Ozcan Keles, academic, barrister and activist, ably analyses Hizmet's evolution from a socially conservative religious congregation to a culturally and religiously emancipatory movement that provides a pragmatic framework for dialectical debate between traditional practices and lived experience of Islam. This book makes a valuable contribution to the hard, unfinished labour of realizing human rights and women's irreplaceable roles.
Ozcan Keles is a non-practicing barrister with a PhD in Human Rights from the University of Sussex. As a former participant, Ozcan is considered to be a leading expert on the Hizmet (Gülen) movement. He has lectured and published on human rights, freedom of religion, countering violent extremism claiming an Islamic justification, the Hizmet movement, and dialogue. In his effort to promote "dialogue" as a distinct academic field, he founded the peer-reviewed biannual Journal of Dialogue Studies in 2012 and founded and delivered a Master's degree of the same title from 2011 to 2015 in partnership with Keele University.