Muhammed Fethullah Gulen, is a Turkish preacher,
author, educator, and Sufi Muslim scholar living in
self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania (USA), he the founder and leader of
the Gulen movement. •
Read more by the Author
July 22, 2012
Most of the Muslim world has been enslaved for
decades by strong-man dictators, supported by the
West. Several countries have revolted and overthrown
their former dictators, such as in Tunisia, Egypt,
and Libya, while in Syria thousands of opponents
continue to defy the brutal oppression of the Assad
regime. Some countries have called the Arab Spring
an Islamic awakening.
The reason that many dictators do not let Muslim
groups come into power is because they fear
political Islam and because most of the leaders of
Islamic groups in Arab countries embrace a political
view of Islam and reject secular forms of
government. The West also feels these groups are
anti-Western and anti-secular forms of government.
That is why most of these seemingly radicalized
groups have not been very successful or are short
-lived. So why has Fethullah Gülen’s Islamic
missionary movement been successful? And why is the
West, and particularly America, supporting him and
his movement?
Of course, if you ask the devotees of this Turkish
imam’s organization these questions, they will say
that God is on their side, that they are followers
of Mohammed, that this Dava or Hizmet has been given
to them, and that Turks are the chosen people;
therefore, they have been successful. But if you ask
sceptics why this ideological system has expanded
more than any other Islamic fundamentalists, they
will say that it is their method of disseminating
Islam and conducting their mission. The other
Islamic movements use reactionary methods, not using
Gülen’s methods of secrecy, prudence, caution,
indoctrination via education, and selective truth
according to whenever they feel they can tell the
truth, based on conditions related to when the time
is right and when the moment is appropriate.
This contrast in methods is the reason that for a
long time terrorism has helped the Gülen movement,
because Gülenists told the naïve westerners that
these other groups do not represent Islam, claiming
instead that they were the only ones speaking on
behalf of Islam. The Gülenists argue, “Look, we
advocate education, and we are secular but Muslim.”
That is a complete fallacy. It is impossible to be a
Muslim and at the same time be secular; either you
are Muslim or secular. That’s why today the West and
America accept their ideals, support the movement,
and want other groups to be like them. In reality
Gülen himself is not tolerant, but, on the contrary,
he is very authoritarian with no room for criticism
and no room to object to him or his vision. His
decrees must be met.
This kind of ideology is one of the most dangerous
kinds. However, for a long time violence and
terrorism have helped Gülen, but with the Arab
Spring this
may change, because,
according to democratic theory, democracies do
not fight each other, so if all Muslims and
Middle Easterners become democracies, they will
respect the rule of law and solve their disputes
in a democratic way. The reason the West and
America support Gülen and his missionaries is
not because Gülenists are very tolerant and
peace loving or save humanity, but because
America and the West do not have any
alternatives, and they cannot go against the 1.3
billion Muslims. Therefore, they have to choose
and support one group over the other groups.
Since Gülen is using capitalism in conjunction
with an Islamic spirit to mask his true goals,
he pretends to advocate primarily tolerance,
interfaith dialogue, education, science, and
technology. For the West and America there are
three options: one is Iran’s version of Islam,
which is Shia; the second option is Saudi
Arabia’s fundamental sects of Islam called
Salafis; and the third is Gülen’s brand of Sunni
Islam. Therefore, it is not surprising then that
Gülen has many admirers in the West and
particularly in America because the West posits,
“It is a civic movement and Gülen’s views are
moderate and modern. He is fiercely opposed to
violence and enthusiastic about science. He is
not a radical Islamist.” Gülen has written, “The
lesser Jihad is our active fulfillment of Islam’
commands and duties,” adding, “and the greater
jihad is proclaiming war on our ego’s
destructive and negative emotions and thoughts
which prevent us from attaining perfections.”
Gülen is very opportunistic. When Central Asia
first gained its independence, he ordered his
followers to go there to get power and influence
among those countries because the door soon
would be closed. Also, at that time Gülen was
criticized for teaching the English language,www.ekurd.net
and for that decision some of his critiques
accused Gülen of working for the CIA, but Gülen
is not working for CIA; instead, he is using the
CIA for his purposes. The reason Gülen’s schools
give instruction in English is to create the
alternative to American schools teaching there.
