New Book – No Return from Democracy: A Survey of Interviews with Fethullah Gulen
Date posted: August 8, 2017
It was rare, if not impossible, to find in ’80s and ’90s a Muslim cleric who spoke in favor of democracy, integration with the Western world, and universal human values. Fethullah Gülen was one of those. Many of his avant-garde ideas did not only earn him one of the largest and most influential faith-inspired social movements of recent history, but also many foes, especially from the Turkish ruling elite, placing him in the center of many social and political developments in Turkey. Despite the enormous defamation from some political groups in Turkey, Gülen is recognized in the world as a devout Muslim cleric, whose thoughts and life style are deeply rooted in the Islamic faith, but who also believes Islam is not in conflict with the progressive values of the modern world. This book collates Gülen’s ahead-of-his-time comments on some of the debated issues as he phrased in interviews in the past few decades.
MUSTAFA EDİB YILMAZ Mustafa Yeşil, the chairman of the Journalists and Writers Foundation’s (GYV) executive board, a Turkish NGO undertaking projects that emphasize mutual understanding and tolerance to establish global peace, described the movement named after the GYV’s honorary president, Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, as being faith based, pacifist, pluralist, colorful and pro-democratic. Gülen […]
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