Casting Call for Aspiring "Fethullahcis"
The following article appeared in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a major national newspaper in Germany, on July 21, 2008.
(Photo of Gulen and the Pope not included in this article).
The Followers of Fethullah Gülen
by Necla Kelek
July 21, 2008
A Muslim chauvinist behind a façade of enlightenment: Fethullah Gülen shakes hands with Pope John Paul II
The arrests in Turkey in early July of several retired Kemalist generals as alleged coup organizers can be traced back, insiders in Ankara suspect, also to the Fethullahcis, the followers of Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen. By now they now have high positions, not only in the AKP, but also in the state apparatus and the police.
(2) Translator’s note;The AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, or Justice and Development Party) is the current ruling party of Turkey.
Who is Fethullah Gulen? He was born in 1941 near the city of Erzurum in eastern Anatolia. He went to a Koranic school, became an imam with the Turkish religious authority at age eighteen, joined the Nurcu-light movement of the Sufi cleric Said Nursi, spent six months in jail due to the Islamist disturbances after the 1971 coup, and nevertheless remained a preacher in the government service until after the military coup in 1981. He then founded his own movement, oriented towards mysticism and Sufism, which invokes a combination of Islam and Turkish nationalism or "Turanism," and which secretly spreads ideas of world conquest.
A sect with corporate structure
Gülen has established a global network of foundations and schools, first and foremost to educate the new Muslim technical intelligentsia, which operates as a sort of secret sect. Their public arm is typified by high-circulation newspapers such as the Turkish "Zaman". Outwardly, he represents a kind of “Islam lite;” inwardly, he propagates a power-conscious Muslim chauvinism.
With respect to the West, he tries to obtain international renown through appeals for peace, for example through the "Global Ethic" movement of the Catholic writer Hans Küng. Nevertheless, he forthrightly promotes the thesis of the superiority of Islam over any other religion. His movement is active from Japan to Russia, Germany and Turkey; it has universities, television stations, a bank, insurance companies, newspapers, a business association and trade unions. Fethullahci, as Gülen's followers are called, have positions all the way to the highest circles of the Turkish government.
An "elusive" Movement
"The Nurcu movement sees itself as a religious reform movement, which aims to form a synthesis of modern technology and Islam. Meanwhile, the "Islamic Association of the Community of Light” '(“Light Youth”) has, nationwide, about forty madrasas, or theological training schools. This includes, for example, the Feyza Education Center in Duisburg. The number of followers of this movement in Germany is between five and six thousand. According to its own reports, the movement has about 1.5 million followers worldwide, in more than sixty countries. The overall responsibility lies with a working team of “equal brothers” in Istanbul "- thus the Federal Ministry of Family Affairs assesses the situation.
In 1999 in Turkey, one of Gülen’s speeches became well-known, in which he gave instructions to his followers for a “march through the institutions(1)” urging them to act in a conspiratorial manner until the time would come for the transfer of power. The speech became famous; Gülen relocated to the United States to prevent an arrest by the military. He has lived there ever since. Conforming exactly to the principles of a conspiracy, his sect has no central organization. There are no meetings, because there are only personal connection between the brothers and sisters. They work with godfathers and sponsors, informally and via the Internet. The movement is "elusive", as the Islamic scholar Ralph Ghadban asserts.
(1) Translator’s note: “march through the institutions” refers to a well-known phrase first used in 1968 by activist Rudi Dutschke of the German student movement.
Discreet organizational form
I myself took a long time to figure out the operation of this organization. Years ago we had an exchange student as our guest. The young woman had studied business administration in Turkey and wanted to earn a doctorate in Germany. She neither wore a headscarf, nor prayed, nor displayed towards me any interest in religious themes. The only thing she did every day was to translate texts of the Turkish newspaper "Zaman" online into English. A student job, she said, in order to finance her studies. From other connections, I found out that she was a Fethullahci.
