Dear Friends of Pearl Institute. Imagine a magical book:you open it, and it opens itself to a second, and then third, book. This is what Pearl Institute invites its readers to do. When the reader opens this page, on its pages, books are revealed. The reader reads the books, but the articles also read the reader; suddenly, the universes of micro and macro converge between the lines. The meaning, the human, and the universe unfold and each reads the other on every page of the journey.

Reading and writing are deeply important to a diverse society and an interconnected world. A society’s reading habits reveal how people are investing in their communities and challenging themselves. No form of media challenges the human mind quite like reading does.

So here let’s take a break. Let’s see what is on the skirts of the mountain, where the palace of humanity is at the top. Let’s enjoy the rain of the letters as they fall upon us and continue reading.

Violent Extremism

ISBN: 978-0-9569304-9-1
The report broaches the difficulties in naming ‘violent extremism’, offering examples of problematic language use and drawing on relevant work in the field of cognitive linguistics. This work reflects the Dialogue Society’s ongoing commitment to encouraging sensitive, reflective and reflexive dialogue.

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Making Dialogue Effective

ISBN:
This volume presents some of the key insights emerging from the Dialogue Society’s 2011 ‘Making Dialogue Effective’ panel discussion seriesin London. It also offers a list of practical recommendations.

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Dialogue in Islam

ISBN:978-0-9569304-3-9
This book gives a concise, readable introduction to the relationship between Islam and dialogue. Drawing on the Qur’an, the Sunna and Islamic history it demonstrates that dialogue is an integral part of the very fabric of Islam, dispelling popular misconceptions.

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Mevlana Jelaladdin Rumi

ISBN: 095550175-X
This book is an introduction to the life, work and message of Mevlana Jalaleddin Rumi, the famous 13th century Sufi Master. It explains how Rumi’s teaching of love, acceptance and dialogue is symbolised in the performace of the whirling dervishes.

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Celebrating-Festivals of All Faith

ISBN: 978-0-9569304-1-5
This manual provides inspiration and advice to help people of different faiths to acknowledge each other’s religious festivals, spreading goodwill and respect between different groups.

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Connecting Communitites

ISBN: 978-0-9557349-7-7
This manual gives ideas and advice to help readers use speed dialogue to bring people together for worthwhile conversations, whether as part of other events or as the focus of an event.

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Community Engagement Dinners

ISBN: 978-0-9557349-9-1
This manual will help readers to organise a Community Engagement Dinner to bring people from all sectors of their local community together for a meal and a discussion of issues of local importance.

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Fast Breaking Dinners

ISBN: 978-0-9557349-6-0
This manual is intended to help readers to successfully share fast-breaking meals with non-Muslim neighbours and the wider community, initiating new interaction and friendship.

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Media Engagement

ISBN: 978-0-9569304-2-2
This manual complements the events-based manuals within the Community Dialogue Manual Series by helping readers to communicate their work or the work of their organisations; it is intended to empower and encourage readers to engage effectively with the mass media.

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Community Centres Branching Out

ISBN: 978-0-9557349-8-4
This manual is intended to give ideas and inspiration for promoting intercultural dialogue through events and activities at a general, cultural or religious community centre.

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Open Mosque Day

ISBN: 978-0-9557349-6-0
This manual is intended to help readers to successfully share fast-breaking meals with non-Muslim neighbours and the wider community, initiating new interaction and friendship.

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Community Fairs

ISBN: 978-0-9569304-0-8
This manual complements the events-based manuals within the Community Dialogue Manual Series by helping readers to communicate their work or the work of their organisations; it is intended to empower and encourage readers to engage effectively with the mass media.

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Noahs Pudding

ISBN: 978-0-9557349-3-9
This manual will help readers to facilitate neighbourly interaction through a range of events based on the tradition of Noah’s Pudding (Ashurah).

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Building Partnerships

ISBN: 978-0-9557349-5-3
This manual is focused on identifying potential partners with whom community groups, charities and others might organise events, whom they might turn to for help, advice and support, and whose projects they might be able to support in turn.

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Islam & Democracy : A Closer Look at the Turkish Model

Islam & Democracy

A Closer look at the Turkish Model

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A Hizmet Approach to Rooting out Violent Extremism

Thought & Practice Series: A Hizmet Approach to Rooting out Violent Extremism

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Xenophobia

Xenophobia

Why Do We Fear ‘Others’?

The views expressed in the report do not necessarily represent the views of Peace Islands Institute.

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Sustainable Women’s Rights

Sustainable Women’s Rights

Present and Future of the Women’s Rights in Turkey

Replicability of Turkish Coordination Model in Other Nations

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Resurgence of the Kurdish Conflict in Turkey: How Kurds View It

Resurgence of the Kurdish Conflict in Turkey: How Kurds View It

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Turkey As Viewed From Central Asia

 

Turkey As Viewed From Central Asia

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EMBRACING THE WORLD

Embracing the World: Fethullah Gulen’s Thought and Its Relationship with Jelaluddin Rumi and Others

This book is not a comprehensive study of Rumi and Gülen, but it seeks to explore the places where the thought of the one is echoed in the thinking of the other, either overtly or indirectly—and to note ways in which the opposite is true: that Gülen diverges from Rumi. The book is also seeking to suggest some of the larger contexts in which the thinking of both resides. Given the wide-ranging aspects of their respective writings, it should not be surprising if, minimally, we can find important foundation stones in both philosophy and theology in the edifices that they each construct.

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So That Others May Live: A Fethullah Gulen Reader

So That Others May Live: A Fethullah Gulen Reader

Fethullah Gülen is undoubtedly one of the most influential Muslim thinkers of our time. His work and writings have inspired a transnational civic movement that advocates for education, promotes intercultural and interfaith understanding, and delivers humanitarian aid and disaster relief. Originated in Turkey, this “Hizmet” or “Gülen Movement” is active in more than one hundred countries across the globe. So That Others May Live offers a definitive compilation of Gülen’s characteristic essays. Some of them are available here in English for the first time. The rest have been carefully re-translated and edited, providing even familiar readers with new insight into Gülen’s most remarkable writings on faith, morality, education, civic service, and modern civilization. Together, this selection functions as a valuable guide to the ethical impetuses of a global social movement—one that has rooted itself in Gülen’s signature synthesis of humanism and Islam.

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Islam

Islam’s Jesus

“Accessible and readable. Spotlights an important theological theme in a way that both illuminates its internal development in Islamic thought and presents it as a helpful basis for interreligious discussion. The topic is very much in need of teaching and discussion and is a fine example of ‘common ground.’”—John Renard, author of Islam and Christianity

“Contains valuable and fascinating material about how classical Muslim theologians treated various aspects of Jesus and, in particular, the role of Jesus in Islamic eschatology. Saritoprak brings new insights from contemporary Turkish thinkers to bear on the issues raised by the Jesus figure in Islamic narratives about the Last Days.”—Marcia Hermansen, author of Shah Wali Allah’s Treatises on Islamic Law

“A refreshingly easy read that makes a complex world of theology and interfaith relations accessible and enjoyable for readers of all backgrounds.”—Jonathan Brown, author of Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World

Few people realize that Jesus was a prominent messenger of God in Islam and that Muslims believe in the return of Jesus. Even among Muslims, it is not well known that there are diverse interpretations of references to Jesus in the Qur’an and the Hadith. Aiming to remedy this, Islam’s Jesus takes a bold yet candid look at the highly charged topic of Jesus’s place in Islam, exploring some of the religion’s least understood aspects.

