I make no claim to being an expert on Turkish affairs (which right now seem to be more than usually confused). But this detailed look at Fethullah Gulen is worth a look: Its in the City Journal, home of the Naipaul-admiring highly sophisticated section of the ruling class. And it does show why the ruling class is the ruling class. I tried to imagine what a bullshit artist like Pankaj Mishra would do with the same topic and I despaired for my comrades on the metropolitan Left..
It does seem to me (just on general principles, without ever having met someone from the Gulen Jamaat or Jamia or whatever they want to call it) that Gulen himself MAY think he is doing God’s work or whatever, but its still basically a cult and a scam..and more like Scientology than like Mormonism. And likely to crash and burn, or rather, get tied up in court battles and internecine warfare as the founder goes the way of all flesh.
Unfortunately it may have less benign effects in Turkey and central Asia (and Pakistan), where followers will be cultivated by state department idiots, KGB agents, ISI geniuses and even the Relatives And Wives wing in various half-baked schemes of extending “influence”; will feed endless dumb conspiracy theories and will distract and confuse a significant proportion of the new middle class (a class that is relatively small, so not as safe as American society is from the ill-effects of such scams and cults).
Magar iss ka koee karey bhi kya, yeh to Maikadey ka nizam hai..
(But what can one do about this? it is, after all, the way of the world)
People who know more about the details of the Gulen organization, please pitch in.
Btw, its interesting that Jamat (cemaat), Jamia (camia) and Khidmet (Hizmet) are all easily recognizable words for us, though Turkish transliteration is a bit different than our Latin Urdu.
So you think these guys are oh-so-smart, given the pile of absurdity they havef on display? They aren’t the ruling class, BTW, having failed to beat a former community organizer who also happens to be a black guy.
I predict a nauseating tide of such drivel in the wake of Obama’s election to a second term. This would be to build up public opinion to ‘stay the course’, that would make it difficult for the president to inject any fresh ideas into standard American paranoia.
Anyway, Gulen isn’t too different from other messianic power mongers. Billy Graham comes immediately to mind here.
And more importantly, one should question how such never-ending Neo-Con, Islamophobic bullshit helps Israel? OK, well, in the long run? As after all, the fact that the US Military Machine is way past being broke will undoubtedly impact things over time.
LOL-the US military has learned not to occupy. In terms of “smash” it would be the height of foolishness to consider it “way past being broke.” Please to put down the crack-pipe.
Usman, can you be more specific? which parts of that article strike you as particularly absurd?
Anyway, there may be some absurdities in there…I was only making a relative judgment, comparing the city journal’s writer to standard Metropolitan Left wing “analysis”. Being a leftist, i feel that hurt a bit more than usual.
And I dont see how this has anything to do with Obama’s election? can you explain?
I am taking it in perspective, and not on its accuracy. Of course, Gulen is quite prominent in Pakistan with Pak-Turk schools. Alarge group of Turkish businessmen looking for investment opportunities whom I met in Lahore seemed to be Gulen-blessed. BTW, they have been very successful in scooping up huge construction projects from the Punjab government.
Given what Evangelicals have wrought in the US, it is pretty much absurd to start griping about their Non-Christian equivalents. Reagan was a religious nutjob who naturally allied himself with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, and we all know what that did.
Anyway, you are free to commiserate with the huddled masses of neo-cons to whatever extent you like. The government money’s all gone, and I’ll let Jai Hanuman above light festive lamps as to the terrible strike power.
