What do you think?
Rate this book
Toward a Global Civilization of Love and Tolerance
Using a basis of theoretical and cultural dynamics, this study explores dialogue, tolerance, different religions, cultures, and civilizations.
This book has a double purpose. On the one hand, it is a call to Muslims to a greater awareness that Islam teaches the need for dialogue and that Muslims are called to be agents and witnesses to God's universal mercy. On the other hand, the book is an invitation to non-Muslims to move beyond prejudice, suspicion, and half-truths in order to arrive at an understanding of what Islam is really about.
This book has a double purpose. On the one hand, it is a call to Muslims to a greater awareness that Islam teaches the need for dialogue and that Muslims are called to be agents and witnesses to God's universal mercy. On the other hand, the book is an invitation to non-Muslims to move beyond prejudice, suspicion, and half-truths in order to arrive at an understanding of what Islam is really about.
- GenresReligion
271 pages, Paperback
First published May 31, 2004
10 people are currently reading
76 people want to read
About the author
M. Fethullah Gülen
290Ìýbooks230ÌýfollowersMuhammed Fethullah Gülen was a Turkish Muslim scholar, preacher, and leader of the Gülen movement who as of 2016 had millions of followers. Gülen was an influential neo-Ottomanist, Anatolian panethnicist, Islamic poet, writer, social critic, and activist–dissident developing a Nursian theological perspective that embraces democratic modernity. Gülen was a local state imam from 1959 to 1981 and he was a citizen of Turkey until his denaturalization by the Turkish government in 2017. Over the years, Gülen became a centrist political figure in Turkey prior to his being there as a fugitive. From 1999 until his death in 2024, Gülen lived in self-exile in the United States near Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania.
Gülen said his social criticisms are focused upon individuals' faith and morality and a lesser extent toward political ends, and self described as rejecting an Islamist political philosophy, advocating instead for full participation within professions, society, and political life by religious and secular individuals who profess high moral or ethical principles and who wholly support secular rule, within Muslim-majority countries and elsewhere. Gülen was described in the English-language media as an imam "who promoted a tolerant Islam which emphasises altruism, hard work, and education" and as "one of the world's most important Muslim figures".
In 2003, a number of Gülen movement participants allied with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's right wing Justice and Development Party (AKP), providing the AKP political and sorely-needed administrative support. This political alliance worked together to weaken left-of-center Kemalist factions, but fractured in 2011. Turkish prosecutors accused Gülen of attempts to overthrow the government by allegedly directing politically motivated corruption investigations by Gülen-linked investigators then in the judiciary, who illegally wiretapped the executive office of the Turkish president, and Gülen's alleged instigations of the 2016 coup attempt. Gülen denied the accusations.
A Turkish criminal court issued an arrest warrant for Gülen in 2016, and Turkey demanded his extradition from the United States. U.S. government officials did not believe he was associated with any terrorist activity, and requested evidence to be provided by the Turkish government to substantiate the allegations in the warrant requesting extradition, frequently rejecting Turkish calls for his extradition.
Gülen was wanted as a terrorist leader in Turkey and Pakistan, as well as by the OIC and GCC.
Gülen said his social criticisms are focused upon individuals' faith and morality and a lesser extent toward political ends, and self described as rejecting an Islamist political philosophy, advocating instead for full participation within professions, society, and political life by religious and secular individuals who profess high moral or ethical principles and who wholly support secular rule, within Muslim-majority countries and elsewhere. Gülen was described in the English-language media as an imam "who promoted a tolerant Islam which emphasises altruism, hard work, and education" and as "one of the world's most important Muslim figures".
In 2003, a number of Gülen movement participants allied with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's right wing Justice and Development Party (AKP), providing the AKP political and sorely-needed administrative support. This political alliance worked together to weaken left-of-center Kemalist factions, but fractured in 2011. Turkish prosecutors accused Gülen of attempts to overthrow the government by allegedly directing politically motivated corruption investigations by Gülen-linked investigators then in the judiciary, who illegally wiretapped the executive office of the Turkish president, and Gülen's alleged instigations of the 2016 coup attempt. Gülen denied the accusations.
A Turkish criminal court issued an arrest warrant for Gülen in 2016, and Turkey demanded his extradition from the United States. U.S. government officials did not believe he was associated with any terrorist activity, and requested evidence to be provided by the Turkish government to substantiate the allegations in the warrant requesting extradition, frequently rejecting Turkish calls for his extradition.
Gülen was wanted as a terrorist leader in Turkey and Pakistan, as well as by the OIC and GCC.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
September 11, 2017
I was given this book by a Turkish man who told me that Fethullah Gülen had changed his life and made him a better person and less angry at the world. There may be many others like him who were thus inspired by Gülen. To his followers, Gülen is an inspiration for peace, tolerance and interfaith dialogue.