Examining multiple intellectual traditions, Zeki Saritoprak makes clear the reality of pluralism in the history of Islamic religious scholarship. Actively engaged in efforts to promote interfaith dialogue and harmony, Saritoprak thoughtfully argues that the shared belief in Jesus presents an excellent opportunity for understanding between Muslims and Christians. Together, they constitute more than half of the world’s population, and such understanding may be a foundation for peace.

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Fethullah Gulen and the Gulen Movement in 100 Questions

Fethullah Gulen and the Gulen Movement in 100 Questions

Standing both Fethullah Gulen, a moderate Turkish Muslim scholar, and the Gulen Movement, a global network of volunteers, teachers, students, intellectuals and business people who are inspired by Gulen’s philosophy based on dialog and peaceful coexistence, is vital to making any sort of predictions about the direction that Turkey might be headed in the next years.

Who is Fethullah Gulen? What is Gulen;s worldview and what are his fundamental ideas about society and the state. How does Gulen view history and what does he consider the most important events? What are the basic principles of the Gulen movement? These questions and more are posed ans answered in detail in this book.

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Toward an Islamic Enlightenment: The Gülen Movement

Toward an Islamic Enlightenment: The Gülen Movement

M. Hakan Yavuz offers an insightful and wide-ranging study of the Gulen Movement, one of the most imaginative developments in contemporary Islam. Founded in Turkey by the Muslim thinker Fethullah Gulen, the Gulen Movement aims to disseminate a ”moderate” interpretation of Islam through faith-based education. Its activities have fundamentally altered religious and political discourse in Turkey in recent decades, and its schools and other institutions have been established throughout Central Asia and the Balkans, as well as western Europe and North America. Consequently, its goals and modus operandi have come under increasing scrutiny around the world.

Yavuz introduces readers to the movement, its leader, its philosophies, and its practical applications. After recounting Gulen’s personal history, he analyzes Gulen’s theological outlook, the structure of the movement, its educational premise and promise, its financial structure, and its contributions (particularly to debates in the Turkish public sphere), its scientific outlook, and its role in interfaith dialogue. Towards an Islamic Enlightenment shows the many facets of the movement, arguing that it is marked by an identity paradox: despite its tremendous contribution to the introduction of a moderate, peaceful, and modern Islamic outlook-so different from the Iranian or Saudi forms of radical and political Islam-the Gulen Movement is at once liberal and communitarian, provoking both hope and fear in its works and influence.

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Terror And Suicide Attacks

Terror And Suicide Attacks

This book collects articles from various Turkish scholars on Islam and terror, particularly how Islam treats suicide bombers. The contributors analyze such subjects as terrorism, suicide attacks, jihad in consultation with first hand sources of Islam. All the articles in the book reject the idea that Islam approves terrorism. This book is prime example of the efforts in the Islamic world to disassociate terrorism from Islam..

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Beginnings and Endings: Fethullah Gulen

Beginnings and Endings: Fethullah Gulen’s Vision for Today’s World

Walter Wagner attempts to present a framework of understanding that outlines the philosophy and theology of Fethullah Gulen, a worldwide known scholar of Islam who inspired a global movement of education and interfaith dialogue. This book shows how Gülen’s vision for the present and future makes the present and future forms of Hizmet an essential part of his wider and urgent call for the formation of a community of religiously committed and non-religiously committed persons to work toward a just, equitable and prosperous world now.

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The Gülen Movement: A Sociological Analysis of a Civic Movement Rooted in Moderate Islam

The Gülen Movement: A Sociological Analysis of a Civic Movement Rooted in Moderate Islam

This is a book about an Islamic movement, the Gülen Movement, that is rooted in a moderate version of Islam and that promotes interfaith and intercultural dialog and global peace. Based on interviews with supporters of the movement in Turkey and in the U.S. and visits to Gülen-inspired schools, hospitals, newspapers and relief organizations, the book describes a movement that has millions of supporters in Turkey and that has spread to over 100 countries on five continents.

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Making Peace in and with the World: The Gulen Movement and Eco-justice

Making Peace in and with the World: The Gulen Movement and Eco-justice

Making Peace In and With the World: The Gulen Movement and Eco-Justice” is a representative study and working analysis of contemporary Islamic thought on eco-justice. It cuts through problems facing humanity today, ranging from inequality and violence in the smaller globalized world to ‘the end/death of nature’ as signaled by various environmental and ecological crises. Addressing these problems, this volume sheds light on two dimensions of peace in the earth community – making peace between differing human communities and making peace of humanity with nature.

The phrase Eco-Justice in this volume signifies this dual reality, thereby offering a unique and insightful view that justice in the world must go hand in hand with ecological justice if “peace” is to be made. With its dual foci of peace, this volume contributes to multi-disciplinary academic areas. It adds to a burgeoning field of religious ecology, by exploring the dynamics at play in the interaction between religion, human communities and nature, and by providing natural scientific works with considerable theoretical, philosophical and ethical implications. This volume also corresponds to studies in the interdisciplinary field of ‘war and peace.’ Since it deals centrally with the question of religion and eco-justice, this volume challenges assumptions of exclusivist religion, religion-oriented violence and the religion-based “Clash of Civilizations.”

The contributors of this volume from diverse academic backgrounds take Gulen and the Gulen movement as the case study. Muhammad Fethullah Gulen is one of the most significant Islamic theologians in the contemporary world, and his inspired Gulen movement is the fastest growing Islamic civic movement worldwide. This volume provides a key reference to studies in Gulen and his movement for new discussions and criticisms. And, by taking this figure and his movement as a case, it reveals a new dimension of peace among differing human communities and between humanity and nature.

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Understanding Fethullah Gulen

Understanding Fethullah Gulen

Foreword: Why Fethullah Gülen?Dedicating a book or any published material to someone is always a hard decision: At one hand, considering the significance of that person for your country, for Muslim World, thus for the world, you feel obliged to make his voice heard by everyone. Particularly, those who is seeking for a hope against, or alternative to “Clash of Civilisations” thesis. On the other, what you are doing could be called a propaganda, and whatever you are saying, true or not, could be ignored without ever thinking. So, waiting this person to be discovered in time seems to be the best option.

We, Journalist and Writers Foundation, have chosen the first way. The reasons are verious, and below you can see ten of them. However, to us, considering that he pionereed a movement inspired by faith yet geared towards serving all.

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Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey (Religion, Culture, and Public Life)

Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey (Religion, Culture, and Public Life)

While Turkey has grown as a world power, promoting the image of a progressive and stable nation, several choices in policy have strained its relationship with the East and the West. Providing historical, social, and religious context for this behavior, the essays in Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey examine issues relevant to Turkish debates and global concerns, from the state’s position on religion to its involvement with the European Union.

Written by experts in a range of disciplines, the chapters explore the toleration of diversity during the Ottoman Empire’s classical period; the erosion of ethno-religious heterogeneity in modern, pre-democratic times; Kemalism and its role in modernization and nation building; the changing political strategies of the military; and the effect of possible EU membership on domestic reforms. The essays also offer a cross-Continental comparison of “multiple secularisms,” as well as political parties, considering especially Turkey’s Justice and Development Party in relation to Europe’s Christian Democratic parties.

