EDITED BY M. HAKAN YAVUZ AND JoruNn L. EsrosirTo n the first book of its kind, M. Hakan Yavuz and John L. I Esposìto explore recent reformations of Islam and culture ìn Turkey and the successful Islamic modernist Fethullah Gülen movement. As one of the most significant religious movements to emerge in Turkey in the past fifty years, the Gülen movement combines a devotion to Islam with love for modern learning, especially modern science. This groundbreaking work focuses on and explains the nexus of complex historical and political developments that have contributed to the transformation of Islam in Turkey, and to the movements sphere of influence stretching into the Balkans and Central Asia through the establishment of schools outside Turkey. The book cogently traces the origins of Gülen's ideology and his early efforts to propagate his views through educational activities. It details the various strategies employed by Gülen's followers to put his ideas into practice, both in Turkey and around the world. Contributors describe its intellectual and religious formation, its spread across Turkey and Central Asia, and its influence on citizens outside the movement, . including leading Turkish politicians. Cover illustrations of Feshullah Gülen, 2003. Courtesy of M. Hakan Yavua,
LE. M. Hakan Yavuz is an assistant professor of political science at | the Universìty of Utah. He is the author of Jslamie Political 1dentity in Turkey. *_ John L. Esposito is the founding director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and professor of religion and international affairs at Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Services. He is the author of Llam and Politics, Fourth Edition, and Women in Muslim Family Law, Second Edition, both published by Syracuse University Press. THIS VOLUME aims not to provide a comprehensive historical study of the neoNur movement associated with the Turkish spiritual and social leader Fethullah Gülen, but rather to examine the intervening role of market forces in the interaction between the secular Turkish republic and Turkish Islamic sociopolitical movements through the study of Fethullah Gülen and his movement. The various chapters on the Gülen movement seek to assess its significance in the shaping of the contemporary Islamic sociopolitical scene in Turkey. Within these parameters, we have chosen those articles in which the interaction between the secular state and the religious, cultural, and sociopolitical manifestations of Turkish Islam is assessed with regard to current seminal developments in the country—the most obvious being the rise of a Muslimoriented Anatolian bourgeoisie and the sweeping electoral victory of the Muslim democratic Justice and Development Party in 2002. Each chapter focuses on different aspects of the interaction between Gülen’s ideas and leadership, on the one hand, and this broader evolving sociopolitical context, on the other. Analysis of the growing accommodation between modern Turkish Islamic identities and idioms and the democratic, market-oriented Turkish state also sheds important insights on similar challenges facing a number of large Muslim countries. We have placed the Gülen movement within the larger context of the Nur movement. Gülen and his following cannot be understood without considering the founder of the movement during the early republican period, Said Nursi. Many of Gülen's followers object to this linkage between Nursi and Gülen, but we feel that understanding the genesis of the movement and its significant per| mutations necessitates a consideration of the formative role of Sufi tradition in general and of Said Nursi in particular. In Gülen’s neo-Nur movement, one can discern both the legacy of traditional Islamic sociopolitical activism and the modern challenges faced in the reproduction of Islamic identity in a large and developing secular state. The Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University helped make this project possible by hosting, a conference on the Gülen move. ment. This volume is an outcome of the papers presented at that conference. We thank the Rumi Forum for Interfaith Dialogue for their financial support. We also owe a special debt of gratitude to Ali Aslan and Hüseyin Sentürk for their unstinting generosity, which greatly facilitated our work. The Rockefeller Foundation and the Kroc Institute of the University of Notre Dame provided a year of support for Hakan Yavuz to work on thís project, and this assistance is gratefully acknowledged. Yavuz also thanks the Summer Institute of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Berlin, Germany. Eric Hooglund played a crucial role in preparing the manuscript and provided valuable criticism; without his help, publication of the present volume would not have been possible. Mujeeb R. Khan also read a number of chapters and provided his customary keen editorial insight and comments. Finally, we also must thank Mary Selden Evans of Syracuse University Press for her excellent guidance and support throughout all the stages of publication. Contributors Bekim Agai is a researcher at the University of Bonn, Germany, and a former fellow of the Volkswagen Foundation in the Junior Research Group, focusing on educational networks ín the national and transnational context. His doctoral dissertation is entitled “Between Network and Discourse: The Educational Network Around Fethullah Gülen; The Flexible Implementation of New Islamic Thought. Three Countries in Comparison.” Agai earned his M.A. in Oriental studies at Rheinische-Friedrich-Wilhelm University in Bonn. He also studied at Cairo University. He has lectured on Said Nursi, Islam and politics in contemporary Turkey, and the political culture of Turkey. His current research interests include the impact of Said Nursi on Islamic discourse in Turkey and Islam in Europe. Yasin Aktay is associate professor of sociology at Selguk University in Konya, Turkey. He received his Ph.D. from Middle East Technical University in Ankara. In 1991, he founded the quarterly intellectual journal 7ezkire, of which he is editor, and the publishing company Vadi Yayinlan. He also is on the editorial board of the journal Stvi/ Toplum (Civil society). During 2001, he held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Utah. His publications include translations of several Arabic and English books and articles into Turkish. He is coeditor of Postmodernism and Islam, Globatigation, and Orientalism (1996, in Turkish) and of $ociology of Religion (1998, in Turkish); he is coauthor of Word Was at the Beginning: On Hermeneutics (1996, in Turkish). His most recent book is On the Possibility of a Turkish Religion (1999, in Turkish). John L. Esposito is professor of religion and international affairs at Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service. He is the founding director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and editor in chief of The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World (1995), The Oxford History of Islam (1999), and 7he Oxford Dictionary of Islam (2003). He is the author of Zslam: Ahmet T. Kuru is a Ph.D, candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington. He is the author of essays on identity and politics in Central Asia and on Islamic movements, published in journals including Central Asian Survey and Cabiers d'études sur la Mediterranée et le monde turco-iranien. He is currently studying church-state relations in the United States, France, and Turkey. ‘Thomas Michel is a member of the Indonesian Province of the Jesuits. He presently serves as secretary for Interreligious Dialogue of the Society of Jesus and ecumenical secretary of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences. He studied Arabic in Lebanon and Egypt and received a Ph.D. in Arabic and Islamic studies in 1977 from the University of Chicago. His doctoral thesis, completed under the instruction of the late Fazlur Rahman, focused on the thought of Ibn Taymiyya. Dr. Michel has taught for many years in Indonesia and the Philippines. In Turkey, he has taught in the theology faculties of universities in Ankara, Izmir, Konya, and Urfa. Elisabeth Ôzdalga received a Ph.D. in sociology from Göteborg University in 1979 and presently is a faculty member in the Department of Sociology at Middle East Technical University in Ankara. Her main research interests are religion and socicty in the Near Last, Central Asia, and Turkey. She is affiliated with the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, as its previous director, she organized four major international conferenees on aspects of Islam. She edited the proceedings of these conferences in four books: Civil Society, Denrtocracy, and the Muslim World (1997); Alevt Identity (1998); The Nagshbandis in West and Central Asia (1999); and Sufism, Music, and Society in Turkey and the Middle East (2001). Özdalga also is the author of 7he Veiling Issue (1998). John O. Voll is a professor of Islamic history and associate director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. He is a past president of the Middle East Studies Association. Among his books are Zskam: Continuity and Change in the Modern World (1994, 2d ed.) and Islam and Democracy (1996, with John L. Esposito) and Makers of Contemporary Islam (2001). M. Hakan Yavuz is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Utah. He obtained his B.A. degree from the University of Ankara and his degrees from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He is the author of Zskamic Political Ldentity in Turkey (2003).