An intellectual with a distinctive spiritual charisma, a prolific writer and poet, M. Fethullah Gulen has been an extremely effective and popular scholar of Islam for the last 3 decades. Many college and university students and graduates, as well as the general Turkish public, have been attracted to his message of tolerance and compassion through education and self-improvement. His efforts to achieve this lofty goal, which had its humble beginnings in Turkey, now spans the globe and includes people from many different walks of life.
The foundation of his message consists of joining religious belief and modern scientific education to create a better world, one based on positive activism, altruism, interfaith and intercultural dialogue, and a desire to serve others and thereby gain God’s good pleasure. Gülen has spent his career impressing on people that true religion preaches love, tolerance, open-mindedness, compassion, hard work, peace, and many other values and practices that lead a person to virtue and perfection. And, he believes, fusing the two types of education mentioned above enables a person to better understand the Creator’s revelation of Himself to humanity.
The millions of people who believe in his ideas and goals have made themselves felt mainly in the fields of education and interfaith and intercultural dialogue activities through non-governmental organizations. Their activities have brought about hundreds of successful institutions, for Turkish businessmen have gone abroad in order to open and fund high schools, colleges, and universities in many countries with limited access to modern education and its resulting benefits. Other schools have been established in America and Europe.
This work presents Gülen through a short biography, a selection of various articles, his views on modern education and its importance, and how he has been presented in the media. It is by no means a comprehensive presentation of his life and influence upon millions of people; rather, it is meant to serve as an introduction to those who desire a better understanding of Gulen’s message and what it has accomplished over the years.
Known by his simple and austere lifestyle, Fethullah Gulen, affectionately called Hodjaefendi, is a scholar of extraordinary proportions. This man for all seasons was born in Erzurum, eastern Turkey, in 1941. Upon graduation from a private divinity school in Erzurum, he obtained his license and began to preach and teach about the importance of understanding and tolerance. His social reform efforts have made him one of Turkey's most well-known and respected public figures during the 1960s.
Though simple in outward appearance, he is original in thought and action. He embraces all humanity, and is deeply averse to unbelief, injustice, and deviation. His belief and feelings are profound, and his ideas and approach to problems are both wise and rational. A living model of love, ardor, and feeling, he is extraordinarily balanced in his thoughts, acts, and treatment of matters.
Turkish intellectuals and scholars acknowledge, either tacitly or explicitly, that he is one of the most serious and important thinkers and writers, and among the wisest activists of twentieth-century Turkey or even of the Muslim world. But such accolades of his leadership of a new Islamic intellectual, social, and spiritual revival—a revival with the potential to embrace great areas of the world—do not deter him from striving to be no more than a humble servant of God and a friend to all. Desire for fame is the same as show and ostentation, a "poisonous honey" that extinguishes the heart's spiritual liveliness, is one of the golden rules he follows.
Gulen has spent his adult life voicing the cries and laments, as well as the beliefs and aspirations, of Muslims in particular and of humanity in general. He bears his own sorrows, but those of others crush him. He feels each blow delivered at humanity to be delivered first at his own heart. He feels himself so deeply and inwardly connected to creation that once he said: "Whenever I see a leaf fall from its branch in autumn, I feel as much pain as if my arm had been amputated."