Contributors tackle critical research questions, such as the legacy of the Ottoman Empire’s ethno-religious plurality and the way in which Turkey’s assertive secularism can be softened to allow greater space for religious actors. They address the military’s “guardian” role in Turkey’s secularism, the implications of recent constitutional amendments for democratization, and the consequences and benefits of Islamic activism’s presence within a democratic system. No other collection confronts Turkey’s contemporary evolution so vividly and thoroughly or offers such expert analysis of its crucial social and political systems.

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Mastering Knowledge in Modern Times Fethullah Gülen as an Islamic Scholar

Mastering Knowledge in Modern Times Fethullah Gülen as an Islamic Scholar

A number of conferences have been organized in recent years emphasizing the social, civic, and educational activities of the Gülen Movement (aka Hizmet), as well as Gülen’s contribution to interreligious dialogue. However, very little attention has been paid to his formal and informal education, his scholarly works, and his interpretation of basic Islamic sources and disciplines in the modern period. In fact, his expertise goes beyond the limitations of modern academic compartmentalization of Islamic studies. This edited book aims to explore Gülen’s personal and theological profile in relation to Qur’anic exegesis (tafsir), Prophetic tradition (hadith), Islamic law (fiqh), Islamic systematic theology (kalam), and Islamic mysticism or Sufism (tasawwuf). Gülen’s private study circle and the texts and style of education that he continues to teach is also separately covered in order to reflect his mastership over Islamic disciplines.

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A Dialogue of Civilizations by Jill Carroll

A Dialogue of Civilizations by Jill Carroll

Writer Carroll states in the introduction that prior to a trip she made late in 2004 she was unaware that the organizers of the Institute for Interfaith Dialog based in Houston, Texas as well as the organizers of the trip itself were members of a community of people inspired by the notions of Fethullh Gulen, a Turkish Islamic scholar. Reading further we find Carroll’s intent in this book is to ‘place the ideas of Fethullh Gulen into the context of the larger humanities. Chapter titles are 1: Gulen and Kant on Inherent Human Value and Moral Dignity, 2: Gulen and Mill on Freedom, 3: Gulen, Confucius, and Plato on the Human Ideal, 4: Gulen, Confucius, and Plato on Education, 5: Gulen and Sartre on Responsibility. Kant’s belief was that humans have inherent value, Gulen spoke of the transcendent value of human beings. Mills’ assertions that the tyranny of the majority must be met head long was presented from his viewpoint of the nineteenth century Briton. Gulen avows that ‘freedom allows people to do whatever they want, provided they do not harm others and they remain wholly devoted to the truth.’ A Dialogue of Civilizations: Gulen’s Islamic Ideals and Humanistic Discourse presents the query ‘what is the level of resonance between Islam and the West?’ That the twenty-first century has become an episode of heretofore unnoticed quandary is obvious. Up until 9-1-1 few worldwide really gave much thought to anything other than their own viewpoint. Writer Carroll finds significance can be gleaned an awareness of the theoretically divergent views of Gulen, Turkish Muslim scholar and those of Immanuel Kant, Confucius, Plato, John Stuart Mill, and Jean Paul Sartre regarding critical hypothesis including intrinsic ethical pride, creature significance, learning, autonomy, and accountability. The reader may be surprised to find out these figures who are separated by centuries in time, as well as oceans or continents have a propensity toward speaking the same language

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Growing Seeds of Peace (Stories and Images of Service of the Gülen Movement in Southeastern Turkey)

Growing Seeds of Peace (Stories and Images of Service of the Gülen Movement in Southeastern Turkey)

“If a typical picture speaks a thousand words, then the pictures in this collection by Martha Ann Kirk speak millions. These photos document Hizmet-in-practice, service-on-the-ground, love-made-real, which is the ultimate power of the cosmos and the surest path to peace and justice.”

Jon Pahl
Professor of the History of Christianity in North America, Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia“

“These days, when the media seem filled with injustice, tragedy, and violence, Growing Seeds of Peace offers us images and words of individuals’ courageous good deeds and the possibilities of hope for young people. Sr. Martha Kirk’s sensitive stories and perceptive images help us catch a glimpse of communities where reconciliation has pushed aside hatred and where generosity transforms misery. These moving narratives of ‘winning hearts for good’ offer an alternative to those who once thought winning wars was the only way through life.”

James C. Harrington
Founder and Director of the Texas Civil Right Project,
Adjunct Professor at the University of Texas School of Law

Martha Ann Kirk, Th.D., a professor in the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at the University  of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas, has received a number of peacemaking awards for her work building bridges between diverse peoples.  Among her recent publications are Healing and Hope: Stories from Northern Iraq Where Persons Inspired by Fethullah Gulen Have Been Serving (www.guleninstitute.org) on peace building and Women of Bible Lands: A Pilgrimage to Compassion and Wisdom which has sites from a dozen countries and the history of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim women associated with them.

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Hizmet: Questions and Answers on the Hizmet Movement

Hizmet: Questions and Answers on the Hizmet Movement

“Hizmet”—or the Gülen Movement referring to name of the renowned Turkish scholar Fethullah Gülen—originated in 1970s’ Turkey as a faith-inspired initiative to improve educational opportunities for a local community; since then, it has grown into a transnational educational, inter-cultural and interfaith movement. This book is intended to summarize and represent the conclusions of much of the academic work on Hizmet in a manner more easily accessible to the lay person or non-specialist.

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Islam and Peacebuilding: Gulen Movement Initiatives

Islam and Peacebuilding: Gulen Movement Initiatives

The exploration of the contributions is made with regards to the title in hand by the thought and practice of the global movement associated with the Turkish Muslim scholar Fethullah Gulen. The importance and distinctiveness of teaching of Gulen and the practice of the movement is that it is rooted in a confident Turkish Islamic heritage while being fully engaged with modernity. It offers the possibility of a contextualised renewal of Islam for Muslims in the modern world while being fully rooted in the teachings of the Qu’ran and the Sunnah of the Prophet. It advocates the freedom of religion while making an Islamic contribution to the wider society based on a commitment to service of others.

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Turkish Islam and the Secular State: The Global Impact of Fethullah Gülen

Turkish Islam and the Secular State: The Global Impact of Fethullah Gülen’s Nur Movement (Contemporary Issues in the Middle East)

This work examines reformations of Islam and culture in Turkey and the successful Islamic modernist Fethullah Gulen movement.

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The Gulen Hizmet Movement and Its Transnational Activities: Case Studies of Altruistic Activism in Contemporary Islam

The Gulen Hizmet Movement and Its Transnational Activities: Case Studies of Altruistic Activism in Contemporary Islam

This volume of essays on the Gulen, or Hizmet (service) movement, a Turkish, Sufi Muslim, and humanitarian civil society group, looks at the recent activities of its followers to practice their form of Islam and carry out collective interfaith projects at the international level. It adds to the newly burgeoning discourse by focusing on the ways in which participants challenge ideological and sectarian boundaries. Included are essays which discuss how the movement is organized, structured, and institutionalized in many parts of the world, explore Turkey’s global influence, evaluate criticisms of the movement, and suggest directions for further research. While most previous scholarly attention has focused on the theological and philosophical ideas of Fethullah Gulen, the movement’s inspirational figure, less attention has been paid to the ways in which participants have interpreted and carried out Gulen’s messages in the contemporary world.

