Tolerance and Dialogue from Yusuf Has Hacip to Gülen
A conference titled "Tolerance and Dialogue from Yusuf Has Hacip to Fethullah Gülen," organized by the Dialogue Eurasia (DA) Platform and the International Spiritual Foundation, was held on Saturday in Bishkek under the auspices of the Kyrgyz Ministry of Culture.
A large number of academics and civil society representatives participated in the conference, which was hosted by the Vefa business center, a multifunctional establishment opened by Turkish businessmen in Kyrgyzstan. The gathering focused on the importance of dialogue and tolerance for peaceful coexistence, and scholars discussed initiatives taken by leading academics to promote global peace.
Addressing the audience, Harun Tokak, the co-president of the DA Platform, which aims to establish dialogue and mutual understanding among Eurasian peoples, underlined the scholarly and intellectual crisis the Muslim world currently faces. "We will be able to live more peacefully in the future only if we can understand the teachings of thinkers such as Yusuf Has Hacip, Cengiz Aytmatov and Fethullah Gülen," said Tokak.
Professor Abdülaziz Hatip of Marmara University's faculty of theology described Yusuf Has Hacip, the writer of the famous "Kutadgu Bilig" (Wisdom of Royal Glory), as a wise, humble and virtuous man who wrote his masterpiece while nourished by the spirit of tolerance. "Kutadgu Bilig is not a book of advice to the highest officeholders; it is rather a philosophy of life, delineating the duties of men within the state and society at large and showing them the path toward happiness in both lives by examining the meaning of life," he said.
Professor Asan Ormoşov of Mahmud Kashgari Eastern University expressed his appreciation for the schools opened around the world by those inspired by Gülen's teachings, which underline the importance of education for achieving peaceful coexistence worldwide. "Thirty years ago, there were ill-minded people who did not understand Fethullah Gülen and thought he was leading the state to Islamic rule, but time has proven all those allegations wrong, and today the world has fortunately come to understand him," he told the audience.
Other than Gülen, all the thinkers whose contributions to global peace were discussed at the conference have all passed away. Gülen is a Turkish scholar whose ideas have inspired thousands of people, mostly Turkish, to open educational institutions of various levels, from elementary schools to universities, all over the world.
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