Experiences with Hizmet and the Followers of Fethullah Gulen

Experiences with Hizmet and the Followers of Fethullah Gülen

Leo D. Lefebure

Georgetown University

Since the 1990s, I have been involved in a variety of dialogues with Muslims in the United States and around the world.  When I moved to Georgetown University in the summer of 2005, I became acquainted with the members of the Rumi Forum in Washington, DC, which is affiliated with the international Islamic movement known as Hizmet, a Turkish word that means “Service.”  Since the movement is inspired by the example and writings of Turkish Muslim leader Fethullah Gülen, outside observers often refer to this as “the Gülen movement.”  At the time I moved to Washington, DC, the director of the Rumi Forum was Ali Yurtsever, a dynamic, friendly leader with a seemingly insatiable interest in interreligious dialogue and friendship.

       When I arrived in Washington, I found that Georgetown University hosted a Muslim-Christian dialogue in which the majority of the Muslim participants were affiliated with the Rumi Forum.  We discussed a variety of topics of spiritual experience and interreligious relations, including the religious poetry of Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207-1273), the policies of the Ottoman Empire regarding Jews and Christians, the theology of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (ca. 1877-1960), the writings of Gülen, and the biography of Ignatius of Loyola.  The conclusion of each dialogue consisted of the enjoyment of delicious Turkish food, courtesy of the Rumi Forum.  Eventually, the dialogue expanded to include Jewish participants as well.  Among the participants affiliated with the Rumi Forum were Ali Aslan, a journalist who covers Washington, DC, for Zaman Newspaper, and Jena Luedtke, who is the interreligious representative of the Rumi Forum.


         After a dialogue one evening, Ali Aslan asked me if I had ever been to Turkey, and I said that I had not.  He proceeded to notify Ali Yurtsever that I should be invited to join one of their intercultural tours of Turkey.  And so it happened that the following May I found myself in Turkey with Ali Yurtsever, Jena Luedtke, and a very interesting group of participants.  One of the greatest contributions of the Rumi Forum is to bring together people with common interests who otherwise would likely not know each other.  In our traveling group were a retired U.S. diplomat and his wife with long experience in the Middle East, the former dean of a law school, a Reform rabbi and his wife, the minister of Unity Church in Fairfax, Virginia, and a Franciscan sister who works in Muslim-Christian relations and who had written a short book about the visit of St. Francis of Assisi to Sultan Malik al-Kamil in 1219, during the fifth Crusade.  Francis, who saw himself as a man of peace, traveled through the Crusader army and sought an audience with the sultan, who apparently viewed him as similar to the Sufi holy men.  Their encounter stands as a hopeful sign of the possibilities for respectful, cordial dialogue even during periods of suspicion and conflict.       On our tour of Turkey, we visited the major sites of Istanbul, including the magnificent edifices of Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque and the Suleimanniyya Mosque, as well as the traditional Topkapi Palace of the sultans and the nineteenth-century Dolmabace Palace along the Bosphorus.  We took a beautiful evening dinner cruise on the Bosphorus and later visited the headquarters of Zaman Newspaper and the Authors and Writers Forum in Istanbul.  In a number of cities we visited schools sponsored by Hizmet.  We visited sites of early Christians in Cappadocia, including a monastery carved into the side of a hill and a village carved underground, where Christians could hide from Roman persecutors and escape through underground tunnels.  In Ephesus we visited the place that is venerated as the place where Mary the mother of Jesus lived the last years of her life.  We witnessed the profound devotion that both Muslims and Christians have to her in praying at this site.  Mary is honored in the Qur’an as the virgin mother of the prophet Jesus; she is the only woman named by her own name in the Qur’an, and she is also the only woman to have a sura (chapter) of the Qur’an named after her.  Thus she has been held up as a bridge to the future for shaping Muslim-Christian relations.

