The Gulen Movement: A Sociological Analysis of a Civic Movement Rooted in Moderate Islam

This is a book about Fethullah GA?len, a Turkish scholar and preacher, and the movement that he inspired in Turkey and ultimately throughout the world. During the decades of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, he preached to large crowds in mosques and public places throughout Turkey and wrote hundreds of newspaper columns, articles and books espousing his ideas. Gradually, many Turks from all walks of life responded to his ideas of education, modernization, positive relationships with the West and interfaith dialog by establishing dormitories, university preparatory courses and schools in which quality education, especially in the sciences and technology, were buttressed with commitment to Islamic ideals. With the fall of the Soviet Union, his ideas and service projects spread to the former Turkic-Soviet countries and ultimately to western Europe, North America, Asia, Africa, Australia and to Middle Eastern countries. Today, the GA?len-inspired movement has over 1,000 schools in 100 countries on 5 continents. It is a thriving civic movement rooted in moderate Islam and committed to educating youth, fostering interfaith and intercultural dialog, assisting the needy in society and contributing to global peace. Based on interview data and visits to GA?len-inspired institutions in Turkey and in the United States, this book describes the movement with emphasis upon the structure and commitment mechanisms that both demonstrate commitment to the movement as well as simultaneously generating commitment on the part of movement participants.

Helen Rose Ebaugh, professor, University of Houston, received her Ph.D. in sociology from Columbia University in 1975 with specialties in organizational sociology and the sociology of religion. In addition to five research monographs and two edited books, she has published numerous articles in scholarly journals, including The American Sociological Review, Social Forces, The Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Sociological Analysis and The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. She served as president of the national Association for the Sociology of Religion, helped organize and served as the first chair of the American Sociological Association’s Section on the Sociology of Religion and is past president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. Ebaugh received two consecutive research grants from the Pew Charitable Trusts to study religion and the new immigrants in the United States. With a major grant from the Lilly Endowment, she studied inter-faith coalitions and their provision of social services. She routinely teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in the sociology of religion and the study of world religions.