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The Gulen Movement: Building Social Cohesion through Dialogue and Education

The Gulen Movement: Building Social Cohesion through Dialogue and Education

In recent years, Muslim communities in Europe and throughout the West have come under increasingly virulent criticism, blamed for everything from terrorism to breakdowns of social cohesion and ideas of national identity. In response, the Gülen Movement, inspired by the teachings of Turkish Muslim scholar Fethullah Gülen, has organized volunteers to use dialogue and education as ways to bridge the divide of misunderstanding that separates Muslims and non-Muslims. The Gülen Movement analyzes the work of the Gülen volunteers using social movement theory, helping us to understand the interactions of its origins, goals, structure, and composition.

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The House of Service: The Gulen Movement and Islam

The House of Service: The Gulen Movement and Islam’s Third Way (Religion and Global Politics)

David Tittensor offers a groundbreaking new perspective on the Gülen movement, a Turkish Muslim educational activist network that emerged in the 1960s and has grown into a global empire with an estimated worth of $25 billion. Named after its leader Fethullah Gülen, the movement has established more than 1,000 secular educational institutions in over 140 countries, aiming to provide holistic education that incorporates both spirituality and the secular sciences.

Despite the movement’s success, little is known about how its schools are run, or how Islam is operationalized. Drawing on thirteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Turkey, Tittensor explores the movement’s ideo-theology and how it is practiced in the schools. His interviews with both teachers and graduates from Africa, Indonesia, Central Asia, and Turkey show that the movement is a missionary organization, but of a singular kind: its goal is not simply widespread religious conversion, but a quest to recoup those Muslims who have apparently lost their way and to show non-Muslims that Muslims can embrace modernity and integrate into the wider community. Tittensor also examines the movement’s operational side and shows how the schools represent an example of Mohammad Yunus’s social business model: a business with a social cause at its heart.

The House of Service is an insightful exploration of one of the world’s largest transnational Muslim associations, and will be invaluable for those seeking to understand how Islam will be perceived and practiced in the future.

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Gülen: The Ambiguous Politics of Market Islam in Turkey and the World

Gülen: The Ambiguous Politics of Market Islam in Turkey and the World

The “Hizmet” (“Service”) Movement of Fethullah Gülen is Turkey’s most influential Islamic identity community. Widely praised throughout the early 2000s as a mild and moderate variation on Islamic political identity, the Gülen Movement has long been a topic of both adulation and conspiracy in Turkey. In Gülen, Joshua D. Hendrick suggests that the Gülen Movement should be given credit for playing a significant role in Turkey’s rise to global prominence.
Hendrick draws on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Turkey and the U.S. for his study. He argues that the movement’s growth and impact both inside and outside Turkey position both its leader and its followers as indicative of a “post political” turn in twenty-first century Islamic political identity in general, and as illustrative of Turkey’s political, economic, and cultural transformation in particular.

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Conversations on Fethullah Gülen and the Hizmet Movement: Dreaming for a Better World

Conversations on Fethullah Gülen and the Hizmet Movement: Dreaming for a Better World

Conversations on Fethullah Gülen and the Hizment Movement: Dreaming for a Better World, is intended to represent an open perspective on the influence of the Hizmet Movement, including Fethullah Gülen in particular, on the theme of “dreaming for a better world,” based on a variety of Christian and Muslim world views. This theme is approached from three specific perspectives: education and an emphasis on interfaith and intercultural dialogue, a comparison of various spiritualties, and a consideration of the shared dreams of the two religions.
The essays in this volume are adapted from talks presented by eleven authors from Canada and the United States at the Gülen Symposium at Carleton University in October 2009. The panel discussion that followed the individual presentations enhanced the overall theme of “dreaming for a better world.” The symposium as a whole represented the positive potential that there is for the organization of forums of sharing that focus on this theme and on the three sub themes.

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Renewing Islam by Service: A Christian View of Fethullah Gülen and the Hizmet Movement

Renewing Islam by Service: A Christian View of Fethullah Gülen and the Hizmet Movement

Renewing Islam by Service offers a theological account of the contemporary Turkish faith-based service movement started by Fethullah Gülen, and placed against the backdrop of changes in modern Turkish society. The life and works of Gülen are analyzed against the background of developments in Turkish society, and of spiritual Islamic tendencies in the transition from the Ottoman empire to the secular republic. Pim Valkenberg includes stories of his personal experiences with supporters of this movement, in a number of different countries, and analyzes the spiritual practices and the faith-based service of this movement that is also compared to some important Christian religious movements. Fethullah Gülen (born 1941 in Erzurum) is sometimes mentioned as one of the most influential Islamic scholars of the twenty-first century. During his work as a scholar-preacher in Izmir in the 1970s he started to provide learning opportunities for his students. He attracted many supporters and inspired them to form communities that put their Islamic faith into practice by serving others. When the political and economic situation of the Turkish republic improved, Gülen and the Hizmet (service) Movement began to take initiatives in order to overcome ignorance, disunity and poverty. At the beginning of the 21­st century the Hizmet Movement ormed one of the most influential networks of Muslims, not only in Turkey but in Europe and the United States as well. Gülen now lives in the United States where he still inspires many groups to engage in dialogue initiatives, excellent schools, public media and service organizatons. However, these initiatives are often met with suspicion by a number of different groups – secularists as well as radical Muslims. While the Hizmet Movement has thus far mainly been studied from a social scientific perspective, this book claims that Gülen and the Hizmet can best be understood by researching the religious drive that empowers them. Since this book has been written by a Christian theologian, this is done in a comparative theological approach that not only shows how Gülen and the Hizmet Movement renew Islam by service, but also how Christians can be inspired by such a religious renewal movement.

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Wrestling with Free Speech, Religious Freedom, and Democracy in Turkey: The Political Trials and Times of Fethullah Gulen

Wrestling with Free Speech, Religious Freedom, and Democracy in Turkey: The Political Trials and Times of Fethullah Gulen

The political trial of Fethullah Gülen, a moderate Turkish religious leader, helped to greatly expand civil liberties and strengthen democracy in Turkey. The trial began in 2000 in an Ankara state security court (now disbanded) and ended in 2008 in an appeals court in Gülen’s favor. This book explores Gülen’s trial, examines the evolving process of Turkey’s efforts to enter the European Union, and discusses ways that the EU’s insistence on expanding civil liberties in Turkey and reforming the judicial system affected the outcome of the trial (and vice versa). As a coda, the book considers unsuccessful efforts to block Gülen’s application for immigrant status in the United States as a religious scholar, which occurred during the same time as his political trial in Turkey.

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Muslim Citizens of the Globalized World

Muslim Citizens of the Globalized World

Exploring the response and contributions of Muslims and Turkish Muslims to globalization?including areas such as democratization, scientific revolution, changing gender roles, and religious diversity?this study identifies the common values and visions of peace Muslims share. This study places specific analysis on the Glen movement?a growing approach to the reunification of faith and reason with hopes for a peaceful coexistence between liberal democracies and the religiously diverse.

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Gulen

Gulen’s Dialogue on Education

In a most engaging narrative style, Professor Tom Gage portrays eight modern educators and the development of their theories viewed from personal, cultural, and historical perspectives. He links their ideas to those of Fethullah Gülen, a highly influential educator of today who draws on an entirely different tradition.
Open-minded, yet with strong commitments of his own, Gage ably transcends cultural barriers to compare Gülen and educators of the western canon. The result is to reduce the potential for alienation between practitioners of different traditions and to increase the likelihood of fruitful cooperation.

