The Gulen Movement ─ Building Social Cohesion Through Dialogue and Education

In recent years, Muslim communities in Europe and throughout the West have come under increasingly virulent criticism, blamed for everything from terrorism to breakdowns of social cohesion and ideas of national identity. In response, the Gulen Movement, inspired by the teachings of Turkish Muslim scholar Fethullah Gulen, has organized volunteers to use dialogue and education as ways to bridge the divide of misunderstanding that separates Muslims and non-Muslims. The Gulen Movement analyzes the work of the Gulen volunteers using social movement theory, helping us to understand the interactions of its origins, goals, structure, and composition.

Gurkan Celik is the director of the Dialog Academy, a Rotterdam-based organization that coordinates, mobilizes, and employs national and international research contacts and networks and investigates the ongoing realignment of public, private, and civil society groups.