Date posted: August 30, 2014
Fethullah Gulen is a Turkish scholar, thinker, social entrepreneur and opinion leader known as founder of Gulen Movement. He stances for democracy, interfaith dialogue, peaceful coexistence, and secular education where universal values are embodied by altruistic teachers.
Tags: Fethullah Gulen | Peacebuilding |

A recently released report by a think tank based in İstanbul has revealed that the controversial law shutting down Turkey’s private prep schools or “dershanes” includes clauses that violate the Turkish Constitution.

“I am deeply saddened by the tragic bomb attack at the Boston Marathon that cost the lives of innocent people and injured many more. I express my absolute condemnation of this senseless act of violence that accomplished nothing more than the infliction of unbearable pain on innocent people. I send my sincere condolences to the […]

To extradite Gulen would not only imply a high chance of an unfair trial, but would also sound the death knell of a blueprint for global peace. Gulen’s ideas have all the potential for a global approach to peace-building. John L. Esposito, a professor at Georgetown University and a highly respected expert on Islam, called Gulen’s initiatives “extraordinarily unique”, and suggested it would be “wise” for other Muslim movements to emulate them.

In an interview with the Zaman daily last week, GYV vice president Cemal Uşak categorically denied the aspersions that have been cast on the Hizmet movement on social media for a couple of years and in conventional media for the last three months that claim that the Hizmet movement has been against the settlement process.

Afghanistan’s capital city Kabul hosted a conference entitled “Fethullah Gulen’s Perspectives on Combating Extremism in the Muslim World,” jointly organized by the local Tolerance and Dialogue Center and Baran-i Omid Publishing. Leading Afghan officials called attention to Gulen’s approach and education for an efficient and permanent solution to extremism.

Religion, particularly Islam, has become one of the most difficult subject areas to tackle in recent years. Contemporary culture, whether approached from the perspective of anthropology or theology, psychology or psychoanalysis, evaluates religion with empirical methods. On the one hand, religion is an inwardly experienced and felt phenomenon, one mostly related to life’s permanent aspects.