She then moved into an apartment for female students. When I visited her there once by surprise, I came across a thoroughly Islamic community. She traveled to Paris for a few days or sometimes to London, always to "friends" of whom she, in response to inquires, could or would not say anything. After a year she suddenly married. Her professor in Istanbul had arranged as a bridegroom for her a student who also belonged to the movement. The Nurcus arranged the marriage, and her parents agreed. She returned to Turkey, and will teach at a Gulen school.
Feigned modernity
At first glance, the approach of the movement seems thoroughly modern. The idea is for Muslims to assimilate all the achievements of science, so that they can compete with the West. There is nothing wrong in this, and the movement could serve as a showcase of a reformed Islam, which itself otherwise rejects modernity. But if the writings of Fethullah Gülen are considered, a deeply dogmatic and reactionary thinking appears. He writes: "The Quran and Hadith are true and absolute. Science and scientific facts are true as long as they conform to the Quran and Hadith. But when they adopt a different position and lead away from the truth of the Quran and Hadith, they are faulty. Even clearly established scientific facts can not be the pillars on which the truths of Iman (faith) rest. It is not science that reveals the truth, but rather faith in Allah, and in the true guidance of God . .”
This kind of thought leads to the realization that everything is already in the Koran, and that everything is preordained. Thus the Koran gives, for example, references to the invisible actions of what is now called physics: attraction and repulsion, and the rotations and revolutions in the universe. The proof, according to Gülen, is the 13th Sura, verse 2 of the Koran: "Allah is He who, as you can see, has lifted without pillars." Or, Sura 22, Verse 65: "And He holds the sky back, so it does not fall to earth except with his permission.
"Intellectual despotism"
When asked, then, why most scientific knowledge does not come from Muslims, he explains that, "the secret of scientific advances of the Islamic world from the 12th Century” lies in Islam, because it possesses a "sense of poverty and powerlessness before the eternal omnipotent creator of the universe.” The rest is the "intellectual and scientific despotism" of Western bigotry, colonialism, et cetera, which have made the world worse rather than better, because they fail to follow the Koran.
Gülen’s world view is composed of such reasoning. It follows naturally, then, that in the same spirit he attests to the existence of angels and jinn. They are the same arguments that are known from Sharia-Islam . Gülen does only one thing differently than the fatalistic believer in providence: He calls on his followers to actively usurp the world of infidels in order to control them in the name of Islam. He is concerned with achieving the God-given, natural domination of Islam over the world, because "everything will submit to mankind, as long as they submit to Allah."
Waiting for the right moment
Gülen's followers are the intellectual architects of the AKP. They use the learning of the West; freedom and democracy are tools for gaining and preserving power and influence. Turkish political parties as a whole are not organizations of believers in democracy, but rather lobbyists who use the democratic system to further their group and individual interests. Since the establishment of the Turkish Republic, dozens of political parties, movements and religious orders were legally banned, or destroyed by the military. The AKP currently is struggling against a ban from Kemalist federalist prosecutors. The Fethullahcis have adjusted to this situation; they work underground, and wait for their time to come.
The activities involving lay people, the way the life plans of followers are determined by the movement, and the secrecy toward outsiders are in many respects reminiscent of the model of the Catholic order Opus Dei. The influence of the Fethullahcis should not be underestimated, because the vast majority of them belong to the younger Turkish intelligentsia. Gülen's movement is the most influential politico-religious secret society in Turkey. They will use their influence in the coming months in the debate over the future of the country.
A small anecdote illustrates how well organized and easily mobilized they are. The editors of the British magazine "Prospect" were surprised in June when they evaluated the results of their Internet survey of the “Top 100 Intellectuals in the World.” Out of the gate, Mario Vargas Llosa, Al Gore and Gary Kasparov were still head to head with Noam Chomsky, the 2005 winner. This changed shortly before the finish, when the Internet survey suddenly received more than 500,000 votes. They upended the world of Western intellectuals. Since then, the Turk Fethullah Gülen is deemed the world’s top intellectual.
Text: F.A.Z.
Bildmaterial: ASSOCIATED PRESS, dpa
Necla Kelek was born in 1957 in Istanbul, and is a German social scientist. The main focus of her research is Islamic life in the West.
