Gülen's paradox: Combining commitment and tolerance

Muslim World

Volumn 95, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 373-384

  Kurtz, Lester R ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 46349091414     PISSN: 00274909     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1478-1913.2005.00100.x     Document Type: Review

References (29)

1. http://www.bediuzzaman.org/ available 5 April 2003
2. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Talcott Parsons, tr.; introduction by Anthony Giddens (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1958 [1922-23])
3. Lester R. Kurtz, unpublished manuscript, Gandhi's Paradox: The Legacy of India's Nonviolence. Portions available on the web at www. Cf. Lester R. Kurtz, "War," From Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion, ed. Robert Wuthnow. 2 vols. (Washington, U.C.: Congressional Quarterly, Inc., 1998), 783-789. Available at http://www.cqpress.com/context/articles/epr-War.html. Indeed, this theory came to me when trying to make sense of Gandhi's legacy and when I immersed myself in Fethullah Gülen's life and work. I began to see parallels between the two, especially in terms of how they transcended ordinary contradictions in life to create new solutions to human problems
4. Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, Translated from the French by Joseph Ward Swain (New York, Free Press, 1965, [1915])
5. Cf. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York, Basic Books, 1973)
6. cf. Lester R. Kurtz, Gods In the Global Village (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 1995)
7. See Lester R. Kurtz, "War."
8. Robert Benford and Lester Kurtz, "Performing the Nuclear Ceremony: The Arms Race as a Ritual," Journal for the Applied Behavioral Sciences (December, 1987): 463-482
9. See, e.g., the remarkable compendium edited by Andrew Wilson and posted on the internet at http://www.unification.net/ws/theme144.htm (available 30 August 2003)
10. Quoted in Ali Ünal and Alphonse Williams, eds., Advocate of Dialogue (Fairfax Virginia: The Fountain, 2000), 10
11. Quoted and translated from Fethullah Gülen, Zamanin Altin Dilimi (The Golden Slice of Time) (Izmir, 1994)
12. Quoted and translated from Fethullah Gülen, Küçük Dünyam (My Small World). Interviewed by Latif Erdogan, Zaman
13. See, e.g., M. Fethullah Gülen, Prophet Muhammad: The Infinite Light. 2 vols. (London: Truestar, 1995, 1998) and three volumes translated into English published in the United States in 2000 by The Fountain (in Fairfax, Virginia): Essentials of the Islamic Faith, Questions and Answers About Faith, and Key Concepts and the Practice of Sufism
14. See Lynne Emily Webb's work, Fethullah Gülen: Is There More to Him than Meets the Eye? (Izmir, Turkey: Mercury International Publishing, Consulting, Import and Export Ltd., n.d.) which outlines the series of military coups and trends in modern Turkey that provide the crucible in which his spiritual perspective is formed
15. Comments by Turkish Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit in Eyup Can's "A Tour of the Horizon," Istanbul, 1996
16. al-Bulchari, Book 2, Hadith no: 9
17. Ali Ünal and Alphonse Williams, Advocate of Dialogue: Fethullah Gulen (Fairfax: The Fountain, 2000), 193-94
18. Fethullah Gülen, Toward a Global Civilization of Love and Tolerance (New-Jersey: Light, 2004), 75-76
19. Translated in Ünal and Williams, op. cit., 23
20. See Bulent Aras and Omer Caha, "Fethullah Gülen and His 'Liberal Turkish Islam' Movement," Middle East Review of International Affairs 4 (2000). Available December 2 2002 at http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/ 2000/issue4/jv4n4a4.html. Aras and Caha note that "The main premise of 'Turkish Islam' is moderation and that the Sufi-oriented Islamic movements influenced Turkish political history even during the reign of the Ottomans when the political system accepted a multi-religious state, 'in which Christian and Jewish subjects would continue to be governed by their own laws.'
21. M. Fethullah Gülen, "A Voice of Love: Love" Available at www.fgulen.org/articles/love.html 7 December 2002. Also in Gülen's Toward the Lost Paradise, available September 1 2003 at http://www.fethullahgulen.org/ lostparadise/tlppg12.html
22. Quoted in and translated from Nevval Sevindi, "Fethullah Gülen Ile New York Sohbeti," Yeni Yuzyil, August 1997
23. Fethullah Gülen , "True Muslims Cannot Be Terrorists," 95-100 in The Fountain, op. cit., 100. originally an article in the Turkish Daily News, September 19 2001
24. Fethullah Gülen, "Islam as a Religion of Universal Mercy," 44-50 in The Fountain, op. cit., 45
25. M. Fethullah Gülen , "Our System of Education." Available December 6 2002 at www.fgulen.org/articles/our-education.html
26. Thomas Michel, "Gülen as Educator and Religious Teacher," 101-113 in The Fountain, op. cit., 102. Originally from a paper presented at a symposium at Georgetown University, April, 2001
27. M. Hakan Yavuz, "Search for a New Social Contract in Turkey: Fethullah Gülen, the Virtue Part and the Kurds." SAIS Review 19 (1999), 114-143
28. See my own report on an interfaith dialogue focused on Abraham as the founder of the Jewish-Christian-Islamic tradition: Lester R. Kurtz, "Local Gods and Universal Faiths," 155-160 in Sociology for a New Century, ed. By York W. Bradshaw, Joseph F. Healey, and Rebecca Smith (Boston: Pine Forge Press, 2001)
29. Fethullah Gülen, Prophet Muhammad, 94; originally from al-Bukhari, Iman 24