Fethullah Gulen and the Gulen Movement

.. that’s nice that my wife went before me. I am very proud of her, and her work. I am Lawrence Forman. I am the director of the Institute for Jewish Studies and Interfaith Understanding at Old Dominion University Norfolk, Virginia, and probably one of the few rabbis who is proud to say “I am the Faculty Advisor of the Turkish Muslim Better Understanding Club at Old Dominion University”. I came here with wonderful expectations and visions through my students; he is a Physics student, so he is not really my academic student, but he is a good friend; Mustafa Kenan and his friend Salim; and Laura and I had been at Salim’s home for Turkish dinner and had the pleasure of being with Ali abee at the RumiForum at a wonderful dinner before the trip. I personally found that the visit to the homes of the individual supporters of the school; those visits were very very enlightening. The close cooperation between the economic business community and the academic scholarly community and the average citizen, the outreach to the people through scholarships, through awards is very inspiring: something else we certainly will take back home. The schools, thanks to your wonderful leadership, certainly have set an example for all of us in our work. The sites that we have seen and the Gulen movement is an inner inspiration and emotionally very moving for me, but most of all it’s been the people. The people on the bus, the people in the market, the people at the sites, the people looking at the mountain, and seeing the vision of the mountain, of the minipaz of the mountain up to the truth that there is one God above all of us, and that we are all God’s people whatever the label we might choose to identify herself with. Truly the world is a narrow bridge, as a philosopher once said, and perhaps that narrow bridge is exemplified and symbolized by Turkey and the wonderful Gulen movement. I have had one problem here: I promised to learn how to say “Tesekkur ederim!” in the right way; I have been trying to say it ever since we came here and then I forget the first part of it, and then I miss the last part of it, so I say “Tesekkur ederim! Tesekkur ederim!”, trying to get the accent here, to all of you for being here and for the inspiration you all have shared with me.”