Jihad Turk on Fethullah Gulen and Hizmet Movement


Date posted: September 22, 2014

Jihad Turk, a founding Board Member of Claremont Lincoln University, has been instrumental in the establishment of Bayan Claremont, a graduate school designed to train Muslim scholars and religious leaders. He previously served as the Director of Religious Affairs at the Islamic Center of Southern California. His current interests include Islamic Law, interfaith relations, Islamic reform movements, and community leadership and development with a focus on youth.

In his speech, Turk focuses primarily on the ways he feels that the Hizmet Movement is contributing to today’s Muslim world and culture. He says, “As we are a minority that is misunderstood here, the efforts of the Hizmet Movement and Fethullah Gulen to help Muslims here and around the world to speak in our own voice, as opposed to being represented or misrepresented in the media, is something that we benefit from tremendously.”

Commenting on the state of Muslims today, he notes, “[as Muslims] we feel like we’re victims because of the oppression here … we have a victim mentality, that we have nothing to offer and we just kind of sit and pour and really have no hope. But, in [Hizmet Movement] there’s a focus, instead of on what’s going wrong with the Muslim world, what’s going wrong with humanity, the position and the posture is one of, “what can we do as Muslims to help make the world a better place.”

*Produced by Spectra Media exclusively for Irmak TV, Atlas of Thoughts (Fikir Atlasi) connects the scholars, politicians, jurists, religious figures, journalists, and academics reflecting on Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gulen and the Hizmet Movement with the audience. Each episode features a person from a different segment of the society with diverse experiences regarding the Hizmet activities and its volunteers. If you are interested to hear about the Hizmet and Mr. Gulen from these people’s perspectives, do not miss this show!

Source: Spectra Media

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