When he initially sent his missionaries to
Central Asia, he told them, “If you don’t go
there, Christians will go, they will open
schools, and they will teach the youth; they
will give them an education, so you must go and
teach them English in order to provide them with
a good education, so that those governments will
no longer need other schools, and you will block
the Americans from teaching in the former Soviet
countries. “
From its early journey into the Central Asian
countries to its worldwide dominance today, the
Gülen movement has sought opportunities to
advance, shifting to borrow a country’s
palatable values and retaining successful ones
to augment its base. Countries that have weak
civil society structures but authoritarian
regimes are prone to become fertile grounds for
terrorism and violence, but recently things have
changed. Now some of the groups in the Middle
East, for example, the Brotherhood in Egypt,
argue that the religious ideals within Islam
always favor democracy.
Today Muslims are weakening, thanks to western
technological inventions, and now they are able
to take advantage of technology to disseminate
the truth and learn the truth about what its
right and what is wrong rather than rely
entirely on imams and their interpretations.
Muslims argue the Qur’an contains a number of
ideas that support democratic ideals. In fact,
Shar’ia applies to all aspect of religious,
social, private, and political life. Now the
hard core Islamists realize and agree that
political Islam has all the democratic norms, so
they are trying to adopt new ideas and policies
while maintaining religious and cultural
identity. The Muslim groups now hold that the
abuse of human rights in the Muslim countries
does not come from Islam but is derived from
economic, political, social, and educational
forces. To maintain such a balance, the Muslim
groups, leaders, intellectuals, and mostly those
who have studied in Europe or in the United
States have been at least exposed to ways to
maintain that balance between Islamic values and
social norms in a manner consistent with the
modern and internationally recognized principles
of human rights.
That is what Gülen is advocating- –a spiritual
balance– and that is what is very saleable in
the West, so now hopefully, the global community
will have this balance in the Middle East and
thereby will reduce the value of Gülen ideology.
Today Muslim leaders in the Arab world see Islam
as a set of norms and ideas that emphasize the
equality of people, the accountability of
leaders to community, respect of diversity,
respect for other faiths, and defense of the
rights of minorities– all principles fully
compatible with democracy. For example, the
Egyptian newly elected President Morsi stated
that Egypt would honor its international
commitments, even though the status of the peace
treaty with Israel is still not clear. Neither
the West nor America has reason to stand against
these values.
Therefore, this will reduce the role of the
Gülen movement in the region and around the
world and will help balance the power of Islamic
sects in the Middle East. Consequently, the Arab
Spring could be a blessing for Gülen as well a
curse. It could be a blessing because no such
model exists in the twenty-first century, and so
far Gülenists have been successful in Turkey,
which will help them to spread their influence
in the region. However, it also could be a curse
because now Gülen and his followers advocate not
only education, modernization, economic
development, and religion values, but also his
movement advocates nationalism and the
Turkification of Islam. This could be a curse to
the Arab nationalism of Islam, because Gülenists
believe that Islam is best represented by the
Turks, and that Iran and the Arabs fail to
represent the true Islam.
Islam, thus far, has not represented this true
Islam for several reasons. First, Muslim groups
have to this point rejected the notion of
democracy, tolerance, and minority rights within
the majority rule, choosing hostility instead.
The second reason these groups use the method of
violence to spread Islam is that it is a more
traditional way of representing Islam and doing
this without any secrecy or prudence; and third,
they openly declare Israel their enemy, but do
not
realize that Israel
is doing well economically and also is allied
with strong countries. Muslims were not doing
well economically, so if they openly declared
Israel their enemy and attacked Israel without
gaining power, of course the West, especially
America, would stand by Israel, and Israel’s
allies will do all they can to protect Israel.
With the help of the West and the Americans,
dictators have either jailed most of the Muslim
leaders or exiled them to the West or to
America, including Fethullah Gülen, who was
exiled by the Turkish secular military in 1999,
for attempting to replace the secular government
with an Islamic one.