Tom Gage s balanced, well-structured, and immensely readable account comprises a thorough scholarly contribution to culture, education, community service, and resources for global understanding and peaceful coexistence.

Muhammed Cetin, PhD is the author of
The Gulen Movement: Civic Service without Borders and Hizmet: Questions and Answers on the Hizmet Movement

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Contemporary Islamic Conversations: M. Fethullah Gulen on Turkey, Islam, and the West

Contemporary Islamic Conversations: M. Fethullah Gulen on Turkey, Islam, and the West

Contemporary Islamic Conversations discusses the ideas of Turkey’s most significant Muslim figure, M. Fethullah Gülen. Originally published in Turkish by Nevval Sevindi, one of Turkey’s top journalists, this edited translation makes Gülen’s work and ideas accessible to the English-speaking world for the first time. It includes interviews conducted by the author with Gülen, who has been living in self-imposed exile in the United States since 1999. The book explores his ideas regarding Islam and the West, Islam and violence, and religion and the future of the nation-state in Turkey and the Muslim world.
Gülen has worked hard to revive the religious tradition of the Turkish theologian Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (1877-1960), and while his debt to Nursi’s ideas is clear, he has a passionate interest in Islamic theology and Arabic and Turkish literature, and is also deeply interested in poetry, philosophy, sociology, and the classics in general. Gülen offers a moderate perspective on Islam, is open to interfaith and intercivilizational dialogue, and defends a notion of Islam in which Muslims are able to fully engage the world without any fear or prejudice. His community of followers has opened 500 high schools around the world, including the United States, and also owns seven universities in Central Asia and Turkey.

“This compelling book provides an important analysis by a Turkish journalist with high respect for Gülen, and is edited by an excellent scholar of twentieth-century Islam who is highly regarded by disciples of Nursi and Gülen. Thus we get to hear Gülen speak for himself but with the benefit of Sevindi’s contextualizing and commentary, and Abu-Rabi’s editorial hand and judicious footnoting.” — Lucinda Mosher, author of Praying: The Rituals of Faith

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A Civilian Response to Ethno-Religious Conflict

A Civilian Response to Ethno-Religious Conflict

This extensive analysis of the Mardin conflict in southeast Turkey considers the likelihood that socioreligious movements, such as the popular Glen movement, could effect positive change in ethnoreligious disputes, even those decades old. By focusing specifically on how Glen volunteers helped minimize the support of terrorist organizations in Anatolia, this guide illustrates how potent nonpolitical solutions to ethnic conflict can be.

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Tradition Witnessing the Modern Age

Tradition Witnessing the Modern Age

Addressing the sociological, cultural, and religious aspects of the Glen movement, this insider?s look also explores the failure experienced by many other Islamic movements that attempted to combine traditional values with the modern world. The influence Fethullah Glen has had on secularist Turkey is also examined.

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M. Fethullah Gulen: Essays-Perspectives-Opinions

M. Fethullah Gulen: Essays-Perspectives-Opinions

An intellectual with a distinctive spiritual charisma, a prolific writer and poet, M. Fethullah Gülen has been an extremely effective and popular scholar of Islam for the last 3 decades.

This work presents Gülen through a short biography, a selection of various articles, his views on modern education and its importance, and how he has been presented in the media. It is by no means a comprehensive presentation of his life and influence upon millions of people; rather, it is meant to serve as an introduction to those who desire a better understanding of Gülen’s message and what it has accomplished over the years.

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The Vision and Impact of Fethullah Gulen: A New Paradigm for Social Activism

The Vision and Impact of Fethullah Gulen: A New Paradigm for Social Activism

Fethullah Gulen has become something of a center of gravity for millions of people from all walks of life throughout the world. This work illustrates the ways in which Gulen and the supporters of the movement inspired by him have presented a new kind of social activism coupled with a deeper sense of spirituality and altruism that has been missing from many contemporary civic movements.

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 Gulen Movement

The Gulen Movement: Civic Service without Borders

This book seeks to develop an appropriate discourse for studying the Gulen Movement and phenomena like it. The established discourse concerns itself with social movements as protest, as challenge to the System, as contentious actors looking to alter or even overturn existing structures and/or policies in some field, usually political or economic. Approaching the matter from social movement theory and taking an insider’s perspective, the author argues that the Gulen Movement is, as it has always been, non-contentious’ it is not a marginalized actor working on the System from the outside. On the contrary, it has always worked within the System – within the boundaries of the laws and public norms that obtain in the different local and national settings where it has set up institutions.

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Preventing Violence and Achieving World Peace: The Contributions of the Gülen Movement

Preventing Violence and Achieving World Peace: The Contributions of the Gülen Movement

How can we address the seemingly endless conflicts in the world, particularly those arising from misunderstandings of Islam by both Muslims and non-Muslims? Preventing Violence and Achieving World Peace: The Contributions of the Gülen Movement presents the essays of eight scholars who consider the diverse ways in which the Gülen Movement or hizmet («service to others») – inspired by contemporary Turkish social philosopher Fetullah Gülen – has worked to answer this question. Drawing from various intellectual and theological sources, particularly Sufism, these essays indicate multiple instances of positive interfaith and/or multicultural dialogue. In addition, they consider how the writings of Gülen and the works of the Gülen Movement, through an extensive program of education and communication, have contributed significantly to efforts that oppose violence and shape universal peace.

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The Gulen Hizmet Movement: Circumspect Activism in Faith-Based Reform

The Gulen Hizmet Movement: Circumspect Activism in Faith-Based Reform

This volume covers the origins, historical development, and ideas of one of the largest and most influential Islamic movements in the world, the Gulen Hizmet Movement. Founded during the Cold War under the inspiration of M. Fethullah Gulen, the GHM expanded to over 130 countries by the first decade of the twenty first century. The movement’s circumspect activism sheltered it from illiberal secular practices in Turkey and has guided it through the anxious post-Cold War process of globalization. This edited volume covers various characteristics of the movement from Gulen’s unconventional oratory to his educational philosophy. Also, the book covers Gulen’s ideas on Islam and democracy and the GHM’s indirect political engagement compared to the direct engagement of the Muslim Brotherhood. Other chapters in the book cover the role of women in the movement, the GHM’s creation of an alternative public sphere for pious Muslims, and the tension this creation instills in light of Secularism Theory, which is analyzed comparatively with American religious pluralism. The last two chapters question the effectiveness of interfaith dialogue activities promoted by the movement’s adherents. A concluding section seeks to synthesize this interdisciplinary scholarship in order to assess the GHM’s overall gestalt as a social movement.

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The Gülen Movement:

The Gülen Movement: ‘Cultivating’ A Generation Through Education

This book examines and discusses the strategic manoeuvring of the Gülen Movement, which is an influential religio-social movement in Turkey, in its power struggle with its rival groups and ideologies including the secular elite; through an analysis of internal and external dynamics behind its increasing prominence. The book claims that the Gülen Movement, through its educational activities, creates a reciprocal deal where both parties profit. While the Gülen Movement enlarges its scope, spreads its message and proceeds to “cultivate” its counter-elite, it provides its followers with the ability to climb in the social strata and wholly participate in the society; not only by providing them with the material resources they need, but also rendering them as individuals who are conforming to the contemporary set of values and lifestyles.

