Gülen: The Ambiguous Politics of Market Islam in Turkey and the World

by Joshua D. Hendrick

The "Hizmet" ("Service")
Movement of Fethullah Gülen is Turkey’s most influential Islamic identity
community. Widely praised throughout the early 2000s as a mild and moderate
variation on Islamic political identity, the Gülen Movement has long been a
topic of both adulation and conspiracy in Turkey. In Gülen, Joshua D. Hendrick suggests that the Gülen Movement should
be given credit for playing a significant role in Turkey's rise to global
prominence.


Hendrick draws on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork
in Turkey and the U.S. for his study. He argues that the movement’s growth and
impact both inside and outside Turkey position both its leader and its
followers as indicative of a "post political" turn in twenty-first
century Islamic political identity in general, and as illustrative of Turkey’s
political, economic, and cultural transformation in particular.

292 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2013

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Gulen movement has been in the news since the failed coup in Turkey that is increasingly likely to have been a GM plot. This book is slightly out of date because it does not cover the AKP-GM split, but it does explain why some people say that the GM interferes in politics to further Islamist aims, and at the same time some people say it is a model for modern Islam to tolerate difference. The GM uses strategic ambiguity in its messaging as a source of power. By intentionally obscuring the organization's goals, institutions, power structures, the movement preserves plausible deniability and keep members in the fold and prevent the group from splitting apart over doctrinal issues.

[Kim Shively · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book for academic purposes and found it quite useful, especially in its description of the nuts and bolts of the Gulen movement in Turkey and abroad. I appreciate the fact that Hendrick didn't try to evaluate the political position of the Gulen movement, other than to analyze the movement's strategic political ambiguity. This he does quite well and his critical evaluation harmonizes well with my own observations of how actors in the movement attempt to position themselves according to local politics and situations.