(Photo of Gulen and the Pope not included in this article).
The Followers of Fethullah Gülen
by Necla Kelek
July 21, 2008
A Muslim chauvinist behind a façade of enlightenment: Fethullah Gülen shakes hands with Pope John Paul II
The arrests in Turkey in early July of several retired Kemalist generals as alleged coup organizers can be traced back, insiders in Ankara suspect, also to the Fethullahcis, the followers of Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen. By now they now have high positions, not only in the AKP, but also in the state apparatus and the police.
(2) Translator’s note;The AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, or Justice and Development Party) is the current ruling party of Turkey.
Who is Fethullah Gulen? He was born in 1941 near the city of Erzurum in eastern Anatolia. He went to a Koranic school, became an imam with the Turkish religious authority at age eighteen, joined the Nurcu-light movement of the Sufi cleric Said Nursi, spent six months in jail due to the Islamist disturbances after the 1971 coup, and nevertheless remained a preacher in the government service until after the military coup in 1981. He then founded his own movement, oriented towards mysticism and Sufism, which invokes a combination of Islam and Turkish nationalism or "Turanism," and which secretly spreads ideas of world conquest.
A sect with corporate structure
Gülen has established a global network of foundations and schools, first and foremost to educate the new Muslim technical intelligentsia, which operates as a sort of secret sect. Their public arm is typified by high-circulation newspapers such as the Turkish "Zaman". Outwardly, he represents a kind of “Islam lite;” inwardly, he propagates a power-conscious Muslim chauvinism.
With respect to the West, he tries to obtain international renown through appeals for peace, for example through the "Global Ethic" movement of the Catholic writer Hans Küng. Nevertheless, he forthrightly promotes the thesis of the superiority of Islam over any other religion. His movement is active from Japan to Russia, Germany and Turkey; it has universities, television stations, a bank, insurance companies, newspapers, a business association and trade unions. Fethullahci, as Gülen's followers are called, have positions all the way to the highest circles of the Turkish government.
An "elusive" Movement
"The Nurcu movement sees itself as a religious reform movement, which aims to form a synthesis of modern technology and Islam. Meanwhile, the "Islamic Association of the Community of Light” '(“Light Youth”) has, nationwide, about forty madrasas, or theological training schools. This includes, for example, the Feyza Education Center in Duisburg. The number of followers of this movement in Germany is between five and six thousand. According to its own reports, the movement has about 1.5 million followers worldwide, in more than sixty countries. The overall responsibility lies with a working team of “equal brothers” in Istanbul "- thus the Federal Ministry of Family Affairs assesses the situation.
In 1999 in Turkey, one of Gülen’s speeches became well-known, in which he gave instructions to his followers for a “march through the institutions(1)” urging them to act in a conspiratorial manner until the time would come for the transfer of power. The speech became famous; Gülen relocated to the United States to prevent an arrest by the military. He has lived there ever since. Conforming exactly to the principles of a conspiracy, his sect has no central organization. There are no meetings, because there are only personal connection between the brothers and sisters. They work with godfathers and sponsors, informally and via the Internet. The movement is "elusive", as the Islamic scholar Ralph Ghadban asserts.
(1) Translator’s note: “march through the institutions” refers to a well-known phrase first used in 1968 by activist Rudi Dutschke of the German student movement.
Discreet organizational form
I myself took a long time to figure out the operation of this organization. Years ago we had an exchange student as our guest. The young woman had studied business administration in Turkey and wanted to earn a doctorate in Germany. She neither wore a headscarf, nor prayed, nor displayed towards me any interest in religious themes. The only thing she did every day was to translate texts of the Turkish newspaper "Zaman" online into English. A student job, she said, in order to finance her studies. From other connections, I found out that she was a Fethullahci.
