Fethullah Gulen named the world’s No. 1 public intellectual

Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen
Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen


Date posted: July 27, 2008

The Prospect: Over half a million people voted in our poll to find the world’s top public intellectual. Of the many voting campaigns that were mounted, only one had a decisive impact on the results.

Tom Nuttall on the campaign that delivered Gülen’s victory

Ehsan Masood on Gülen, modern face of Sufi Ottomanism

Prospect last ran its intellectuals poll in November 2005. The positions of people who appeared in the 2005 poll are given in brackets. New entries are marked with an asterisk.

1 Fethullah Gülen (*)

2 Muhammad Yunus (*)

3 Yusuf Al-Qaradawi (56)

4 Orhan Pamuk (54)

5 Aitzaz Ahsan (*)

6 Amr Khaled (*)

7 Abdolkarim Soroush (15)

8 Tariq Ramadan (58)

9 Mahmood Mamdani (*)

10 Shirin Ebadi (12)

11 Noam Chomsky (1)

12 Al Gore (*)

13 Bernard Lewis (34)

14 Umberto Eco (2)

15 Ayaan Hirsi Ali

16 Amartya Sen (8)

17 Fareed Zakaria (35)

18 Garry Kasparov (*)

19 Richard Dawkins (3)

20 Mario Vargas Llosa (29)

21 Lee Smolin (*)

22 Jürgen Habermas (7)

23 Salman Rushdie (10)

24 Sari Nusseibeh (65)

25 Slavoj Zizek (23)

26 Vaclav Havel (4)

27 Christopher Hitchens (5)

28 Samuel Huntington (28)

29 Peter Singer (33)

30 Paul Krugman (6)

31 Jared Diamond (9)

32 Pope Benedict XVI (17)

33 Fan Gang (82)

34 Michael Ignatieff (37)

35 Fernando Henrique Cardoso (43)

36 Lilia Shevtsova (*)

37 Charles Taylor (*)

38 Martin Wolf (*)

39 EO Wilson (31)

40 Thomas Friedman (16)

41 Bjørn Lomborg (14)

42 Daniel Dennett (24)

43 Francis Fukuyama (21)

44 Ramachandra Guha (*)

45 Tony Judt (*)

46 Steven Levitt (*)

47 Nouriel Roubini (*)

48 Jeffrey Sachs (27)

49 Wang Hui (*)

50 VS Ramachandran (*)

51 Drew Gilpin Faust (*)

52 Lawrence Lessig (40)

53 JM Coetzee (44)

54 Fernando Savater (*)

55 Wole Soyinka (66)

56 Yan Xuetong (*)

57 Steven Pinker (26)

58 Alma Guillermoprieto (*)

59 Sunita Narain (80)

60 Anies Baswedan (*)

61 Michael Walzer (68)

62 Niall Ferguson (45)

63 George Ayittey (*)

64 Ashis Nandy (*)

65 David Petraeus (*)

66 Olivier Roy (*)

67 Lawrence Summers (60)

68 Martha Nussbaum (53)

69 Robert Kagan (62)

70 James Lovelock (71)

71 J Craig Venter (74)

72 Amos Oz (59)

73 Samantha Power (*)

74 Lee Kuan Yew (*)

75 Hu Shuli (*)

76 Kwame Anthony Appiah (*)

77 Malcolm Gladwell (*)

78 Alexander De Waal (*)

79 Gianni Riotta (*)

80 Daniel Barenboim (*)

81 Thérèse Delpech (*)

82 William Easterly (*)

83 Minxin Pei (*)

84 Richard Posner (32)

85 Ivan Krastev (*)

86 Enrique Krauze (85)

87 Anne Applebaum (*)

88 Rem Koolhaas (51)

89 Jacques Attali (*)

90 Paul Collier (*)

91 Esther Duflo (*)

92 Michael Spence (*)

93 Robert Putnam (77)

94 Harold Varmus (94)

95 Howard Gardner (70)

96 Daniel Kahneman (64)

97 Yegor Gaidar (*)

98 Neil Gershenfeld (87)

99 Alain Finkielkraut (81)

100 Ian Buruma (*)

The only people to have the same placings in both 2005 and 2008 are Samuel Huntington (28th) and Harold Varmus (94th). Excluding new entrie, the g reatest advance between 2005 and 2008 was 53 places, by Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, from 56th to 3rd. The greatest fall was by Richard Posner, by 52 places, from 32nd to 84th. The highest-ranked intellectual from 2005 not to be included in the 2008 poll was Naomi Klein, who made 11th place in 2005.

