August 30, 2012

From Gandhi to Gülen: The Habitus of Non-Agressive Action

New Social Movement theory regards all cultural movements as “expressive” and “confrontational” social movements. Instead, as proved in the Gandhian Chipko movement and the Gülen movement cases, cultural movements are more prone to combine strategic and expressive elements simultaneously when they are compared to political movements.

Fethullah Gulen and Said Nursi

Dr. Greg Barton *

Gülen is generally seen to draw directly on the intellectual heritage of the influential and greatly loved Sufi scholar and writer Bediuzzaman Said Nursi. And indeed, an examination of Gülen’s writing reveals it to be substantially built upon the foundation laid by Nursi, who in turn drew upon the great Anatolian Sufi Mevlana Jalal ad-Din Rumi (d. 1276) and the Indian writers Ahmad Faruqi Sirhindi (1564-1624) and Shah Wali Allah al-Dihlawi (1703-1762) amongst others.