She then moved into an apartment for female students. When I visited her there once by surprise, I came across a thoroughly Islamic community. She traveled to Paris for a few days or sometimes to London, always to "friends" of whom she, in response to inquires, could or would not say anything. After a year she suddenly married. Her professor in Istanbul had arranged as a bridegroom for her a student who also belonged to the movement. The Nurcus arranged the marriage, and her parents agreed. She returned to Turkey, and will teach at a Gulen school.
Feigned modernity
At first glance, the approach of the movement seems thoroughly modern. The idea is for Muslims to assimilate all the achievements of science, so that they can compete with the West. There is nothing wrong in this, and the movement could serve as a showcase of a reformed Islam, which itself otherwise rejects modernity. But if the writings of Fethullah Gülen are considered, a deeply dogmatic and reactionary thinking appears. He writes: "The Quran and Hadith are true and absolute. Science and scientific facts are true as long as they conform to the Quran and Hadith. But when they adopt a different position and lead away from the truth of the Quran and Hadith, they are faulty. Even clearly established scientific facts can not be the pillars on which the truths of Iman (faith) rest. It is not science that reveals the truth, but rather faith in Allah, and in the true guidance of God . .”
This kind of thought leads to the realization that everything is already in the Koran, and that everything is preordained. Thus the Koran gives, for example, references to the invisible actions of what is now called physics: attraction and repulsion, and the rotations and revolutions in the universe. The proof, according to Gülen, is the 13th Sura, verse 2 of the Koran: "Allah is He who, as you can see, has lifted without pillars." Or, Sura 22, Verse 65: "And He holds the sky back, so it does not fall to earth except with his permission.
"Intellectual despotism"
When asked, then, why most scientific knowledge does not come from Muslims, he explains that, "the secret of scientific advances of the Islamic world from the 12th Century” lies in Islam, because it possesses a "sense of poverty and powerlessness before the eternal omnipotent creator of the universe.” The rest is the "intellectual and scientific despotism" of Western bigotry, colonialism, et cetera, which have made the world worse rather than better, because they fail to follow the Koran.
Gülen’s world view is composed of such reasoning. It follows naturally, then, that in the same spirit he attests to the existence of angels and jinn. They are the same arguments that are known from Sharia-Islam . Gülen does only one thing differently than the fatalistic believer in providence: He calls on his followers to actively usurp the world of infidels in order to control them in the name of Islam. He is concerned with achieving the God-given, natural domination of Islam over the world, because "everything will submit to mankind, as long as they submit to Allah."
Waiting for the right moment
Gülen's followers are the intellectual architects of the AKP. They use the learning of the West; freedom and democracy are tools for gaining and preserving power and influence. Turkish political parties as a whole are not organizations of believers in democracy, but rather lobbyists who use the democratic system to further their group and individual interests. Since the establishment of the Turkish Republic, dozens of political parties, movements and religious orders were legally banned, or destroyed by the military. The AKP currently is struggling against a ban from Kemalist federalist prosecutors. The Fethullahcis have adjusted to this situation; they work underground, and wait for their time to come.
The activities involving lay people, the way the life plans of followers are determined by the movement, and the secrecy toward outsiders are in many respects reminiscent of the model of the Catholic order Opus Dei. The influence of the Fethullahcis should not be underestimated, because the vast majority of them belong to the younger Turkish intelligentsia. Gülen's movement is the most influential politico-religious secret society in Turkey. They will use their influence in the coming months in the debate over the future of the country.
A small anecdote illustrates how well organized and easily mobilized they are. The editors of the British magazine "Prospect" were surprised in June when they evaluated the results of their Internet survey of the “Top 100 Intellectuals in the World.” Out of the gate, Mario Vargas Llosa, Al Gore and Gary Kasparov were still head to head with Noam Chomsky, the 2005 winner. This changed shortly before the finish, when the Internet survey suddenly received more than 500,000 votes. They upended the world of Western intellectuals. Since then, the Turk Fethullah Gülen is deemed the world’s top intellectual.
Text: F.A.Z.
Bildmaterial: ASSOCIATED PRESS, dpa
Necla Kelek was born in 1957 in Istanbul, and is a German social scientist. The main focus of her research is Islamic life in the West.