 

Source: The Prospect , July 26, 2008


Related News

Hizmet-affiliated schools removed from private school incentive list

The Hizmet schools were in the original list of those institutions which met all the criteria for eligibility to receive financial incentives to accept these students. Announced on Monday, the schools were listed on the ministry’s website until Thursday afternoon, when they were taken off without any explanation. However, an official written notice sent from the ministry to governorates on Thursday said: “It was not deemed proper to give such incentives to education institutions whose managers are under fiscal investigation and interrogation within the scope of the Law No. 5549 on the Prevention of Laundering of Crime Revenues and those that had received punishments fiscal irregularities after due inspections before,” and asked the governorates do what the notice requires.

‘Gülen movement challenges culture of competition’

The Gülen movement, a religious-based social movement with millions of followers in Turkey, is challenging the increasingly competitive philosophy based on marginalizing and outdoing others and offering new ways of looking at cooperation and working together, says Michael Samuel, dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal in Durban and life-time educator with good knowledge of schools founded by the Gülen movement.

Samanyolu high school ranks first in Infomatrix Asia and Pacific Olympics

The Eskişehir Samanyolu Gülbahar Anatolian High School, whose students won two gold, three silver and two bronze medals, has ranked first in the Infomatrix Asia and Pacific Olympics held in Kazakhstan.

Ambassadors back Gulen schools in Asia

Kemal Ilter, Ankara Turkey’s ambassadors in Central Asia and the Caucasus have written a report in which they state that Fethullah Gulen’s schools in those countries, had been playing a positive role in Turkey’s relations with those governments. In order to give a new impetus to Turkey’s relations with Central Asian and Caucasian countries the […]

Goods signed by Obama, Stallone auctioned at Turkish organization fundraiser

Boxing gloves, baseballs and photographs signed by public figures like US President Barack Obama and actor Sylvester Stallone were auctioned off at a fundraising event for a Turkish group in New York City on Friday.

3 dead, 5 missing in attempt to escape Turkey’s post-coup crackdown

At least three people died and five others were missing after a boat carrying a group of eight capsized on Tuesday in the Maritsa River while seeking to escape a post-coup crackdown in Turkey.

Latest News

Turkish inmate jailed over alleged Gülen links dies of heart attack in prison

Message of Condemnation and Condolences for Mass Shooting at Bondi Beach, Sydney

Media executive Hidayet Karaca marks 11th year in prison over alleged links to Gülen movement

ECtHR faults Turkey for convictions of 2,420 applicants over Gülen links in follow-up to 2023 judgment

New Book Exposes Erdoğan’s “Civil Death Project” Targeting the Hizmet Movement

European Human Rights Treaty Faces Legal And Political Tests

ECtHR rejects Turkey’s appeal, clearing path for retrials in Gülen-linked cases

Erdoğan’s Civil Death Project’ : The ‘politicide’ spanning more than a decade

Fethullah Gülen’s Vision and the Purpose of Hizmet

In Case You Missed It

Newly launched book tells stories of purge victims after Turkey’s July 15 coup

Who benefits the most from the AKP-Gülen movement rift?

Al-Azhar professor: Gülen courageously resists radicalism

Financial Times: Turkey’s crackdown on dissent has gone too far

Turkish school in Romania moves to new building

Fethullah Gulen: Bridge Between Islam And The West

Turkish Civil society groups: Lack of hate crimes legislation hurts citizens

Copyright 2026 Hizmet News