However, I also know that Gülen is a controversial figure, who has been declared a terrorist by the Turkish President Erdoğan, has been living in exile in the United States, and at least one journalist (Ahmet Şık) sits in prison for writing a book about him and his network of schools and other organizations that are directly or indirectly connected with him and "the Gülen Movement". I read this book hoping to find out more, but his schools are discussed very briefly.
I might recommend this book to a Muslim friend, as many of the messages are positive and appeal to a Muslim audience. He extols the virtues of Islam as a religion of peace and tolerance that can improve people's lives and society on the whole. I have learned more about Islam and Sufism from this book and I became more convinced of a beneficent and cooperative interpretation of Islam that many if not most Muslims adhere to. However, it seems according to Gülen that Muslims past and present are beyond criticism or else they are not Muslims. It is one thing to argue that terrorists can never be true Muslims (and true Muslims can never be terrorists), but it is still problematic to argue that Muslims have only fought war defensively and honorably, and that the problem with the modern days is that Islamic states have not been realized and people have not returned enough to Muslim principles. His book has a strong and repeated denunciation of terrorism, with some fair insight of its causes but also with dubious proposals for solutions (the world must return to religion and Islamic principles of peace and tolerance). To be fair, I shouldn't have expected otherwise from a Muslim cleric.
The essays and lectures of Fethullah Gülen may be an inspiring call for peace and understanding from an Islamic perspective for some or a disappointing myopia of globalization and religion for others, with a very shadowy assessment of religion and politics in modern-day Turkey.
However, I also know that Gülen is a controversial figure, who has been declared a terrorist by the Turkish President Erdoğan, has been living in exile in the United States, and at least one journalist (Ahmet Şık) sits in prison for writing a book about him and his network of schools and other organizations that are directly or indirectly connected with him and "the Gülen Movement". I read this book hoping to find out more, but his schools are discussed very briefly.
I might recommend this book to a Muslim friend, as many of the messages are positive and appeal to a Muslim audience. He extols the virtues of Islam as a religion of peace and tolerance that can improve people's lives and society on the whole. I have learned more about Islam and Sufism from this book and I became more convinced of a beneficent and cooperative interpretation of Islam that many if not most Muslims adhere to. However, it seems according to Gülen that Muslims past and present are beyond criticism or else they are not Muslims. It is one thing to argue that terrorists can never be true Muslims (and true Muslims can never be terrorists), but it is still problematic to argue that Muslims have only fought war defensively and honorably, and that the problem with the modern days is that Islamic states have not been realized and people have not returned enough to Muslim principles. His book has a strong and repeated denunciation of terrorism, with some fair insight of its causes but also with dubious proposals for solutions (the world must return to religion and Islamic principles of peace and tolerance). To be fair, I shouldn't have expected otherwise from a Muslim cleric.
The essays and lectures of Fethullah Gülen may be an inspiring call for peace and understanding from an Islamic perspective for some or a disappointing myopia of globalization and religion for others, with a very shadowy assessment of religion and politics in modern-day Turkey.
February 28, 2021
Gulen's writing is clearly centered within his own religious tradition, but it certainly has applicability to those outside of it. In speaking of God's love, he taps into a well-known stream of many thinkers and writers who have deliberated on the relationship between the divine and the world in which we live. It would have been interesting to see him dive a little more into the themes of liberation and justice from an Islamic perspective, as these are intrinsically tied into love - but I did appreciate the way he describes a vision of his faith that is rooted in the humanization of the other. Tolerance is not my favorite word, but after speaking further with someone who is familiar with his writing in Turkish, I am made to understand that the word translated tolerance here refers to not just to "putting up with" the other but a deeply rooted commitment to respecting and humanizing of the other.
January 12, 2012
Excellent read. Lots of grammatical errors probably due to poor translation/editing/publishing. Beautiful!
July 7, 2017
The other year, the exiled author M. Fethullah Gülen shot into the headlines due to Erdoğan's allegations that Gülen was the mastermind behind the failed Turkish coup. So, I figured, it would behoove me to get a glimpse into Gülen's publications to see what kind of a figure he is. Final analysis: "Harmless hippie." He'd be a safe (though annoying) guy to have as a next-door neighbor, I should think.
The book contains (extremely poorly edited) articles and speeches ranging from 1980 to 2004, and he spends a lot of time lauding a (hypothetical?) group he calls "people of heart" or "devotees of love and affection," described in perfectly idealized terms. He insists that the heart of true faith is love for God (where have I heard that before, I wonder?). For him, "Islam is a religion of security, safety, and peace," which principles "permeate the lives of Muslims." Islam is "a religion made up entirely of forgiveness and tolerance," he says.
