The Muslim World and Politics in Transition Creative Contributions of the Gülen Movement

by Barton, Greg; Weller, Paul; Yilmaz, Ihsan

• ISBN13: 9781441158734
• ISBN10: 1441158731
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2014-12-18
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

As a leading religious movement in contemporary Turkey with a universal educational and inter-faith agenda, the Gulen movement aims to promote creative and positive relations between the West and the Muslim world and to articulate a constructive position on such issues as democracy, multi-culturalism, globalisation, and inter-faith dialogue in the context of secular modernity. Many countries in the predominantly Muslim world are in a time of transition and of opening to democratic development of which the so-called "Arab Spring" has seen only the most recent and dramatic developments. Particularly against that background, there has been a rising amount of interest in "the Turkish model" of transition from authoritarianism to democracy. The Muslim World and Politics in Transition discusses how the Gulen movement has positioned itself and sought to contribute within societies - including its home country of Turkey - in which Islam forms a major part of the cultural, religious and historical inheritance and Muslims constitute the majority of their populations.

Author Biography

Paul Weller is Professor of Inter-Religious Relations at the University of Derby and Visiting Fellow in the Oxford Centre for Christianity and Culture at Regent's Park College, University of Oxford, UK.

Ihsan Yilmaz is Associate Professor of Political Science at Fatih University, Istanbul, Turkey.

Greg Barton is the Herb Feith Research Professor for the Study of Indonesia, Faculty of Arts, Monash University, Australia.

Table of Contents

Introduction \ PART 1: The Gulen Movement in the Public Sphere \ 1. Preaching by example: understanding the Gulen hizmet in the global context of religious philanthropy and civil religion \ 2. Performing "moral opposition": strategy and identity in the Gulen movement \ 3. Religion as a source of social capital? The Gulen movement in the public sphere \ PART II: Muslim Politics Beyond Post-Islamism \ 4. Fethulla Gulen, Turkey and the European Union \ 5. Patterns of interaction between Islam and liberalism: the case of the Gulen movement \ 6. The influence of the Gulen movement in the emergence of a Turkish cultural "Third Way" \ 7. Beyond post-Islamism: a critical analysis of the Turkish Islamism's transformation toward civil Islam \ PART III: The Contexts of the Muslim World \ 8. The Gulen movement and promoting human rights values in the Muslim world \ 9. The relevance of Fethulla Gulen's thought for democratic reforms in the Muslim world \ 10. Gulen's contribution to a middle way Islam in Indonesia \ 11. Hira magazine - Turkish in the language of the Qur'an \ 12. A study of Gulen schools in Central Asia, 1997 - 2007 \ 13. The educational theory of Gulen and its practice in South Africa \ Conclusion \ Bibliography \ Index