Hi Omar:
As you know, I keep an eye out for Mahdist movements of one sort or another. Tim Furnish has addressed Gulen’s Mahdism, which derives from Norsi, here:
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One important aspect of Gülenist ideology that often gets missed by commentators is its sub rosa, “soft” Mahdism, which derives from Fethullah Gülen’s own personal adherence to the teachings of Bediüzzaman Said Nursi (d. 1960) as elucidated by Zeki Saritoprak. Nursi was a late Ottoman/early Turkish Republic Islamic thinker and writer who was heavily influenced by Turkish Sufism. And Sufism, with its mystical and charismatic proclivities, has always been quite susceptible to Mahdist trends—Nursi’s Sufi leanings being no exception. He did, however, differ with traditional Sunni Mahdist thought on some levels: for example, according to Saritoprak, “we may say…that in Bediüzzaman’s view every age has its Mahdi,” from which “it is understood…that the Mahdi is not an individual.” Most importantly, “he [Nursi] does not consider the Mahdi to be someone who will set everything in order…with the sword. He sees him [the Mahdi] as a normal human being and great reformer” who will “revive the Sunna of God’s Messenger” and whose “service will become increasingly brilliant until the start of the 16th century of the Hijra, following which an evil movement will gain dominance.” But Nursi’s thought seems to exhibit some cognitive dissonance on the topic of the Mahdi: while in some writings he stresses the non-individual concept of the Mahdi as almost a Star Wars-like “force” rather than a person, in other places Nursi does admit that “the Great Mahdi expected at the end of time is the last of the Mahdis and reformers.”
Observations:
1)Nursi’s/Gülen’s pacific Mahdism is a welcome break from the normal martial messianic view of the Mahdi espoused in many Sunni, and some Shi`i, sources (and embodied by any number of self-styled Mahdis over the last millennium of Islamic history); however….
2)This same view of the Mahdi as an apolitical mujaddid, “reformer,” who exists in every age also allows for relative ease in donning the mantle of the Mahdi by a sufficiently self-assured, pious and charismatic Muslim leader—as may very well be the case with Fethullah Gülen himself, or with another prominent, Nursi-influenced Turkish Mahdist, Adnan Oktar (whom I interviewed , in Istanbul, in 2008).
http://www.mahdiwatch.org/2012.05.01_arch.html#1336846171736
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It would be instructive to compare Gulen with Oktar in terms of their respective potentials to be viewed as mujaddids or Mahdi, and it is interesting that Oktar (better known as Harun Yahya) includes clips of Gulen speaking about the Mahdi on his own website:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjEZtqd4T34
Both men have large followings, and as I understand it both men teach that the Mahdi would not proclaim himself as such. One can’t help but wonder how each of them privately sees himself — and the other — in eschatological terms.
Does Gulen have the same idiotic creationist views as Oktar? just curious.
ahya is more exuberant and Gulen more circumspect in the way they respectively phrases things, but their conclusions are similar:
Gulen:
What is the Reason for the Persistence of Darwinism in the General Culture of the Masses, Though Many of Darwin’s Hypotheses Have Been Challenged and Even Disproved?
http://en.fgulen.com/questions-and-answers/2129-what-is-the-reason-for-the-persistence-of-darwinism-in-the-general-culture-of-the-masses-though-many-of-darwins-hypotheses-have-been-challenged-and-even-disproved
Yahya:
The Real Ideological Root of Terrorism: Darwinism and Materialism
http://harunyahya.com/en/works/974/the-evolution-deceit
Too unrewarding to phone-type an essay whilst driving at the moment but I’m one of only a handful of non-Turkish non-diplomats to have been given a private tour of his own private compound by his lieutenants.
please share this experience with us.
Did Gulen’s lieutenants explain if and when and why their leader changed his long held anti-Semitic views? I ask because Rodrik has uncovered and translated some of Gülen’s sermons and writings prior to his move to the United States which contain vitriolic passages against Jews, Christians, the West, and the U.S. The peace and tolerance line his followers spout may be a total front.
http://balyozdavasivegercekler.com/2012/11/05/fethullah-gulen-the-jews-and-hypocrisy/
I suppose that you are only asking rhetorically, since it is clear from the next sentence that his views “changed” after he moved to the US. Al taqiya in action.