As a Sufi, his focus is on jihad primarily as inner struggle or social betterment, and he firmly denounces terrorism in all its forms: "Just as Islam is not a religion of terrorism, any Muslim who correctly understands Islam cannot be or become a terrorist. ... Muslims are the devotees of love and affection, people who shun all acts of terrorism and who have purged their bodies of all manner of hate and hostility."
Gülen is a critic of the leaders of Muslim-majority countries, saying they've surrendered to fundamentalist and ignorance, and that Muslim-majority countries are dominated by "a Muslim culture..., rather than Islamic culture." He blames the rise of terrorism, and really any evil in the world, on a failure of education - hence his network of schools.
He tends to take a very rosy view of Islamic history and insists that only Islam advocates things that, very obviously, other Abrahamic faiths advocate just as centrally if not more so. At the same time, he believes these religions are ultimately the same: "Islam, Christianity, and Judaism all stem from the same root; all have essentially the same basic beliefs, and are nourished from the same source," which has... somewhat less truth to it than Gülen imagines. He thinks that the rise of atheism is due entirely to the failure of Catholic Europe to encourage science (which is deeply untrue - cf. James Hannam's book ), and believes that now the false conflict is being cleared up, that religion and science can be fused together, and that the result is an inevitable world of peace, love, and harmony where people "will organize trips into space as if they were merely traveling to another country. Travelers on the way to God, those devotees of love who have no time for hostility, will carry the inspirations within their spirits to other worlds." So, in the end, Gülen seems to end up as a... well, for want of a better phrase... a harmless hippie.
The book contains (extremely poorly edited) articles and speeches ranging from 1980 to 2004, and he spends a lot of time lauding a (hypothetical?) group he calls "people of heart" or "devotees of love and affection," described in perfectly idealized terms. He insists that the heart of true faith is love for God (where have I heard that before, I wonder?). For him, "Islam is a religion of security, safety, and peace," which principles "permeate the lives of Muslims." Islam is "a religion made up entirely of forgiveness and tolerance," he says.
As a Sufi, his focus is on jihad primarily as inner struggle or social betterment, and he firmly denounces terrorism in all its forms: "Just as Islam is not a religion of terrorism, any Muslim who correctly understands Islam cannot be or become a terrorist. ... Muslims are the devotees of love and affection, people who shun all acts of terrorism and who have purged their bodies of all manner of hate and hostility."
Gülen is a critic of the leaders of Muslim-majority countries, saying they've surrendered to fundamentalist and ignorance, and that Muslim-majority countries are dominated by "a Muslim culture..., rather than Islamic culture." He blames the rise of terrorism, and really any evil in the world, on a failure of education - hence his network of schools.
He tends to take a very rosy view of Islamic history and insists that only Islam advocates things that, very obviously, other Abrahamic faiths advocate just as centrally if not more so. At the same time, he believes these religions are ultimately the same: "Islam, Christianity, and Judaism all stem from the same root; all have essentially the same basic beliefs, and are nourished from the same source," which has... somewhat less truth to it than Gülen imagines. He thinks that the rise of atheism is due entirely to the failure of Catholic Europe to encourage science (which is deeply untrue - cf. James Hannam's book ), and believes that now the false conflict is being cleared up, that religion and science can be fused together, and that the result is an inevitable world of peace, love, and harmony where people "will organize trips into space as if they were merely traveling to another country. Travelers on the way to God, those devotees of love who have no time for hostility, will carry the inspirations within their spirits to other worlds." So, in the end, Gülen seems to end up as a... well, for want of a better phrase... a harmless hippie.
March 8, 2015
I leafed through this book, it was given to me by a sincere nice young turkish guy. The title of the book covers the message, as i understood it, very well. He argues that it is central to Islam. And terrorism is not Islamic, and God does not want people to kill, period. As far as i could see this message about love, tolerance, forgiveness, was repeated many, many times throughout the book, and since i usually get something the first time i had no patience to actually read word for word. I am happy this teacher has so many followers, I wish believers and non believers would live according to those love and tolerance principles.
January 24, 2015
This is a collection of thoughts and sermons by spiritual leader, M. Fethullah Gullen. He has a huge following! There is a lot of conversation fodder in this book, because he discusses many major themes: forgiveness, how to be a better (ideal!) person, what the world would be like if everyone lived in accordance with God's Will.
This book has a loose narrative and some of the writing is rambling.Some members of our group found it hard to follow.
This book has a loose narrative and some of the writing is rambling.Some members of our group found it hard to follow.
December 28, 2015
It shows us common points of humanity and it teaches us how we should live together
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get help and learn more about the design.