Fethullah Gulen Tolerance, Dialogue and Peace
When you keep reading lies and biased op-eds on your daily paper every day, and watch the same reality shows every night, and ignore anything else that might make you uncomfortable, it is inevitable that sooner or later you will build your own world on a mirage where everything turns around on your own truths. Your ego will be the only pole you can hang on, your worldview is the only reality you can live in, and the whirlpool of deceived fools around you will be your only friends. Especially if you have a higher position in the society then it is much easier to fall into such a vortex as there will already be enough number of sycophants that will give you this deceived perception.
I am not talking about cults or marginal extremist groups but actually thousands of ordinary people, may be even majority of the population in a country. It is hard to believe that we are living in the information age and it does literally take less than a second to google around anything and find thousands of various resources to check your facts. Yet, when you look around, you see the thousands of people living in their own reality show. Like in the classic satiric social fiction movie Truman show. Interestingly enough they seem to be not only enjoying living in this fake reality, but also seeing the rest of the people as savages to be saved through their own ideology. History is full of examples of these delusional types, only if we can read and remember. Unfortunately those days are not over as we don’t seem to take our lesson yet.
Turkey seems to be going through such an era nowadays where people are lost within the political chaos and disorder. It is very difficult to make sense of anything happening within the last couple of months, as the administration is saying exactly the opposite what they have been saying and promoting for years. They were aiming for a democracy with well-established legal procedures and run the government democratically and respect the universal human rights, yet they ended up not only ignoring those but violating most of the universal and constitutional rights. The pro-government media is only applauding the administration, and blaming the Hizmet movement for anything that goes wrong in the country.
If the stock market goes down it must be businessmen supporting the ideas of Fethullah Gulen. If there is a graft investigation then it must be the prosecutors that are sympathizers of Gulen. If there is any criticism in the West about the Turkey and the current administration, then it must be the thousands of people inspired by Gulen that volunteer abroad to open schools or interfaith and intercultural centers to build bridges between people from different walks of life. Because the current party and its officers running the government today are all perfect (?) and anything that could go wrong is for sure due to the shadow government that is run (?) by the Hizmet movement. Don’t laugh, I am not making these up, when you read about the recent allegations about Gulen and Hizmet movement you will start doubting yourself as well. Similar allegations were made by different groups more than a decade ago as part of several coup d’états that Turkey went through. Moreover Fethullah Gulen had been sued and tried and eventually had been acquitted of all accusations. What is different now is the same blame game is played by the very friends of the movement, who have been promoting the Hizmet movement and its activities for years. Gulen movement made it clear many times that its volunteers could support any party or any person running for office only based on certain principles which are all along the lines of liberal democracy and constitutional government. Here, in this short note, I don’t want to get into the political debates that what Hizmet versus the Islamic party of Erdogan is promoting.
What I am interested is to question how the lies and libels and slanders are travelling through the media so freely without any refutations and how the people are taking these as facts without any verification. When you look at the columnists or the authors of op-eds you see that some are people with advanced degrees or years of public service. These should be the wise people that could provide some solid analysis or at least evaluate the assertions that the politicians are babbling. But no, as the saying goes, some levels of ignorance could be achieved only with education. The very smart people that should dig in and look for the truth, don’t move a bit out of their comfort zone, and just scribble something around their own worldview. They not only mislead the public but enable the corrupt politicians in their tyranny and fraud. What is sad is, not only the modern legal procedures are blocked but the traditional valuable advice is also ignored. Turkey is 99% Muslim, and the pro-government media is moreover Islamist as they call it. You think these journalists or columnists would follow the very basic principles of Islam, like the Holy Quran recommends in (49:6) “O you who believe! If some transgressor brings you news (that requires taking action), verify it carefully (before you believe and act upon it), lest you harm a people in ignorance and then become regretful for what you have done. ” Despite this verse, some papers do not hesitate the print all kinds of conspiracies and smear campaigns. Some papers are worse than a political party bulleting that is full of lies and libel.
Foreseeing this more than a hundred years ago Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, in his book Munazarat (The Discussions), answers the question, “What do we need the most?” by saying sidq (truthfulness), and repeats it three times. And he promotes truthfulness both as an individual virtue, and also as the elixir of social advancement. Then he supports his statement, saying “Unbelief is a lie, while belief is truth. Is this not proof enough that our survival is possible through belief, truthfulness, and solidarity?”
In his famous Damascus Sermon delivered in 1911, Bediuzzaman identifies the six sick characteristics that holds a nation from developing further as follows.
“In the conditions of the present time in these lands, I have learnt a lesson in the school of mankind’s social life and I have realized that what has allowed foreigners, Europeans, to fly towards the future on progress while it arrested us and kept us, in respect of material development, in the Middle Ages are six dire sicknesses. The sicknesses are these:
FIRSTLY: The coming to life and rise of despair and hopelessness in social life.
SECONDLY: The death of truthfulness in social and political life.
THIRDLY: Love of enmity.
FOURTHLY: Not knowing the luminous bonds that bind the believers to one another.
FIFTHLY: Despotism, which spreads like various contagious diseases.
SIXTHLY: Restricting endeavor to what is personally beneficial.”
You don’t need to be a social or political scientist to see that some of these sicknesses have become a plague in Turkey. I will leave the actual social or political analysis to the reader, but will conclude with pointing out another sermon, where Gulen discusses the same issues and emphasizes the importance of truthfulness once again. Reviewing only a short biography of Gulen you can see that he is a man of his word and lives what he preaches. This conclusion itself is enough to be blamed by the pro-government media as being in the whirlpool of deceived fools as well but then you should see it yourself: “The Elixir of Truthfulness and the Safe Route of Honesty”.