       As we were riding on the bus toward Ephesus, Rabbi Larry Forman came up to me and said, “Leo, there was a creed of Ephesus, wasn’t there?”  I answered, “Yes, there was a council that issued a declaration there.”  He continued, “I think we should write our own statement from Ephesus, and you are the one to draft it.”  As I bounced up and down on the bus, I pulled out a piece of paper and drafted a preliminary statement based upon our experiences in Turkey.  We circulated it and invited suggestions to improve it.  Later, on our last full day, we had lunch in a gorgeous room along the Bosphorus at the Dolmabace Palace.  As we finished eating, the rabbi led the group in discussing what we wanted in the statement.  I took notes as one person after another reflected on our experience together.  Later I composed another draft, incorporating many additions from our companions.  We later circulated this through e-mails and finally delivered it to the Rumi Forum as an expression of our delight with the trip and our sharing of their concerns.       We also visited Fatih University in the western suburbs of Istanbul, an English-language university supported by Hizmet.  Six months later, when I returned to Istanbul for a conference on Said Nursi sponsored by the Istanbul Foundation for Science and Culture, the dean of Fatih University invited me to come there and to deliver a lecture on “How Universities Can Contribute to Inter-Civilizational Dialogue.”  After offering some general comments, I shared many of our experiences at Georgetown University.

In Washington, DC, the Rumi Forum is active in a wide variety of initiatives.  For example, the Forum co-sponsored a conference at the Catholic University of America on Islam in America, at which I delivered a paper on “Muslim-Christian Relations in the United States.”  The Rumi Forum hosts an annual interreligious awards banquet.  Some of these celebrations have been held in an office building of the U.S. Congress on Capitol Hill, and at the end of one evening, the Rumi Forum presented whirling dervishes from Turkey dancing as an expression of prayerful meditation.  Later that week, the dervishes also danced in Hebrew Union Congregation, one of the most prominent synagogues in Washington, DC.  My Turkish friends believed that this was the first time in history that dervishes had danced in a synagogue.  The Rumi Forum also hosts a variety of iftar dinners during the holy month of Ramadan, inviting Christians and Jews to eat with them as they end their fast after sundown.  The Rumi Forum, together with others in the Muslim community in Washington, DC, in cooperation with local Jewish leaders, hosted an interreligious iftar dinner in an historic Synagogue, inviting Christian leaders to join with Muslims and Jews in a synagogue breaking the fast during Ramadan.  Muslim colleagues told me that they believed that this was the first time in history that an iftar dinner had been celebrated in a synagogue.  The Rumi Forum also organizes a wide range of more informal iftars, inviting many Christians to the homes of their members for small, family celebrations.
        
Georgetown University has a campus of the School of Foreign Service in Doha, Qatar, where I taught during the 2007-08 academic year.  I had many turbulent experiences in the classroom, especially with animated Muslim students vehemently disagreeing with one another.  In one class Sunni students stridently attacked a Shia student; on another day more conservative Muslim students forcefully, even angrily criticized a more progressive Muslim student.  During this year, two members of Hizmet were teaching at Qatar University, one in the field of political science and the other in chemical engineering.  As I got to know them, we shared our experiences in the classroom, and I was greatly relieved to learn that the political scientist, himself a Muslim professor, had similar troubles with his students there.  One evening over dinner I commented that one of the best things that ever happened to the Papacy was that it lost the Papal States, freeing Popes to become respected international spiritual leaders on a global stage.  The political scientist perked up and commented that his Muslim students needed to hear that, and he then invited me to address his class of female students.  He stressed that I should speak only about the Catholic experience of the benefits of distinguishing religion and government without commenting directly on Islam.  He preferred that the students draw their own conclusions regarding the proper relation of government and Islamic authority.
       
During the spring break of 2008, I traveled from Doha to India, where I met members of Hizmet in both Kolkata and Delhi.  In Kolkata, Cetin Akkaye joined me and a Hindu colleague in traveling together to meet Swami Prabhananda at the headquarters of the Ramakrishna Mission along the Ganges, the site where Vivekananda lived and died and was cremated.  Swami Prabhananada was most gracious and spent almost an hour with us (I was later told this was far more time than is usual).  Cetin was interested in inviting Swami Prabhananda to participate in an interreligious conference in Hyderabad.  Cetin and his colleague, Sinan, attended a lecture that I delivered at the Ramakrishna Mission in downtown Kolkata as part of a UNESCO-approved course on “The Unity of Humanity,” an interdisciplinary study of intercultural and interreligious relations.  After I had concluded, the Hindu host, Dr. Chakrabarti, invited Sinan to speak about the Hizmet movement as well.  From Kolkata, I flew to Delhi, where I met other members of Hizmet, Bulent Cantimur and Ali Akiz, who were very gracious in welcoming me and showing historic sites from the Islamic heritage of India, including the Taj Mahal, the Jami Mosque, the Red Fort, the Lodi Gardens, and Qutb Minar.  My hosts from Hizmet in Kolkata and Delhi were most gracious and welcoming, helping me immediately to feel at home among them.
        