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Resource Mobilization in Gulen-Inspired Hizmet: A New Type of Social Movement

Resource Mobilization in Gulen-Inspired Hizmet: A New Type of Social Movement

This scholarly book presents a case study of some of the London-based work of a social movement known as Hizmet, or the Gulen Movement. This transnational faith-inspired movement represents a rising trend of philanthropic social activism around the world and increasingly now in the Muslim world. This book grew out of the author’s deep interest in Muslims’ interaction with modern society, their social activism, and their response and contributions to global transformation. The author provides a unique insight into the Hizmet Movement, how it draws on Islamic resources, how it should be classified, and how it differs from other social movements.

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Advocate of Dialogue: Fethullah Gulen

Advocate of Dialogue: Fethullah Gulen

The contemporary Muslim world is perceived as a seething cauldron of conflict. “Islam” is synonymous with “oppression” and “Muslim” with “terrorist.” Muslims seem to have become the dreaded “other” people who cannot be understood. But one influential Muslim leader shatters these stereotypes. M. Fethullah Gülen is invited to the Vatican for a private meeting with the Pope, meets leading Israeli and Turkish Rabbis, announces his friendship with the Greek Orthodox Patriarch, and strives for dialogue. His dream is now a vision that attracts people who choose altruism over materialist individualism. Being the spiritual leader of milions of Muslims, he clearly is a voice that must be heard.

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Reflections on Reason, Religion, and Tolerance: Engaging with Fethullah Gulen

Reflections on Reason, Religion, and Tolerance: Engaging with Fethullah Gulen’s Ideas

This is an attempt to reflect on Islam as it appears in the context of Fethullah Gulen’s teachings, an influential Turkish-Muslim scholar who inspired a movement of education and interfaith dialogue. Grinell’s extensive study of Islam and of Gulen allows him to pinpoint a unique expression of values and beliefs that could alter the typical understanding of Islam and Muslims in the West. He draws upon his previous studies of the Gulen Movement and comparatively places Gulen in a wider context of faith and society. What is the concept of knowledge in Islam as understood by Gulen? How is faith and service to people connected? Is Gulen after building a sultanate? Does the Gulen movement have a (hidden) political agenda? How traditional or modern is Gulen? These are some of the questions Grinell attempts to answer from his perspective. As a humanistic researcher on Islam, Grinell believes we definitely have something to learn from Islam.

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Cross-cultural Dialogue on the Virtues: The Contribution of Fethullah Gülen

Cross-cultural Dialogue on the Virtues: The Contribution of Fethullah Gülen

This book explores the development of the influential worldwide Hizmet movement inspired by the Turkish scholar Fethullah Gülen, known for his moderate Islamic emphasis on peaceful relations among diverse people. It provides a detailed study of Gülen’s account of the virtues and argues that they provide the key to understanding this thinker and the movement he inspired, from its initial establishment of hospitality houses through the growth of worldwide schools, hospitals, media outlets, charitable associations and dialogue centers.

The book analyzes the distinctive virtues that shaped the Hizmet movement’s ethos as well as continue to sustain its expansive energy, from the core virtues of tolerance, hospitality, compassion and charity to a host of related virtues, including wisdom, humility, mildness, patience, mercy, integrity and hope. It also examines the Islamic and Sufi roots of Gülen’s understanding of the virtues as well as presents a comparative study of Gülen’s account of the virtues in dialogue with prominent thinkers of the Western philosophical tradition and the religious traditions of Christianity, Judaism and Buddhism.

The Hizmet movement provides living witness to the power and efficacy of tolerance, dialogue and peaceful relations among diverse people. This book offers an insightful portrait of the core virtues of this movement and the scholar who fully explored them within his writing. It will appeal to readers interested in virtue ethics, character education, cross-cultural studies, interfaith dialogue and the role of moderate Islam today.

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Teacher in a Foreign Land: M. Fethullah Gülen

Teacher in a Foreign Land: M. Fethullah Gülen

Fethullah Gülen is an enlightened person who knows well many issues related to literature, art, philosophy and science, he is a man of action who has not wasted his life, but struggled to serve humanity. He is tolerant of mankind and sensitive enough to cry when he sees an ant drown. He is a great person altruistic enough to say, “Regardless of where the fire falls, it burns my heart” instead of saying, “Fire burns where it falls.” Since his childhood Fethullah Gulen has shown himself to be a unique person with his knowledge, morality and ideals. His life is full of service to others which he recommended and made in spite of the difficulties he endured for his people and all of humanity.

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Peace and Dialogue in a Plural Society: Contributions of the Hizmet Movement at a time of Global Tensions

Peace and Dialogue in a Plural Society: Contributions of the Hizmet Movement at a time of Global Tensions

In a world that is too often seen as a cloash of civilizations, some believe there is another way, a path that involves engagement, dialogue, and respect. In Thomas Michel’s new book, Peace and Dialogue in a Plural Society, he explores how Fethullah Gulen is one of those speaking most vocally in favor of a world community, where different faiths and nations can come together at one table to solve the multitude of problems facing today’s world. Exploring the spiritual roots of Gulen and the Hizmet Movement, as well as drawing parallels between his own work as a Catholic priest, Michel shows how Hizmet has helped build a blueprint for intercultural communication in a time when too many voices are trying to stoke the fires of discord. Through education, dialogue, and a respect for basic human dignity, Michel finds a foundation in Gulen’s faith and Hizmet’s service upon which a healthy, diverse society can be built.

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A Contemporary Renaissance: Gulen’s Philosophy For A Global Revival Of Civilization

A Contemporary Renaissance: Gulen’s Philosophy For A Global Revival Of Civilization

There is no doubt that we are stepping towards understanding humanity’s power even though until now the steps we are taking are slow. Nonetheless, these steps are in the right direction. Ashrati says Gülen has turned our attention towards this power. He explained that it exists within us in the depth of our innermost beings. Without this power, man feels that his life is meaningless and so difficult that he wishes not to exist at all. This causes him to become ill and afraid of existence itself. Gülen turns our attention to that power and points to it, encouraging man to go after it in order to discover it and bring it forth to the visible realm to use it in building his individual strength and to strengthen his culture. This is very important because it is the core of what religion calls for and what Islam invites people to; for Islam is a religion and a civilization which takes that inner power as the foundation upon which it establishes its intellectual edifices and its ethical and civilized principles.

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Yunus Emre: The Sufi Poet in Love

Yunus Emre: The Sufi Poet in Love

One of the most famous poets in the history of Turkish literature, Yunus Emre (d. 1320) is well-known as a Sufi saint-poet who has exerted a great influence in both the East and the West. This book is an analysis on Emre’s ardent, deceptively simple, yet powerful expressions of love, the musicality of the verse, and the daring and sometimes even daunting imagery. UNESCO celebrated 1991 as the year of Yunus Emre.

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Rumi and Confucius: Messages for a New Century

Rumi and Confucius: Messages for a New Century

Despite the fact that Confucius and Rumi were born in different periods and places, both were born at a time of social upheaval and political turmoil. Consequently, both thinkers tried to provide the means for their people to overcome the times of difficulty, first by understanding, cultivating, and realizing their human potentialities and then by transforming themselves, their families, and their societies. This book examines the core ideas of these two great thinkers and provides anthropocosmic insights into their ideas on nature, family, and music.