I think the purpose of the people who are labeling successful charter schools as Gulen Charter Schools is to defame Fethullah Gulen and successful charter schools. As it was mentioned on CBS’s 60 Minutes that nationwide Newsweek Magazine listed some of those two successful charter schools as miracle schools of the nation. They’re combining those schools as Gulen Charter Schools, because they’re successful. Those people who are actually against good and goodness picking Fethullah Gulen’s name as a person to mention with those successful charter schools. Whoever they are, they don’t like Fethullah Gulen because of his teachings and positive contribution to humanity in 21st century. In the other hand Turkish oriented people are not the only people operating charter schools. Why are those people picking only charter schools operated by Turkish origin professionals?
http://so-calledgulencharterschools.blogspot.com/
http://gulencharterschoolsmyth.com
http://gulenschools.org
http://fethullahgulenhizmetmovement.blogspot.com/
http://gulen4universalpeace.blogspot.com/
I read the blog and thanks for the invitation for comments. I am a person who admire Gulen. I would recommend two websites that you may get information from.
First, http://www.gulenmovement.us/ present information on Gulen and Gulen Movement from academic perspective.
Second one is http://www.hizmetnews.com/ which provides up-to-date news on Gulen and Gulen Movement.
So much for City Journal being the haven of the sophisticated ruling class. The article below is one of the several which is simplistic and sophomoric a la Pankaj Bhaiyya. Methinks this journal is one of the several from the right wing Republican party bubble and views everything from Ayn Rand tinted glasses and the bells and whistles and the smoke of supply side economics.
http://www.city-journal.org/2012/eon1107mm.html
Another one:
http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_4_otbie-british_character.html
Victor Davis Hanson writes for it. That’s bad enough. And it’s all so Dubya-era.
I remember how VDH himself behind the movie 300 where Pre-Christendom annihilates Proto-Mawzlems. Obviously, his scam ignores the four centuries of Ottoman Greece.
300 is jolly good fun. But I guess it does have (unintentional) racist overtones. I don’t think 300 was ever intended to be an accurate description of history. The actual movie is borrowed from a comic book series and the movie kinda feels like a WWE wrestling bout where protagonists bad-mouth each other before their stylized sham fighting.
“The wolf begins to circle the boy. Claws of steel and eyes like….”
I do know the actual history of the battle of Thermopylae so don’t take my words otherwise.
I think the US and the world have a good deal to gain from a good and sensible right wing party. But the current republican party is just full of dunderheads who totally misunderstand everything. They just spout jargon and come across as laughably ignorant.
I initially thought that this City Journal might actually be the real deal but I have my doubts now.
I was only thinking of this particular article. I am sure they publish a lot of junk too.
lets say SOMETIMES the ruling class knows whats going on.
I am just in a anti-Pankaj funk that wont settle down. Day before yesterday it was triggered by some nice person interviewing him with utmost respect at the Sharjah book festival.
Usman, I wasnt asking about VD Hanson. What absurdities do you see in this particular report about Gulen? (again, there may be some, I am just curious to know what strikes you as absurd).
300 is just a movie (that i have not seen) but whats the deal with Ottoman Greece? What do you mean by that reference? (again, just curious).
+1.
I too get my blood boiling whenever Pankaj Mishra opens his mouth. I actually have even seen the closeted world of Jawaharlal Nehru University, which produced Pankaj Mishra. Its chock full of other Pankaj Mishras. He is one of the lunatics who escaped the asylum. Or rather one of the antiques who escaped the Museum.
City Journal does yeoman’s work on forbidden topics in the mainstream like the increasing Hispanicization of California and what it has meant in details, the impact of the diversity scam in higher education, the fallacious inferences from arrest statistics of the NYPD, etc. Even if you disagree, you can argue and come to a conclusion with some facts on the various theses in City Journal, unlike with po-mo bullshitters like Pankaj Bhaiyya
My experience is the same. I am a recently naturalized American citizen from Pakistan but, yeah, why does that mean I prefer Mexican immigrants? I don’t, that’s why I moved to America not Mexico. LOL!
No hatred on my part, obviously, but it’s a weird topic to me that I don’t really “get” as a new American. I would say take some smart people given that for practicable reasons you can’t take the whole world.