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.
Joshua D. Hendrick is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Global Studies at Loyola UniversityMaryland in Baltimore. He received his PhD and MA degrees in sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz and his MA degree in cultural anthropology from Northern Arizona University.
Table of Contents
Contents Acknowledgments ix Note on Turkish Transliteration xiii List of Abbreviations xv Introduction: The World’s Most Influential 1 Public Intellectual 1 Approaching Muslim Politics in Turkey 11 2 The Political Economy of Muslim Politics in Turkey 35 3 An Ambiguous Leader 56 4 Community 89 5 Education 123 6 Degirmenin suyu nereden geliyor? (Where does the 144 water for the mill come from?) 7 Manufacturing Consent 174 8 Strategic Ambiguity and Its Discontents (i.e., the 206 Gülen Movement in the United States) Conclusion: The Marketization of Muslim 233 Politics in Turkey Notes 243 Bibliography 257 Index 271 About the Author 276