In December 2009, I traveled to Melbourne, Australia, for the fifth Parliament of the World’s Religions.  Together with two Turkish-German Muslims and an Egyptian-American Muslim, I was graciously hosted by the Australian Intercultural Society, which is the affiliate of Hizmet in Australia.  My impression of the Turkish Australian Muslim community was that they were very dynamic and well integrated into Australian society.  On one night of the Parliament, the Australia Intercultural Society hosted the Islamic Communities Dinner, which the Governor of that state of Australia attended.
        
In my experiences, the members of Hizmet have been unfailingly gracious and cordial, respectful of Christianity and mindful of the many values shared by Muslims and Christians.  Their concern to build constructive relationships and to collaborate in building interreligious understanding is inspiring.
In Washington, DC, the Rumi Forum is active in a wide variety of initiatives.  For example, the Forum co-sponsored a conference at the Catholic University of America on Islam in America, at which I delivered a paper on “Muslim-Christian Relations in the United States.”  The Rumi Forum hosts an annual interreligious awards banquet.  Some of these celebrations have been held in an office building of the U.S. Congress on Capitol Hill, and at the end of one evening, the Rumi Forum presented whirling dervishes from Turkey dancing as an expression of prayerful meditation.  Later that week, the dervishes also danced in Hebrew Union Congregation, one of the most prominent synagogues in Washington, DC.  My Turkish friends believed that this was the first time in history that dervishes had danced in a synagogue.  The Rumi Forum also hosts a variety of iftar dinners during the holy month of Ramadan, inviting Christians and Jews to eat with them as they end their fast after sundown.  The Rumi Forum, together with others in the Muslim community in Washington, DC, in cooperation with local Jewish leaders, hosted an interreligious iftar dinner in an historic Synagogue, inviting Christian leaders to join with Muslims and Jews in a synagogue breaking the fast during Ramadan.  Muslim colleagues told me that they believed that this was the first time in history that an iftar dinner had been celebrated in a synagogue.  The Rumi Forum also organizes a wide range of more informal iftars, inviting many Christians to the homes of their members for small, family celebrations.   
   Georgetown University has a campus of the School of Foreign Service in Doha, Qatar, where I taught during the 2007-08 academic year.  I had many turbulent experiences in the classroom, especially with animated Muslim students vehemently disagreeing with one another.  In one class Sunni students stridently attacked a Shia student; on another day more conservative Muslim students forcefully, even angrily criticized a more progressive Muslim student.  During this year, two members of Hizmet were teaching at Qatar University, one in the field of political science and the other in chemical engineering.  As I got to know them, we shared our experiences in the classroom, and I was greatly relieved to learn that the political scientist, himself a Muslim professor, had similar troubles with his students there.  One evening over dinner I commented that one of the best things that ever happened to the Papacy was that it lost the Papal States, freeing Popes to become respected international spiritual leaders on a global stage.  The political scientist perked up and commented that his Muslim students needed to hear that, and he then invited me to address his class of female students.  He stressed that I should speak only about the Catholic experience of the benefits of distinguishing religion and government without commenting directly on Islam.  He preferred that the students draw their own conclusions regarding the proper relation of government and Islamic authority.      During the spring break of 2008, I traveled from Doha to India, where I met members of Hizmet in both Kolkata and Delhi.  In Kolkata, Cetin Akkaye joined me and a Hindu colleague in traveling together to meet Swami Prabhananda at the headquarters of the Ramakrishna Mission along the Ganges, the site where Vivekananda lived and died and was cremated.  Swami Prabhananada was most gracious and spent almost an hour with us (I was later told this was far more time than is usual).  Cetin was interested in inviting Swami Prabhananda to participate in an interreligious conference in Hyderabad.  Cetin and his colleague, Sinan, attended a lecture that I delivered at the Ramakrishna Mission in downtown Kolkata as part of a UNESCO-approved course on “The Unity of Humanity,” an interdisciplinary study of intercultural and interreligious relations.  After I had concluded, the Hindu host, Dr. Chakrabarti, invited Sinan to speak about the Hizmet movement as well.  From Kolkata, I flew to Delhi, where I met other members of Hizmet, Bulent Cantimur and Ali Akiz, who were very gracious in welcoming me and showing historic sites from the Islamic heritage of India, including the Taj Mahal, the Jami Mosque, the Red Fort, the Lodi Gardens, and Qutb Minar.  My hosts from Hizmet in Kolkata and Delhi were most gracious and welcoming, helping me immediately to feel at home among them.       In December 2009, I traveled to Melbourne, Australia, for the fifth Parliament of the World’s Religions.  Together with two Turkish-German Muslims and an Egyptian-American Muslim, I was graciously hosted by the Australian Intercultural Society, which is the affiliate of Hizmet in Australia.  My impression of the Turkish Australian Muslim community was that they were very dynamic and well integrated into Australian society.  On one night of the Parliament, the Australia Intercultural Society hosted the Islamic Communities Dinner, which the Governor of that state of Australia attended.

