Fethullah Gülen’s educational philosophy, its global practice in the secular world

Graham E. Fuller

Islam has a long tradition of philanthropic contributions (zakat, or tithe) by the wealthy to aid the poor and to build mosques. Gülen shifts that approach: he has said that Turkey has enough mosques; instead he urges that philanthropic “good works” are more usefully directed towards building schools or hospitals. Through this vision, Hizmet has slowly built a large network of private schools, initially in Turkey and now increasingly around the world, at this point numbering well over one thousand schools. They are not religious schools, nor do they resemble “parochial” (private Roman Catholic) schools in the US. In Turkey the Gülen schools teach the curriculum established by the Turkish Ministry of National Education. They contain no religious instruction apart from a standard course on Islam long mandated by the secular Turkish government in all public schools as part of Turkish culture. Hizmet schools in other countries follow the curricula set by their own governments.”