Introduction

Abstract

This book is a political ethnography that documents the emergence of the Gülen Movement (GM) as Turkey's most influential nonpartisan, nonmilitary social force and a primary player in the country's ongoing “passive revolution.” The GM was founded by M. Fethullah Gülen, the most widely known, and most controversial, religious personality in contemporary Turkey. Called “Hocaefendi” (esteemed teacher) by the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Turks who devote themselves to his teachings, Fethullah Gülen began to attracted a following when he worked as a religious functionary in Turkey's Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet). Drawing on fourteen months of extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Turkey and the United States, this book explores the GM story to highlight the “post-political” turn in twenty-first-century Muslim politics as well as the compatibility between traditional Islam and liberal modernity.