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When Mystic Masters Meet: Towards a New Matrix for Christian-Muslim Dialogue

When Mystic Masters Meet: Towards a New Matrix for Christian-Muslim Dialogue

This book is a study of the role of mystical discourse and experience can play in Christian-Muslim dialogue as a subset of interfaith dialogue in general. It concentrates on the work of two great medieval mystic masters, one Muslim, the other Christian. The Christian is a German Dominican mystic, Mesiter Eckhart. The Muslim is Muhyi al-Din al-Arabi, a Sufi teacher known as the Greatest Master. It tries to articulate conversation points between the two discourses which might serve as nodes for a possible new matrix for Christian-Muslim dialogue.

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Rumi

Rumi

An authoritative but accessible introduction to this important 13th-century historian and mystic poet Rumi, this work concentrates on the social and cultural environment in which he lived and produced his influential works. The book describes the war-torn lives of the people in Asia Minor at the time and states that few figures in history have made an appeal for peace so enlightened that it traveled down the centuries. A selection of passages from Rumi’s works is also included, explaining his core philosophy in his own words.

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Fundamentals Of Rumis Thought

Fundamentals Of Rumis Thought

This work attempts to present Rumi to the English-speaking world and to shed light on his life as seen from within the Islamic mystical tradition. The knowledge presented in this work comes from Sefik Can, a great expert of Rumi and who used to be the highest authority, Sertariq, of the Mevlevi Sufi order in Turkey until he passed away on January 24, 2005. Two aspects of this work make it unique. The first is that the book was originally authored by a man who is ninety five years old and who has dedicated his entire life to the teachings of Rumu. Such a Mevlevi’s view of Rumi makes this work greatly valuable. The second important contribution to the book is the foreword, which was translated by from the original turkish, written by M. Fethullah Gulen, a prominent Muslim thinker and interfaith activist of Turkey.

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The Art of Coexistence: Pioneering Role of Fethullah Gulen and the Hizmet Movement

The Art of Coexistence: Pioneering Role of Fethullah Gulen and the Hizmet Movement

The global threat of war, terrorism, the increased gap between poor and rich, famine, malnutrition, global warming and pollution, and many other social and cultural problems, pose a real challenge for present citizens of the globe. Intellectuals and politicians take these challenges as their primary concerns. Despite the existence of some pessimists, there are a number of initiatives working for the common good and expending great effort to solve these problems. The Hizmet (Gulen) Movement is one of the most influential initiatives that should be taken into consideration in this context. Fethullah Gulen is a Turkish Muslim scholar whose ideas have inspired and influenced many Turkish intellectuals, educators, students, businessmen, politicians and journalists inside and outside Turkey to establish schools, educational and intercultural centers, and humanitarian aid organizations in more than one hundred fifty countries. Yucel and Albayrak cover the Hizmet Movement under the leadership of Fethullah Gulen from various perspectives in order to shed lights on current discussions.

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European Muslims, Civility and Public Life: Perspectives On and From the Gülen Movement

European Muslims, Civility and Public Life: Perspectives On and From the Gülen Movement

This collection deals with the challenges and opportunities faced by Muslims and the wider society in Europe following the Madrid train bombings of 2003 and the London Transport attacks of 2005. The contributors explore the challenges to the concept and practice of civility in public life within a European context, and demonstrate the contributions that can be made in this regard from the thought and practice of the global movement inspired by the Turkish Muslim scholar FethullahGülen. The importance and distinctiveness of the teaching of Fethullah Gülen and the practice of the movement is that it is rooted in a confident Turkish Islamic heritage while being fully engaged with modernity. It offers the possibility of a contextualised renewal of Islam for Muslims in Europe while being fully rooted in the teachings of the Qu’ran and the Sunnah of the Prophet. This volume is an important contribution to the study of the movement, which advocates the freedom of religion while making an Islamic contribution to the wider society based on a commitment to service of others.

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The Muslim World and Politics in Transition: Creative Contributions of the Gulen Movement

The Muslim World and Politics in Transition: Creative Contributions of the Gulen Movement

As a leading movement in contemporary Turkey with a universal educational and inter-faith agenda, the Gülen movement aims to promote creative and positive relations between the West and the Muslim world and to articulate a critically constructive position on such issues as democracy, multi-culturalism, globalisation, and interfaith dialogue in the context of secular modernity.
Many countries in the predominantly Muslim world are in a time of transition and of opening to democratic development of which the so-called “Arab Spring” has seen only the most recent and dramatic developments. Particularly against that background, there has been a developing interest in “the Turkish model” of transition from authoritarianism to democracy.

The Muslim World and Politics in Transition includes chapters written by international scholars with expertise in relation to the contexts that it addresses. It discusses how the Gülen movement has positioned itself and has sought to contribute within societies – including the movement’s home country of Turkey – in which Muslims are in the majority and Islam forms a major part of the cultural, religious and historical inheritance.

The movement and initiatives inspired by the Turkish Muslim scholar Fethullah Gülen began in Turkey, but can now be found throughout the world, including in both Europe and in the ‘Muslim world’. Bloomsbury has a companion volume edited by Paul Weller and Ihsan Yilmaz on European Muslims, Civility and Public Life: Perspectives on and From the Gulen Movement.

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Language of the Heart: A Sufi Interpretation of Form (Sura) and Meaning (Mana) in Contemporary Society

Language of the Heart: A Sufi Interpretation of Form (Sura) and Meaning (Mana) in Contemporary Society

This book seeks to examine how Sufi thought might provide critical understanding of contemporary life and a pathway towards the recovery of a more meaningful existence. Rumi’s mystical teachings are of great value at a time of rampant materialism and indiscriminate consumerism, and have the potential to illuminate the precarious state of the world, as well as revitalize contemporary social critique, eco-philosophy and bio-semiotics in what is increasingly being regarded as a post-secular age.

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Living In The Shade of Islam

Living In The Shade of Islam

Refuting the numerous misconceptions about Islam, this guide reveals the underlying essence of the beliefs and rituals of the Islam faith.

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Interfaith Just Peacemaking: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Perspectives on the New Paradigm of Peace and War

Interfaith Just Peacemaking: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Perspectives on the New Paradigm of Peace and War

Interfaith Just Peacemaking is a collected work by 27 Jewish, Muslim and Christian scholars and religious leaders on the ten ‘practice norms’ of the peacemaking paradigm called ‘Just Peace.’Just Peace theory, like the paradigm it most resembles, Just War theory, is a list of specific practices that are applied to concrete contexts.

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Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty

Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty

From furious reactions to the cartoons of Prophet Muhammad to the suppression of women, news from the Muslim world begs the question: is Islam incompatible with freedom? With an eye sympathetic to Western liberalism and Islamic theology, Mustafa Akyol traces the ideological and historical roots of political Islam. The years following Muhammad’s passing in 632 AD saw an intellectual “war of ideas” rage between rationalist, flexible schools of Islam and the more dogmatic, rigid ones. The traditionalist school won out, fostering perceptions of Islam as antithetical to modernity. However, through his careful reexamination of the currents of Muslim thought, Akyol discovers a flourishing of liberalism in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire and the unique “Islamo-liberal synthesis” of present-day Turkey. Only by accepting a secular state, he powerfully asserts, can Islamic societies thrive. Persuasive and inspiring, Islam without Extremesoffers a desperately needed intellectual basis for the reconcilability of Islam and religious, political, economic, and social freedoms.

