House of Service: The Gulen Movement and Islam's Third Way

ISBN-13: 9780199336418 / Angielski / Twarda / 2014 / 272 str.

David Tittensor

Opis

David Tittensor offers a groundbreaking new perspective on the Gulen movement, a Turkish Muslim educational activist network that emerged in the 1960s and has grown into a global empire with an estimated worth of $25 billion. Named after its leader Fethullah Gulen, the movement has established more than 1,000 secular educational institutions in over 140 countries, aiming to provide holistic education that incorporates both spirituality and the secular sciences.

Despite the movement's success, little is known about how its schools are run, or how Islam is operationalized. Drawing on thirteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Turkey, Tittensor explores the movement's ideo-theology and how it is practiced in the schools. His interviews with both teachers and graduates from Africa, Indonesia, Central Asia, and Turkey show that the movement is a missionary organization, but of a singular kind: its goal is not simply widespread religious conversion, but a quest to recoup those Muslims who have apparently lost their way and to show non-Muslims that Muslims can embrace modernity and integrate into the wider community. Tittensor also examines the movement's operational side and shows how the schools represent an example of Mohammad Yunus's social business model: a business with a social cause at its heart.

The House of Service is an insightful exploration of one of the world's largest transnational Muslim associations, and will be invaluable for those seeking to understand how Islam will be perceived and practiced in the future.

Recenzje

Tittensor s work is a key contribution to the growing critical scholarship on this global Muslim movement and a reasonable defense of the legitimacy of its approach to da'wa.

O autorze

David Tittensor has a PhD in Politics from Monash University, Australia, and is presently Research Fellow at the Centre for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University. His research interests include transnational Muslim movements, Turkish Politics and Society, Faith Based Organizations and Development.