Why then has the Gülen movement become so
powerful domestically as well as
internationally? Why and what make Gülen so
powerful and other groups not? And how will this
new Great Middle East project affect Gülen’s
missionaries? The reason his followers are
successful compared to other Muslim groups in
the region and around the globe is the method
and representation of Islam, in other words, the
methods Gülen is using to spread and to
represent Islam. Gülen has used Saidi Kurdi’s
idea of education and science. For Saidi Kurdi
the reason the West is ahead of Islam and
economically doing well is not because Islam is
not compatible with science and technology, but
because of lack of ignorance. Said Kurdi
predicted the future of Islam and believed that
some day – that once Muslims took on the
positive Western values, such as science and
technology – then they would be a super power.
Thus, Gülen implemented Said Nursi’ s ideas
about education and science and about using the
method of secrecy, caution, and prudence to
become successful.
For profoundly anti-democratic goals, they use
America’s values of freedom of speech, political
correctness, tolerance, and multiculturalism as
tools for disseminating his ideology and
becoming very successful. According to Gülen,
“You move in the arteries of the system without
anyone noticing your existence until you reach
all the power centers, until the conditions are
ripe; if you do something prematurely, the world
will crush our heads. The time is not yet right.
You must wait until such time as you have gotten
all the state power, until you have brought to
your side all the power of the constitutional
institutions in Turkey. The work to be done is
in confronting the world. Now, I have expressed
my feelings and thoughts to you all in
confidence trusting your loyalty and secrecy.”
Thus, Gülen used the method of denial as well.
For the other Muslim groups, they confronted and
declared the most powerful institutions and
country as their enemy prematurely and, in
Gülen’s view, are thus being crushed. For Gülen,
he always allied himself with the most powerful
institutions and countries. Instead of
criticizing them and being against them, he
allied himself with them and praised them. For
example, in Turkey, Gülen allied himself with
the Turkish secular military and never
criticized the military or the founder of
Turkey, Kemal Ataturk, until recently when his
mentees took all the power. Now the Gülenists’
media and NGOs are attacking the military and
declaring it the number one enemy. Why? They
have demonized the military because at last they
have gained power, and because the conditions
are ripe, a time Gülen had urged his followers
to wait for.
Also, Gülen publically does not declare America
a number one enemy even though behind the door
he considers America and the Vatican the cause
of all the problems that happen in the Muslim
world.
As mentioned, Gülen is an opportunist, trying to
create an alternative for his movement and its
ideology to be the model. But after 9/11 the
world system has gone through a paradigm shift.
President Bush declared a global war on terror
but failed to end terrorism, so the United
States needs an alternative way to persuade the
Muslim world to reject the idea of
fundamentalism, and the United States seeks an
Islamic group as a model for the rest of the
Muslims to follow or to embrace. Now the US has
realized that politics should be war without
violence and needs to engage in politics in the
region to compel them to reject the jihadism as
a path to overcome western domination and help
them to adopt democratic principles and
individual freedoms. Therefore, under the new
Great Middle East Projects, America is trying to
install democracy in the Middle East and in
Muslim countries to prevent fundamentalism and
terrorism from spreading.
Not long ago the Middle East’s most popular
leaders were Hezbollah, Iran’s President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad, Hamas, and some other
fundamentalist groups who were standing up
against Israel in Lebanon and Gaza, against the
American policies in the Middle East, and
against the American interests by using
terrorism and violence. The US government gave
its support to Gülen, because it mistakenly
believes that Gülen’s missionaries are less
harmful compared to the Iranian Islamic movement
Hezbollah, the Saudi brand of Islam Wahhabism,
or other fundamentalist groups. The US thinks
that Gülen’s movement could be managed in the
right way by using it to suit American purposes.
Because many naively believe that Gülen preaches
nonviolence and dialogue between the western and
Muslim worlds, they let their guard down and
fail to see the reality behind his proclaimed
agenda.
