Gulen movement wants to participate in the globalization

NEWARK, N.J. - June 10, 2013 - PRLog -- Ali Bulac*, if there had not been opportunities to become a community and join a community, Turkey would have ended up in a far more complicated and problematic situation. Community protects [individuals] from culture shocks, provides dynamism, and produces a new human being. In this respect, the Gulen movement is the most successful community.

Thinking again...

Ali Bulac recently published "Religion, City, and Community: Fethullah Gülen's Example" bears the attributes of sociology of the city and religion. He gives practical examples while criticizing those approaches that restrict religion's meaning and domain. He combines the current living process with history, builds cause and effect relationships, and emphasizes the struggle of understanding the phenomena, instead of "thinking in the difficult area" and approving them. We also need to understand what is religious, what is civil, and what is secular. While analyzing a movement that has a high religious motivation, no positivist, modernist, or political reading can lead us to the truth. The "Gülen reality" is something beyond these. Those who look at it from outside and refuse to accept it, as well as those who look at it from inside with envy, unite at the same point. Bulaç's book forced me to re-examine the movement that I thought I knew so well. The "reality" and the "depth" are not always as we know them... We are often shallow, and there is a lot to learn...

Your latest book is "Religion, City, and Community: Fethullah Gülen's Example." A Western-style reading of the nineteenth century kept claiming that religion has withdrawn from public life and lost its meaning...

They claimed that religion would withdraw from public life. However, after the 1950s we saw that the flow of history does not reflect what was predicted. This is not the case just for us; also in the West, religion was understood to be the most important factor influencing the social life, politics, and masses.

Return to religion...

It happened so for the Westerners. For us, it did not go anywhere.

Turkish intellectuals do not think deeply about religion; either they narrow down its meaning and scope or completely deny it.

Social scientists in Turkey are not ready to accept the fact of religion. Since the philosophical base of our modernization project is positivism, it is assumed that religion is unable to make any positive contribution.

Do you think that what is being reflected as a conflict between religion and state is, in fact, the manifestations of a conflict between intellectuals and the public?

There is still continuity between Turkey and the Ottoman Empire. Under the Ottomans, the seyfiye (army and administration), ilmiye (religious, educational, and judicial authorities) and kalemiye (bureaucrats) controlled the center. There was a center but not a centralist government, as well as a strong civil society on the periphery. In addition, there was no conflict between religion and state. After Tanzimat, the actors in the center changed and a centralized structure emerged. Under the Republic, the military and civil bureaucrats, judiciary, universities, capital, and state artists formed the center. The ilmiye was replaced by the media and [secular] intellectuals.

[Secular] Intellectuals come from the society, don't they?

If that were the case, they would not have taken their place next to the center at times of historical turning points. [Secular] Intellectuals never defended the values of society; rather, they acted on behalf of the state and undertook the mission of transforming society. However, after 1950 religion and [religious] communities emerged with a mission to modernize society and, as a result, Turkey's modernization project was turned upside down.

After 1950, what lead to the disruption in the modernization paradigm?

The most important factor that led to the emergence of [religious] communities in Turkey is the major changes in demographics. Community is a phenomenon that belongs to the city, and therefore communities emerged with migration. Political Islam is also a product of city and migration. The state cared about this migration, since it believed that the city could modernize the masses. But the migrants saw the segregation there and started to look for new channels.

Did [religious] communities take on the mission to absorb [culture] shocks?

Yes, they performed many great functions. Since the state and society swallow the individual, it can only protect itself through communities. Communities in the West are non-governmental organizations. The most important factors behind their continued viability is their representation of the Anatolian people's energy and economic rationality. In today's world, it is rational for an individual to belong to a community. The immediate future is the period of communities.

The Gulen Movement has an all-encompassing heritage. You've analyzed the Gulen movement as an example...

The Gulen movement is a product of Turkish sociology and thus contains all ethnic groups. It would be wrong to call the movement "Turkish Muslim" or "Anatolian Muslim," for the all-compassing heritage of the Ottomans is more pronounced in it. It resembles the movement that led to the establishment of the Seljuks. Back then, the great economic activity in central Anatolia was motivated mainly by religion. The Gulen movement attracts similar energy from Anatolia.

Read the whole interview:  http://hizmetnews.com/index.php/interviews/item/1030-ali-...