religious faith, can peacefully coexist. Mr. Gülen is one of those individuals and he's coming from a quadrant of society, at least from the Western person's perspective, which has been problematic since 9/11. He's coming from a section of Islam and many people have become confused and afraid of Islam so it's very important for those of us in the West to listen to this particular Muslim scholar and hear his message of dialogue.
MF: How would you describe the brand of Islam that Gülen preaches?
JC: He comes from the largest, major group in Islam, which is Sunni. 85% of world Muslims are in the Sunni school and within Sunni, he comes from one of the interpretative schools that is known to be traditional but also progressive at the same time. There is also a very strong Sufi overlay if you will – he is not a Sufi, he does not belong to a brotherhood – it's the mystical tradition in Islam and there's a strong Sufi influence in his understanding of Islam.
MF: The thing that struck me was the altruism that he obviously preaches, of an incredibly generous variety. His followers have shelled out millions to build these schools, hospitals, and universities. Why the emphasis on schools?
JC: From the beginning of his career, he's focused on education reform, so that's been close to his heart from the beginning. Part of that has to do with his belief that education is what allows us to be most fully human and that through education and expanding ourselves intellectually we become fully human and better able to create a world that is good for everyone, that is a world of peacefully coexistence and dialogue and justice.
MF: And yet, those schools don't teach religion, surprisingly, right?
JC: No, they do not. They are like other schools in Turkey. Turkish schools do not teach religion. They are absolutely secular. That's true of the Gülen schools – even those outside Turkey.
MF: I was amazed to find out that it's against the law for even private schools in Turkey to teach religion.
JC: Yeah, Turkey is a secular state very different than what we are here in the United States and what some of the other democracies practice. It's a very different kind of secularism, which at times can be hostile to religion.
MF: I've got to admit, when I first visited these schools, I was quite skeptical in the beginning – I thought to myself they have to be getting something in return. Is this just charity or what drives people to depart with substantial funds to build these schools?
JC: Like you, I was skeptical. I thought, what am I not seeing here? In the few years I have studied it, it seems clear to me that those who invest as sponsors in these schools are investing in the future. They have an interest in creating a society that works for everyone, where people have opportunity, and problems can be solved and addressed, and in order to do that, you need educated people.
MF: So the payback is for society as a whole, not them as individuals.
JC: Absolutely.
MF: Now, I want to look at the question of this secular Turkish state, I was amazed to find out that Imam's are paid by the state, that the Grand Muffdi's office fax sermons to Imam's every Friday morning, and not just suggestions, but the text of sermons and that religion of course is not taught in private schools. How would you describe the Turkish government's relationship to religion? It seemed to me that this was the desire to control religion?
JC: It is. It recognizes that religion can be really dangerous and the State and the people need to be protected from it. As opposed to what we have in the US where we're committed to religious freedom. Turkey will, yes, fax them their sermons because they're monitoring and managing religion.
MF: And yet, Gülen, who is a Muslim Imam, sounds like an American in his approach to religion that he's promoting religious freedom. For example, in that head scarf controversy, that's been dominating the news in Turkey. We should say it used to be against the law for women to wear the Islamic head scarf at a public university, now they have the choice, but the controversy continues. But I believe Gülen was in favor of that freedom of choice in the name of freedom of religion.
JC: Absolutely. His understanding of the relations between the institutions of religion and state and religious freedom and human rights are very much in line with what you would call a more western democratic understanding of things.
MF: Now, another feature of Gülen's movement is interfaith dialogue at all levels, and I know that I was always welcomed by the followers of Gülen. What's the significance of that outreach?
JC: The Gülen movement, that's probably one of their key commitments besides education, is interfaith dialogue. Many of them would say that interfaith dialogue is another form of education. And so, interfaith dialogue in their view is a way in which all of us living in the planet, whether we are people of faith or whether we're not, can come to understand each other and build relationships with one another so we can peacefully co-exist. I was blown away by the hospitality of the Turkish people – so willing to engage and to be friends, and be generous in their hearts. This is the type of profile or ideal behavior that Mr. Gülen speaks about and encourages those who are inspired by his ideas, to emulate wherever they are in the world.
MF: It seems to be, the movement, from what I could detect, quite informal. There's no membership list or anything like that. How would you describe it?
JC: It's a loose network of communities. Mr. Gülen, himself, lives in a retreat center in Pennsylvania; he's quite reclusive and spends much of his time in prayer, meditation, and studies. He does not run these organizations inspired by his ideas. He doesn't even know of all of them. These are all projects that are started by individuals and groups of individuals inspired by Gülen's ideas, but they're all independently run and very decentralized.
MF: I did run into some Turkish people who were skeptical of Gülen. For example, on one of my flights, I met a young doctor who wondered if Gülen and his movement really had political motivations. When I said to him that Gülen's writings are opposed to an Islamic state, he wasn't so sure. What's your take on that skepticism?
JC: There's been some skepticism in the general culture in Turkey around the issue of an Islamic scholar like Gülen, who has come to influence now three generations of people. It is a traditional and observant form of Islam. So many of the people are very observant, they pray five times a day, they fast during Rammadon, and they really do practice their faith - it's not just a nominal thing for them. Many of the women will cover, they will wear the head scarves. So many of Turkey's secular folks will look at that and say they are trying to take Turkey back to being an Islamic State. And so there have been these accusations, and some of them have actually resulted in charges against Mr. Gülen. In every instance, he was charged with trying to overthrow the state and replace it with radical Islam. All these charges were dropped in 2006. It became clear that many of them were nonsensical, but it's a concern. We see it in the news, apart from Gülen, that Turkey is in this very large national discussion about its secular quality and what the nature of that is, especially with the government that they have in power now.
MF: Why is Gülen in Pennsylvania and not in Turkey?
JC: He has health concerns and needs treatment for a variety of health issues, and felt like he could get that better here. But, in some ways, I'd say he's here for the same reason other Turkish people are here; here in the US we have more religious freedom than they do in Turkey.
MF: And yet, he continues to have influence even though he's living here?
JC: Tremendous influence, mainly because he's very active in terms of writing, he also preaches. Those who are inspired by his ideas put his sermons out on the internet so people can listen to the podcast. He's continuing to have a huge impact. He retired from official preaching in Turkey in 1981, but starting in 1988 for the next couple of years, he did a number of sermons and sermon series in some of the really large mosks, in the largest population centers in Turkey. Those mosks were filled with hundreds of thousands of people thronging to listen to him. Most of them were very young. They were in their early twenty and were absolutely inspired by him.
MF: That generation is now running the economy of Turkey.
JC: Exactly, they have spread out all over Turkey and all over the world and they have now taken it to the whole next level. It's begun to take on a much broader identity than just Turkish. It's becoming truly a more global, transnational movement.
MF: Thank you so much, Jill, for joining us.
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