Muhammet Cetin is the author of a book titled The Gulen Movement: Civic Service without Borders. In his column at the daily Today’s Zaman, Cetin reflects on what civic engagement means and how it can be utilized to better our communities or to reach a sustainable state of peace.
The recent extraordinary interest in activities by and related to the Gulen movement leads many to think about civic engagement and its efficacy and success.
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Hizmet is a complex collective actor, composed of many decentralized civil society organizations and institutions pursuing similar goals but different strategies. It is argued that decisions on goals, that is, on what to do, are taken in a process of consultation, locally or in an individual project-network. The consultative process means that no one owns the services and authority in the name of hizmet as a collective actor. The efficiency of decision taking in its service networks is seen to be the constancy and richness of the interaction of many individuals.
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I feel that an understanding of the Gulen movement can help to reverse the kind of decline in civic engagement that we see in many contemporary societies. It can show activists and other civic society movements how to expand their repertoire of action for societal peace and inter-civilizational cooperation. Very diverse people can come together to achieve very worthy goals. Hizmet has discovered this, reminds people of it and acts on this simple truth. For this reason, I believe that, in spite of opposition from groups that benefit from conflict between people, the Gulen movement, or hizmet, will continue peacefully and successfully in the way it always has.
