“A STATION ABOVE THAT OF ANGELS”: THE VISION OF ISLAMIC EDUCATION WITHIN PLURALISTIC SOCIETIES IN THE THOUGHT OF FETHULLAH GÜLEN - A STUDY OF CONTRASTS BETWEEN TURKEY AND THE UK

Abstract

Gülen cites ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib as saying, ‘... if a person’s intellect dominates his or her desire and ferocity, he or she rises to a station above that of angels ...’. Both historically as well as in modern contexts Muslim education is not characterised by uniformity but rather by a plurality of actors, institutions, ideas and political milieus. The two central questions are: What is required to live as a Muslim in the present world? Who is qualified to teach in this time? The debate over the nature and purpose of Islamic education is no recent phenomenon. It has been conducted for the past two centuries throughout the Islamic world: the transmission of both spiritual and empirical knowledge has always been dependent upon the support of religious, social and political authorities. Based on fieldwork in Turkey and the UK amongst schools associated with the Gülen move- ment, examination of national government policies and on readings of contemporary Muslim educationalists, this paper seeks to examine the ideals of Fethullah Gülen on contemporary Islamic and religious education. It reports critically on the contribution of these schools to social cohesion, inter-religious dialogue and common ambitions for every child and student. We should accept the fact that there is a specific way of being Muslim, which reflects the Turkish understanding and practices in those regions [which] stretch from Central Asia to the Balkans. [Ocak 1996 79] Islam, a rich and strong tradition in many diverse societies is both a living faith and in every generation has been the means of enabling Muslims to address social developments, justice, and both corporate and individual questions of identity and ethics. Drawing on the Qur’an, Hadith, Sunnah and fiqh new Islamic social movements have constantly formed fresh public spaces in which new identities and lifestyles could emerge. Some of the finest expressions of Islam have occurred in the most pluralist religio-social circumstances when intellectual dis- course, educational achievements and social harmony have flourished. Amongst contempo- rary Islamic thinkers who are professedly concerned to interpret the sources and their practice in an “Islamically correct” manner is Fethullah Gülen [b. 1938], the spiritual father of what is probably the most active Turkish-Islamic movement of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. In considering this movement however, one soon realizes that Fethullah Gülen is neither an innovator with a new and unique theology nor a revolutionary. His understanding of Islam is oriented within the conservative mainstream and his arguments are rooted in the traditional sources of Islam. They stand in a lineage represented as I shall argue through al-Ghazali, Mevlana Jalal ud-Din Rumi, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, and in company with Muhammad Asad and Muhammad Naquib Syed Al-Attas, and Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Nonetheless, in less than thirty years his followers as Islamic activists have made significant contributions to inter-communal and national peace, inter-religious dialogue, economic development, and most certainly in the field of education out of all proportion to their numbers. Moreover, this is a de-centralised polymorphic social movement.