Fethullah Gülen
Who was Fethullah Gülen?
Turkish Islamic preacher and founder of the Gülen movement who lived in self-imposed exile in the United States from 1999 until his death.
Biographical data adapted from Wikipedia’s article on Fethullah Gülen (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Biography
Muhammed Fethullah Gülen was born on 27 April 1941 in the Pasinler district of Erzurum Province in eastern Turkey. He got his early religious education from local scholars and his father and became a state imam licensed by the Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs in 1959. He held this position until 1981. During this time, he started attracting followers through his sermons and writings, which were strongly influenced by Said Nursi, the influential Kurdish-Turkish Islamic scholar. Nursi's Risale-i Nur Collection shaped much of modern Anatolian Islamic intellectual life. Gülen developed a theological view that aimed to balance Islamic faith with democratic governance, modern science, and interfaith dialogue. This approach set him apart from political Islamism, and he instead promoted a civic and moral involvement with modern society.
Before Fame
Gülen grew up in Turkey during the Cold War, a time when the country had undergone major secular changes under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in the 1920s and 1930s. The state kept a tight grip on religious expression, leaving little room for Islamic intellectual activity. In this setting, Gülen started preaching in Izmir in the 1960s. He attracted students, professionals, and educators with his focus on education, ethics, and a non-confrontational approach to secular institutions. He didn't gain early prominence through political protests but rather through sermons, summer camps, and informal study groups that gradually developed into an organized social movement.
Key Achievements
- Founded the Gülen movement, which established more than 2,000 schools across 150 countries focused on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education.
- Authored The Essentials of the Islamic Faith and numerous other works articulating a Nursian theological framework compatible with democratic modernity and interfaith dialogue.
- Built one of the largest transnational Islamic civil society networks of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, encompassing schools, charities, media outlets, and financial institutions.
- Promoted sustained interfaith dialogue with Christian and Jewish leaders, including a notable meeting with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican in 1998.
- Served as a Turkish state imam for over two decades before transitioning to a broader role as an independent Islamic intellectual and movement leader with global reach.
Did You Know?
- 01.Gülen's movement established a network of over 2,000 STEM-focused schools in more than 150 countries, making it one of the largest privately operated educational networks in the world.
- 02.He lived near Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania, from 1999 until his death, residing at the Chestnut Retreat Center, where he was also buried after a funeral attended by approximately 15,000 mourners at a stadium in New Jersey.
- 03.The Turkish government stripped Gülen of his citizenship in 2017, two years after formally designating his movement a terrorist organization under the acronym FETÖ following the disputed 2016 coup attempt.
- 04.Gülen wrote Islamic poetry and was regarded as a practitioner of a literary tradition rooted in Sufi and Anatolian verse, in addition to his prolific prose output on theology and social ethics.
- 05.At its height around 2010, the Gülen movement was estimated to have between 8 and 10 million followers globally, and its affiliated institutions held assets later valued by the Turkish government at over $12 billion before their seizure.