A brief biography of Fethullah Gulen and his mission

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HIS BRIEF BIOGRAPHY AND MISSION

Fethullah Gülen, now widely known as Hodjaefendi, was born in a village called Korucuk, in Erzurum Province of Turkey, in 1938.

After completion of his education, he started to teach in Edirne in 1958. As well as teaching, he also took part, throughout this period, in other religious and social services. After doing his military service and teaching for some time more in Edirne, he was transferred to Izmir, the third biggest province in Turkey. His appointment to Izmir was to prove a turning-point. Since childhood he had been totally dedicated to religious life and deeply interested in the condition of not only Muslims but also of the whole of mankind. While in Izmir, he never restricted himself to teaching in a single place. He began to travel from city to city to give lectures on subjects ranging from Darwinism to social justice in Islam, and visit places like large Turkish-style cafés, where people mostly gather, in order to convey to them his message.

"Applaud the good for their goodness; appreciate those who have believing hearts; be kind to the believers. Approach unbelievers so gently that their envy and hatred melt away, like a Messiah revive people with your breath."

Fethullah Gülen had long dreamed of a young generation who would combine intellectual "enlightenment" with pure spirituality, wisdom and continuous activism. Being extraordinarily knowledgeable in religious and social sciences and quite familiar with the principles of the "material" sciences, he was able to instruct his students in almost all of them. The first students who attended his courses in Izmir became the vanguard of the revived generation willing to serve his ideals. The small group that had begun to form around the opinions of Fethullah Gülen by the end of 1960s has increased rapidly and steadily ever since. The generation captivated by his tears, sincerity, altruism and love, has rendered, and still continues to render, services to people without expecting any material reward. These services include preaching, teaching, establishing private institutions of education all over the world, publishing books, magazines, dailies and weeklies, TV and radio broadcasts, and funding scholarships for poor students. They have nothing to do with politics and political ambitions. They have already founded and are running high schools and universities numbering about 300 all over the world from England to Australia and the United States and from Russian cities such as Petersburg and Moscow to Yakutsky and therefrom to South Africa. They run a TV channel whose broadcast covers a wide area stretching from Turkey to India and the Middle East.

"Only those who overflow with love will build the happy and enlightened world of the future. Their lips smiling with love, their hearts brimming with love, their eyes radiating love and the most tender human feelings – such are the heroes of love who always receive messages of love from the rising and setting of the sun and from the flickering light of the stars."

FURTHER REMARKS ON HIS MISSION

Fethullah Gülen is well-known for his ardent endeavors to strengthen bonds among all peoples of the world. He maintains that the bonds among the people of not only an individual country but the whole world are much more than those separating them. So, there should be established a sincere, strong dialogue and tolerance among them. To this end, he pioneered in the establishment of a foundation called The Foundation of Journalists and Writers, the activities of which to promote dialogue and tolerance among all strata of the society receive warm welcome from almost all walks of life. Again to this end, Fethullah Gülen visits and receives especially leading figures not only from the Turkish people, but from all over the world. In Turkey, the Vatican Ambassador to Turkey, the Patriarch of the Turkish Orthodox people, the Patriarch of the Turkish Armenian community, the Chief Rabbi of the Turkish Jewish community and many others including leading journalists, columnists, TV and movie stars and thinkers of varying views, are among those with whom he meets.

Fethullah Gülen unequivocally believes and asserts that If you wish to keep masses under control simply starve them for knowledge. Only way to get out from under tyranny is through the attainment of knowledge. Totally dedicated to solving the society’s problems, he believes the road to justice for all is paved with an adequate universal education. Only then would there be sufficient understanding and tolerance in the society to show respect for the rights of others. To this end, he has over the years, encouraged society’s elite and the community leaders, industrialists and business leaders in his community to support quality education for the needy.

His tireless efforts in this area have begun to bear fruit for the society, as the students graduating from the private schools in Turkey and Central Asia established by entirely private donations, fostered through his inspirations, and run as trusts, have taken top honors in university placement tests and consistently finished at the top in International Knowledge Olympics, producing a number of world champions, especially in sciences, such as math, physics, chemistry, and biology.

Fethullah Gülen maintains, If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. In the area of education he has inspired the use of mass media, notably television, to inform the public, especially those unable to attain a formal education, of the pressing matters in the society.

As a political and governing system, democracy is, at present, the only alternative left in the world, he maintains. In spite of its many shortcomings, according to Fethullah Gülen, mankind has not yet designed a better governing system than Democracy. We must, therefore, make it work. People shall always demand their freedom of choice in the way they run their affairs and especially in their expression of spiritual and religious values.

Do not despair in the face of adversity and do not yield to anarchists, he emphasizes time and again, and he warns constantly to guard against giving up hope. To him hopelessness is a quicksand that buries in it human progress and kills the will to succeed; it is a noose that chokes and drowns man.

With his acute perception, Fethullah Gülen feels the positive change in the spiritual climate in the world. He envisions a 21^st century in which we shall witness the sprouting of a spiritual dynamics that will dust off the moral values dormant for so long. He envisions the birth of the age of tolerance and understanding leading to the cooperation of civilizations and ultimately to the fusion of the two into one body. Human spirit shall triumph in the way to intercivilizational dialogue and sharing of values.

Fethullah Gülen attempts and successfully manages to bridge the past with his image of the future. His deep desire to find a solution for the dilemma society is faced today presents, in his writings, itself as a row of sentences set one after another like priceless pearls on a string. In his inimitable style and choice of vocabulary, which he exhibits so richly, he offers a formula for a way out of "material quicksand" in which humanity find itself today.

Today’s man is in search of his Creator and the purpose of his creation, Fethullah Gülen contends. To questions, why was I born, what is the purpose of my living, what is the meaning of death and what does it demand from me, he gives very practical yet singularly convincing answers. In his speeches and writings one encounters statements like man has come to a crossroads, one leads to despair, the other to salvation; may God give us the wisdom to make the right choice. He hints in his work methods in search of the truth.

He does not believe, there exists any material shortage in the world and sees no justification for the death of millions of starvation. Inequitably distributed wealth should be channeled through private charities to the needy. He has spearheaded the establishment of many charitable organizations to handle the welfare of the underprivileged and the most direct method to accomplish this task.

A unique social reformer, Fethullah Gülen has brilliantly synthesized the positive sciences with divinity, reconciling those "apparent" differences between the two. In his writings and oral presentations, he admirably brings closer the ideology and philosophies of East and West.

As for getting others accept your ways, Fethullah Gülen tells us, the days of getting things done by brute force are over. In today’s enlightened world, the only way to get others accept your ideas is by persuasion through convincing arguments. Those who resort to brute force to reach their goal are intellectually bankrupt souls, he quips.

In his daily life, man must maintain that delicate balance between material and spiritual values, he emphasizes. Only then could man enjoy serenity and true happiness. Man must guard against unbridled greed.

A true leader, who leads by example, he lives as he preaches and in himself presents to humanity an ideal model to emulate. As a student of hadith, tafsir, fiqh, and tasawwuf and philosophy he occupies his rightful place among his contemporaries in Islamic sciences.

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