THREE GREATEST ENEMIES: Ignorance, Poverty and Disunity

Fethullah Gülen has stated that society’s three greatest enemies are ignorance, poverty, and internal schism (separatism) and inspired people to consider applying some practical solutions.

GULEN’S SOLUTION FOR IGNORANCE
Ignorance is the most serious problem, and it is defeated through education, which has always been the most important way of serving others. Fethullah Gülen has been encouraging people to serve humanity through education, intercultural and interfaith activities in formal and institutionalized efforts and projects. Read rest of the story

Turkish school in Pakistan produces math world champion

Usama Mahmoud Hawar, a student at a Turkish school in Pakistan, has become the world champion in mathematics in an exam commissioned by the British Council’s Cambridge University, the Anatolia news agency reported on Sunday.

Hawar, one of 12 million students from 200 countries to participate in the exam, was a final-year student at Lahore High School for Boys, one of the Turkish schools operating in Pakistan. The math world champion received a great deal of attention from the Pakistani media, which congratulated the successful students, teachers and schools of the exam. Read rest of the story

“Bustling Will Power”, M. Fethullah Gulen

Close not your eyes to the beauty
Do not be stuck in the ugly!
Behold Him as mountains do the sun!
Watch ever for His Holy Light,
Put the darkness aside!

These winter months are cold and can be bitter, making our bodies, and even our will power, cold and tired. In his poem, “Bustling Will Power”, Mr. Gulen implores the believer, the servants of humanity to not bow to the harsh and desperate phenomena in our midst but to rise above it all and . . . Read rest of the story

Book Review: A Dialogue of Civilizations: Gülen’s Islamic Ideals and Humanistic Discourse

Review of Jill Carroll’s A Dialogue of Civilizations: Gulen’s Islamic Ideals and Humanistic Discourse. 2007. Somerset, NJ: The Light, 114pp. US $13.95. ISBN 978 1 59784 110 8.

Renewed interest in civil society movements has inspired many scholars to undertake full-time research on democratic political processes and institutions across the globe. Yet few of them have focused on the role of ideas that bring people together nowadays; even less have attempted to put those ideas in the context of the larger humanities.

Dr. Jill Carroll, in a more critical spirit than was formerly possible, delves into the intellectual world of one of the most influential thinkers of our time and carries on a constructive conversation between him and giants of Western thought. Her book, A Dialogue of Civilizations, aims to explain the points where the ideas of Fethullah Gulen, an influential Turkish intellectual and scholar of Islam, find echo in the texts of Confucius, Plato, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, and Jean Paul Sartre. This important study advances public knowledge of the cross-cultural religious dialogue in the twenty-first century and highlights opportunities for improved human understanding. Read rest of the story

Awaited Generation

Humankind has never been so wretched as they are today. They have lost all their values: the ‘table of art and literature is vandalized’ by drunks; thought is capital wasted in the hands of people suffering from intellectual poverty; science is a plaything of materialism; and the products of science are tools used in the name of unbelief.

Fethullah Gulen sees  as our young people are living in and through a most distressing period. The neglect of past centuries has brought to fruit the successive calamities we are experiencing now. The young have been buried under a heavy burden of anxiety with nothing of use coming to them from their fathers and mothers, from the home or the school, nothing whatever of any spiritual value. Read rest of the story

Kimse Yok Mu helps Azerbaijani boy to recover from lifelong illness

Kimse Yok Mu, a relief organization established by the followers of Gulen Movement, has helped a young Azerbaijani boy to recover from illness he had been suffering from since birth. Rahim Bahsiyev had scoliosis which affected his ability to walk and breath and caused strong pain in internal organs. By the help of Kimse Yok Mu volunteers, Rahim was brought from Azerbaijan to Turkey and had surgical operation which was totally covered by the organization. Although the operation was very risky and could have ended with failure and even stroke, it ended with success and Rahim recovered from his lifelong illness. His parents were delighted when they saw their son walking upright and happy.

Read more at Kimse Yok Mu?

TOWARDS A BETTER GENERATION

Our young people are living in and through a most distressing period.  The challenge of ensuring that today’s children would experience a better world is up to us now.

The neglect of past centuries has brought to fruit the successive calamities we are experiencing now.  The young have been buried under a heavy burden of anxiety with nothing of use coming to them from their fathers and mothers, from the home or the school, nothing whatever of any spiritual value. Most of the problems facing today’s youth are not restricted to any one ethnic or religious group, but affect young people generally. Read rest of the story

Helping Hands Relief Foundation

Helping Hands Relief Foundation is a US-based humanitarian aid organization established by the followers of ideas and teachings of Fethullah Gulen. It was founded in 2005 upon the principle reflected in the following verse of Quran: “They feed with food–despite their own desire for it– the indigent, and the orphan and the captive (saying): ‘We feed you purely for the sake of God. We desire no reward from you, no thankfulness.” (Surah al-Insan 8-9) The mission of Helping Hands is to solely serve the humanity by collecting and distributing resources for needy people regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, religion, culture and education. HH provides immediate response to disaster stricken areas as well as works on long-term projects of improving living conditions in poor areas of the world. The organization mostly works with countries which have substantial populations below the poverty line. Read rest of the story

Doing Research on the Gulen Movement

Fethullah Gulen, most widely known as a Turkish scholar and preacher, who has inspired a civic movement in Turkey and ultimately throughout the world, has become a subject of significant attention over the past decade. As Gulen’s ideas increasingly thrive both in Turkey and worldwide, it has become crucial for scholars, students, and policy-makers to be able to conduct research effectively on the nature of the Gulen movement, its activities, and the impact it has on a broader society. English language literature devoted to the topic is insufficient and often difficult to locate and access. This article points to some of the available sources such as books, periodicals, Internet resources, electronic discussion sites, scholarly and professional organizations to help identify relevant quality research material in English language. Read rest of the story

Sidq (Truthfulness)

According to Fethullah Gulen, truthfulness is the firmest road leading to God. It is the spirit and essence of action and the true standard of straightforwardness in thought; it distinguishes believers from hypocrites, and the people of Paradise from the people of Fire. Gulen also describes truthfulness as struggling to preserve one’s integrity and to avoid hypocrisy and lying, even in strained circumstances when a lie will cause release. The truthful, on the other hand, is the traveler on the path to God as follows: he or she does not lie or tell a falsehood, lives according to truthfulness, and strives to be a trustworthy representative of loyalty to God. In other words, he or she never deviates from truthfulness in all thoughts, words and actions. Read rest of the story