       In my experiences, the members of Hizmet have been unfailingly gracious and cordial, respectful of Christianity and mindful of the many values shared by Muslims and Christians.  Their concern to build constructive relationships and to collaborate in building interreligious understanding is inspiring.


SOURCE: http://islamicstudiesassociation.blogspot.com/2012/07/experienceswith-hizmet-and-followers-of.html

TIME MAGAZINE A Visit with Turkey's Controversial Religious Movement (ie Fethullah Gulen Movement)

By Piotr Zalewski / Diyarbakir Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Children attend a class at Fatih College in Istanbul April 16, 2008. The 640-pupil school is run by followers of Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish Muslim preacher who advocates moderate Islam rooted in modern life.

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It is Monday evening in Diyarbakir, a city in Turkey's southeast, and a weekly meeting of several local members of the so-called Gulen movement has begun with a book reading. One of the eight men present — this is an all-boys affair — picks up a paperback by Fethullah Gulen, the charismatic Islamic preacher after whom the movement is named, and reads out a few paragraphs. The subject is one of the central tenets of Gulen's philosophy: hizmet, service to others. Once the reading ends, a few of the other members — smiling beneath cropped mustaches — begin to extemporize on the difficulties and rewards of teaching and the challenges of shaping young minds.

Many Turks view the Gulen Movement with suspicion. The group has drawn comparisons among the conspiracy-minded to the freemasons; it has been accused of being a shadow government and more than once of trying to engineer an Islamist takeover of Turkey; and in recent years, some of its opponents have found themselves snared in legal proceedings. There's little reason to expect such issues to come up during an informal gathering of local Gulenists in a place like Diyarbakir. The movement not only forswears any role in politics, but is also said to discourage discussion of political issues among its followers. (A student who stayed at one of the movement's dormitories in Istanbul told me that he, an international relations major, was asked not to read or discuss books on politics in his room.) Still, the next item on the Diyarbakir meeting's agenda comes as something of a surprise.

It involves the day before, Sunday May 13: "What did you do for Mother's Day?"

The question comes from Bilgi Ozdemir, a public school teacher who is presiding over the gathering. A tour de table follows. One of the men reports that he and a group of friends cooked dinner for a group of women. All the time they are the ones cooking, he says, but on Mother's Day "we told them to sit still and let us prepare the food." Another man took a group of moms to a picnic outside Diyarbakir. Yet another organized a sightseeing tour of the city, including visits to a mosque and a reading hall — the local equivalent of a Boys and Girls Club — run by fellow Gulen supporters.

As the meeting progresses, it's hard to avoid the impression that the men, all of whom have regular jobs, have much time for anything other than hizmet. For the months of May and June alone, Ozdemir's circle, one of many similar Gulen groups in Diyarbakir, has scheduled at least a dozen events. Fundraisers, trips, charity functions: one for Nurses Day; another for Disability Week; and still more for the International Day against Drug Abuse. They might as well belong to the Rotary Club. Except that hizmet can be a little all-enveloping.

Nearly half a century after Fethullah Gulen began delivering impassioned sermons in Izmir, a city on Turkey's Aegean coast, the religious movement he helped inspire counts as many as six million followers. (There is no formal membership structure, Gulenists say, making exact numbers impossible to compute.) The largest religious movement in Turkey, Gulen sympathizers are known to run hundreds of schools, several media outlets, including Zaman, the paper with the highest circulation in Turkey, as well as a bank, a number of foundations, and a major charity.