Because he is wearing a moderate Islamic mask
and because he is using education as his front,
he is perceived as less dangerous and therefore
as an alternative to fundamentalism, but let’s
see how long this honeymoon lasts between Gülen
and America. The more Middle Eastern countries
embrace democratic values, the more the role of
Gülen’s missionary movement will be reduced,
because in the West especially in America,
Gülen’s movement is under scrutiny, and the
public is beginning to understand its real
agenda. The American government has failed to
acknowledge that in the Middle East Gülen’s
missionaries will be a future threat to American
national interests. Gülen and his followers are
thirsty for power, because with that power, they
will be able to do anything and thereby
accomplish their objectives. Actually terrorism
and fundamentalism help Gülen to gain momentum
internationally and domestically because Gülen
masks himself as more moderate, tolerant, and
receptive to interfaith dialogue. Domestically,
the public already understands how tolerant and
moderate they are, especially toward the Kurds
and secularists who criticized them and as a
result are in jail, so anyone who really has
researched Gülen closely comprehends that he is
not tolerant at all; he is an authoritarian and
a one-man rule. No one dares to object to his
view, his decrees must be done, and he is the
absolute authority.
In summary, for a long time Gülenists enjoyed
being seen as the rational alternative to the
overtly radical groups. However, simultaneously
as Gülen extends his command in the US, he
enlarges his movement across the globe to give
an alternative to the West and to America to
support his movement rather than those who use
force to advance their cause. Gülen knows the
West and America cannot be an enemy of Islam
because of the world’s political climate, but
that these world powers want some kind of modern
Islam that will embrace peace rather than
violence. Gülen used the same tactics in Turkey
to down the secular military and thereby gained
power in Turkey; first he praised the military
and allied himself with it. For example, in the
1997 coup, Gülen praised the military for
ousting the Muslims’ party leader Necmettin
Erbakan. Gülen had less than optimal relations
with him, not talking to him, even though Gülen
advocated tolerance and love. Gülen and the
Justice and Development Party (AKP) wanted to be
the leader of the Muslim world and are trying to
get the sympathy of the Arabic public by showing
it, “Look, your leader failed to show support
for Palestine and proved unable to show muscles
to Israel, so we are doing that now.“ By this
posturing, they hoped to get Arabs to invest oil
money in Turkey and to gain support of Muslims
in Turkey to ensure their own re-election.
Gülen believes reactionary movements cannot be
successful, no matter how powerful they are,
because a balance cannot be maintained; on the
contrary,
they prove to be a
more harmful threat to other people, and as a
result will cause reaction on the other side. In
his view, extreme religious indoctrination has
harmed the genuine revival of universal Islamic
values. Therefore, he is well aware of the
weaknesses of other religious movements of his
many predecessors to uphold the moral and
ethical values derived from Islamic scriptures.
However, like many Arab countries and Iran,
Gülen also wants to build a prosperous modern
state based solely on nationalistic ideals and
thus tends to show a discriminatory attitude
toward all kinds of minorities, leading to the
Turkification of Islam.
Gülen’s gospels claim Gülen is a voice of
moderation and a juncture of dichotomies of
Muslim polity and the ideological struggles
between extreme forces in the Muslim world.
While these extremists are trying to gain power,
Gülen is secretly rising to the pinnacle. In
Gülen’s thinking, these fundamentalists spoil
the bright appearance of Islam, and they create
a dirty image of the religion, especially the
Arab countries and Iran, so presumably he and
his followers are appointed by God to fix the
spoiled image of Islam. Gülen says, “We will
tell about this dirty view of Islam everywhere
in different platforms. We will write books
about it; we will say that this is not Islam.”
Today, Gülen’s movement represents an Islam
which is secular and tolerant; one in favor of
Turkey’s joining the European Union, and
concurrently pretending to favor modernization
reforms, America, and even Israel. Gülen
believes the best way to defeat the enemy is
with the enemy’s method.
Ironically, the enemy’s method is democracy,
tolerance, rule of law, technology, and economic
development. For a long time Muslim society has
been forced to accept modernity and
secularization, via secularist authoritarians
and with the help of Western interventions,
thereby creating more fundamentalism. Now the
West is changing its stance and has realized the
mistakes they have done, and the Muslims also
have realized that violence is not a very
favorable method to spread Islam– image is
important. With the Arab Spring, regional
opinion has shifted toward prioritizing civil
rights and democratic reforms, and Westerners
are supporting them in this realization. If the
change does materialize, then this will mean a
decrease in the Gülen movement’s hegemony,
especially in the West and then around the
world.
Dr. Aland Mizell is with the University of
Mindanao School of Social Science, President of the
MCI and a regular contributor to the Kurdish Media.
You may reach the author via email at:
aland_mizell2@hotmail.com
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© 2012 Ekurd.net
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