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The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization

European Muslims, Civility and Public Life: Perspectives On and From the Gülen Movement

This collection deals with the challenges and opportunities faced by Muslims and the wider society in Europe following the Madrid train bombings of 2003 and the London Transport attacks of 2005. The contributors explore the challenges to the concept and practice of civility in public life within a European context, and demonstrate the contributions that can be made in this regard from the thought and practice of the global movement inspired by the Turkish Muslim scholar FethullahGülen. The importance and distinctiveness of the teaching of Fethullah Gülen and the practice of the movement is that it is rooted in a confident Turkish Islamic heritage while being fully engaged with modernity. It offers the possibility of a contextualised renewal of Islam for Muslims in Europe while being fully rooted in the teachings of the Qu’ran and the Sunnah of the Prophet. This volume is an important contribution to the study of the movement, which advocates the freedom of religion while making an Islamic contribution to the wider society based on a commitment to service of others.

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Debating Multiculturalism: Vol. 1

Debating Multiculturalism: Vol. 1

This is a Workshop Proceedings

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Debating Multiculturalism Vol 2

Debating Multiculturalism Vol 2

This is a Workshop Proceedings

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Reporting From The Bridge

Reporting From The Bridge

In this series of essays with leading figures in the journalism and publishing fields, Aydoğan Vatandaş brings his unique investigative approach and perspective as a journalistic bridge-builder to explore the evolution of the media and the role it plays in global understanding as he seeks that middle meeting field of differing cultures and approaches. His interviews shed light on the various ways the US press has reported such topics as the leadership role of Turkey in the Middle East, the death of Osama bin Laden, the role of Hamas, the role of social media in the Arab Spring, Islamophobia, Wikileaks, the role of propaganda in the press, citizen journalism, opinion crafting by both sides, and the intimate relationship between politics and media in the United States.

“Vatandaş’s interviews provide a vibrant account of the real issues faced by journalists, and allow us to read between the lines of the news. The net result is an exciting book which delves into the heart of current affairs.”
Katharine Branning

Author of Yes, I Would Love another Glass of Tea

“Vatandaş asks the right questions in a concise and thoughtful way. As a result, his guests offer absorbing insights into a range of topics, from the vast changes in the media landscape to the Arab spring, and to Turkey’s role in international diplomacy.”
Paul Moses is a Pulitzer Award winner journalist and professor of journalism at Brooklyn College.

Aydoğan Vatandaş is an investigative journalist from Turkey based in New York. He is the author of eleven books, many of which have been bestsellers in Turkey. He is currently the media representative of Turkish Cihan News Agency in New York.

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Turkey

Turkey’s Path to Democratization: Barriers, Actors, Outcomes

In this timely book the author addresses a number of key questions about Turkey’s hard road to democratization. Is it still underway? What are the hindrances or blockages? What are the motivations and roles of civil society groupings in this evolving democracy? What is the current stance and role of the military, given Turkey’s recent history of recurrent military coups d’état? Will Turkey ever succeed in gaining admittance to the European Union?

How does Turkey’s role in NATO interact with Turkey’s constantly changing relations with neighbors in the region? Is Turkey moving West or is it turning to the East? What are the implications for Turkey and the region of the relatively new “state” of Northern Iraq—now commonly known as “Kurdistan”?

To contextualize events in contemporary Turkey, Çetin begins with a swift-moving account of the attempt to establish, and then hold on to, a nationalist, laicist, and Westernized republic after the end of the Ottoman Empire. In this way, he traces the emergence, dynamics and outcomes of social and political movements in Turkey, the political system, its institutions and processes, and the larger social and cultural ethos to the early Republican years, when a new state and society formed.

The articles which follow the historical account, and which provide a commentary on contemporary social and political events, were written over a period of three years for publication in the English-language newspaper Today’s Zaman and are grouped in this book according to theme.

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Time to Talk: An Exclusive Interview with Fethullah Gulen

Time to Talk: An Exclusive Interview with Fethullah Gulen

Time to Talk is a defense manifesto of the Hizmet Movement which has been engaged in educational activities around the world and in Turkey for five decades. The content of the talk once again confirms that the Movement, which has never been involved in any illegal activity whatsoever since its inception, expects nothing but the establishment of bridges of peace and brotherhood throughout the world.

Gülen’s responses to the questions on the association of the Hizmet Movement with the so-called “parallel state,” the Dec. 17 corruption investigation and many other critical inquiries eliminate the suspicions.

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Mary

Mary

He made Mary grow in purity and beauty, Like a beatiful flower…

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The Necessity of Interfaith Dialogue

The Necessity of Interfaith Dialogue

Religious progress is possible not by consciences being narrow and separate from each other, but by their being universal and broad.

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Debating Multiculturalism Vol 2

Jesus, His Mission, and Miracles

The Messenger believes in what has been revealed to him by his Lord, and so do the believers. They all believe in God and His angels, His Scriptures, and His Messengers: “We make no distinction between any of His Messengers” and they say: We hear and obey. Grant us Your forgiveness, our Lord. To You is the journeying.

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Three Mystics Walk into a Tavern: A Once and Future Meeting of Rumi, Meister Eckhart, and Moses de León in Medieval Venice

Three Mystics Walk into a Tavern: A Once and Future Meeting of Rumi, Meister Eckhart, and Moses de León in Medieval Venice

In Three Mystics Walk into a Tavern, Jalal ad-Din Rumi, Moses de León, and Meister Eckhart–three of the greatest mystics of all time–meet in Venice for an imaginary night-long conversation that will inspire everyday individuals of the twenty-first century to find their own spirituality and realize that everyone can be a mystic. Although the mystics came from different backgrounds and religious traditions (Islam, Judaism, and Christianity), their spiritual paths led them to similar understandings of union with the Divine. The three mystics have a timeless and timely message for people who walk the earth eight centuries after they did, no matter an individual’s religious background or even if they have none. It is a message of connecting with the “divine spark” deep within us and within the universe.

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Gülen-Inspired Hizmet in Europe (Dieux, Hommes et Religions)

Gülen-Inspired Hizmet in Europe (Dieux, Hommes et Religions)

The Hizmet Movement initiated by Fethullah Gülen in Turkey in the 1960s is today active in more than 160 countries. The participants of Hizmet are often less visible among the Muslim minorities in Western societies. They do not build mosques or hold regular prayer meetings like institutional Muslims or Sufi masters, but establish emancipatory schools without religious instruction, cherish networks of business people, publish the newspaper Zaman in various national editions, and run dialogue charities for intercultural and interreligious encounters. Small groups come together in private houses to hold sohbets, that is spiritual talks on faith, religion and society, and to discuss Hizmet-related projects in the light of teachings articulated by Gülen in his books and talks.
This book provides a broad presentation of Gülen’s thought and practice. These issues are discussed in the first part of this book. The second part presents six case studies from countries where the name of Gülen has been attached to a great variety of social activities in the field of education, media, business, dialogue, and the support of integration and defence of human rights. These countries are Belgium, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Albania as the centre of Muslims in the Balkans. Although the participants of Hizmet are quite small in number and work in an extremely decentralised way, they are among the best educated and most socially active of the Turkish-speaking communities in their countries. This is therefore an important study of a group of Muslims who cannot simply be categorized as «conservative» or «progressive», «pietistic» or «political».

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