If anything, the tiny, informal gathering in Diyarbakir reveals a side of the Gulen movement that is key to its power — its management at the grass-roots level. Opening an Excel file on his laptop, Ozdemir the teacher asks each of the eight men present to report how much money they have raised for the construction of four new reading halls in the city. Each of the members, Ozdemir tells me, represents a group of lower-level followers who have been asked to pitch in, along with friends, neighbors and family. Celal, a physiotherapist seated to my left, has managed to raise 4,000 lira, or about $2,200. Others report having raised 1,400, 1,500 or 250 lira. Ozdemir carefully records all the sums. For transparency's sake, he tells me, we prefer bank transfers. "If donations are made in cash, we will provide receipts."

Apart from nominal contributions for special projects, it is local businessmen sympathetic to the movement's cause who often foot the Gulenists' bills. "When I was in high school, some people inspired by hizmet helped me financially," says Aladdin Korkutata, who heads DIGIAD, a local business association. "Now that I've reached my target I am happy to help others."

Leading lights within the movement usually insist that that Gulen-affiliated institutions are administered autonomously, with little supervision from above. Meetings in Diyarbakir, however, show that at least here, at the local level, the movement runs a very tight ship. Most local Gulenists have no difficulty producing data about the movement's educational activities. In the southeast as a whole, Gulen followers run 57 elementary schools, Ali Pehlivan, a principal at one of the schools, tells me. In Diyarbakir province alone, another Gulenist says, the movement's 27 reading halls cater to roughly 4,500 children. FEM, a network of Gulen dershanes, or cramming schools, operates 14 local branches, attracting about 11,000 students per year. The total number of FEM branches in Turkey is "roughly" 615.

At one of dershanes, Bulent Ince, the headmaster, explains that 2,000 lira, the price of tuition, buys local high schoolers much more than a 10-month prep course for Turkey's feared university entrance exam. Students, he says, are also assigned so-called teacher-guides, who look after them in and outside of class, and even after they enter college.

The teacher-guides, says Ince, serve as role models. "None of them smoke or drink," he says. Many become the teens' confidants, calling on them regularly, offering advice, teaching them "love for their parents, love for their country, love for others," and "Islamic values." "Sometimes, our kids will share things with their teacher-guides that they will not share with their parents," says Ince. Students can phone their guides late at night to talk about their problems. "It's 24 hour hizmet."

When students enter college — FEM students score better on the entrance exams than most others — they remain under the watchful eye of Gulen followers. If a student goes off to study in another city, says Ince, a teacher will accompany him there and try to place him in a dorm or a house where "people don't smoke and drink, and where they pray." Otherwise, he says, "we will introduce him to our friends, who will keep in touch with him." After graduation, he explains, "we will help him find job, or make him a teacher and send him abroad." As he puts it, "If you're in hizmet, you're never alone."

SOURCE: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2115391,00.html?iid=tsmodule

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The HINDU - Anatolian Tigers drive Turkey's silent revolution - (Gulen Movement)

This piece from The Hindu highlights the positive contributions of business persons associated with the Gulen Movement

Anatolian Tigers drive Turkey's silent revolution

..Nursi's advocacy of embracing Western science and technology as well as engagement with “competing paradigms”, has had a deep impact on his followers in Central Anatolia. In the tradition of Nursi, Fethullah Gulen has given a clear contemporary direction to the Anatolian middle class. The Gulen movement's message of inclusivity, inter-faith engagement, entrepreneurship, education and outreach has had a decisive influence in directing the entrepreneurial impulses of the Anatolian Tigers.

As they grew, benefiting initially from the early phase of globalisation initiated in the eighties under the stewardship of Turgut Ozal, a former Prime Minister and President, the Anatolian Tigers have become part of a new ecosystem that is steadily overwhelming Turkey's established order.

The Anatolian businessmen have ploughed their considerable resources to the cause of the Gulen movement, which, in step with its focus on education, has opened quality schools imparting modern education in more than 140 countries. The Gulen movement's well acknowledged educational contributions abroad, in turn, have helped soften the ground for the entry of Anatolian businesses in many of these countries. “There is no direct link but our association with the Gulen movement quite often helps to do business in new areas such as Africa, Central Asia and the Balkans,” says Fatih Kutlutas, another Anatolian Tiger. The top floors of many of the buildings affiliated with the Gulen movement usually have a few “guest rooms”, which travellers can usually access.

Organisations such as ISGED — a business-development establishment — and the 20,000-member TUSKON are also helping Turkish small and medium enterprises to break into markets abroad. Addressing a TUSKON gathering recently, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said: “These businessmen [affiliated to TUSKON] conquer hearts in five continents by conducting successful projects and contributing to education in these countries.”...

SOURCE: http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/article3364873.ece

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