Turkish Islam and the Secular State

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and Yasin Aktay and published in the book with a very informative introduction for unin-

formed readers. There are roughly three different but related issues raised by different

authors. First, there are articles related to the educational dimension of the communitys

activities. Other articles are more concentrated on the analysis of the personality of

Fethullah Gulen. Finally, there are articles that are focused on the political attitudes of

the community.

In his historical analysis of the movement, Yavuz provides an informative historical

sketch of the formation and evolution of the Nur movement. Yavuz discusses the roots

of the movement dating back to Said Nursi. According to him, Nursis teachings have

three interrelated goals: to raise Muslim consciousness; to refute the dominant intellec-

tual discourses of materialism and positivism and to recover collective memory by revis-

ing the shared grammar of society, Islam (p. 5). The reading circles, which are formed by

the people who want to understand and internalize the books of Nursi, helped the for-

mation of the new mechanism of socialibility and of intellectual exchange for some of

the alienated segments of the society and served as a stepping stone for the construction

of a new counter public. As most of the other Islamic leaders of the period, Nursiencountered several problems during his lifetime with state authorities and was even

imprisoned for some time. As we learn from Yavuzs analysis, Nursis life presents a

microcosm for the relations between Islam and secularism in Turkey. His legacy,

despite continuous state persecution, shows the ability of his movement to persist in

every regime.

After the death of Nursi and the split among the Nur community, Fethullah Gulen

started to take the upper hand and transformed the community. According to Yavuz,

Gulen was different from Nursi. His community used the flexible ideas of Nursi to

promote a nationalist, global and free market orientation. As a movement, Gulens

faith inspired an educational movement, which was different from Nursis exclusivelyfaith movement. Yavuz described Gulen as an inspirational leader of a transnational

education movement, whereas he depicted Nursi as the formative giant of intellectual

discourse (p. 19).

In fact, the most important and visible aspect of the Fethullah Gulen community has

been its educational activities, particularly its activities of establishing Turkish schools

around the world.

After Nursi, Fethullah Gulen transformed the Nur community by means oflighthouses

and stressed the ethics of education, and worked for transforming Muslims and their

environment. The articles of Bekim Agai, Thomas Michel, and Elizabeth Ozdalga deal

particularly with the transnational education movement of Fethullah Gulen, which

today has spread out to different parts of the world. Agai provides a systemic analysis

of the movement and emphasizes the production of educational Islamism, which is

opposed to political Islamism. Michels article analyses Fethullah Gulen as a main

teacher in the community and discusses him as a role-model for the other members

of the community. Finally, Ozdalga examines the teachers of the Fethullah Gulen

movement by means of in-depth interviews with three female teachers in different

schools that belong to the Gulen community.

In fact, this first part reveals how the Gulen communitys highly organized network of

members from different occupations produced a kind of division of labour and provides

continuous adherence and support to the schools and foundations of the community.

The community manages the working of these endeavours by means of an executiveprocedure, which resembles transnational corporations. The most apparent result

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From the relevant articles, we can figure out the two fundamental pillars of these schools;

the presence of a middle and upper-middle class which supports the schools financially

with their donations, and the existence of human capital in the community which main-

tains the presence of these schools by working in the schools for low wages with a mis-

sionary ideal.

The articles in the second part of the book help the readers to understand the leader of

the movement as a person. Among these articles, Kuru emphasizes Gulens search for an

inclusive middle way between fundamental features of modernity and Muslim tradition,

whereas Saritoprak looks into Gulens attitude towards Sufism and his spirituality. Yasin

Aktay contributes to the book with an article about the influence of the idea of diaspora

and stability on Gulens worldview. According to Aktay, the Islamic literary men

employed the diasporic conditions as a metaphor to represent Turkish Islamic with the

widespread usage of phrases such as stranger in ones own home and pariah in ones

own country. Aktay shows the way Gulen inherited and shared such a metaphor and

how it determined the formation of his body of knowledge (p. 154) This alienation

from the new society and disengagement from the reform movement did not,however, hamper his loyalty to the state. This is apparent in another important aspect

of Gulens personality which is very much related to the concern for security, survival

and stability and the instrumentality of the state for these concerns. Both Yavuz and

Aktay, emphasized the influence of Fethullah Gulens hometown, Erzurum, and dadas

culture of this city on his personality and worldview. This culture associates statism

with conservatism and is usually characterized by the culture of frontier regions which

stresses security over other concerns. According to Yavuz and Aktay, Gulens employ-

ment in Edirne, another frontier region, also played a crucial role in developing his

deep convictions and shaped Gulens political stand.

This security oriented outlook of Gulen is decisive in order to understand the articlesdealing with the political and legal attitudes of the community towards the international

environment, written by Hasan Kosebalaban, Ihsan Yilmaz and Berna Turam. Turam

analyses the nationalistic ideology of the teachers and members of the community in

central Asia. According to Turam, Gulens educational project indicates prioritization

and politicization of the national affiliation and in this sense Gulen represents a prag-

matic Islam that is a product of the national culture, the culture of the nation. In fact,

Turam points to an emerging Turkish Islam and ethnic politics which are actualizing a

network at the international level on the basis of their primary loyalties to the nation

(p. 190). Very much related to this nationalistic position of the movement, Kosebalaban

examines the national security strategy of Fethullah Gulen and its attitude towards the

others, including Iran, Europe and the Arab world. According to Kosebalaban, Gulens

movement has a distinct security identity formed around a set of security perceptions

and multiple others, which he summarizes as: (a) strong degree of common identification

with the Turkic World; (b) lack of common identification with the West but a desire to

integrate with Western institutions; (c) strong lack of common identification with Iran

(p. 172). Hakan Yavuzs observation about the evolution in the world view of the com-

munity is important in this sense. It would be interesting to see how Turams and Kose-

balabans findings about the political stand of Gulens followers evolved after 27

February. In addition, it is significant to look at the influences of September 11on the

community at large and their stand in the Islamic world. It is obvious that the Gulen

community, and the other Turkish communities around the world, have a special empha-sis to distinguish themselves from the Arab and South Asian Muslims. The role of Iran in

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Since September 11, the Turkish community has started to present the distinctiveness of

their religious view in the Islamic world and to represent their uniqueness, which they

claim to have similarities only with Rumis Sufism. In fact, it is clear that the community

is trying to integrate itself with the western world by means of the interfaith dialogue

movements. However, it is still unclear what will be the outcome of this attempt. In

this sense, there are many questions that remain about the future of the political position

of the Gulen movement. It is distancing itself from both the nationalist and statist dis-

course after 27 February and from the other communities and groups in the Muslim

world after September 11. So what will be the future stand of the community?

Overall, Turkish Islam and the Secular State: The Gulen Movement is a tremendously

important and essential reading for those who are interested in social movements in

the Islamic world. It also fills an important gap in the literature. The chapters in this

work are very well edited and organized. In particular, its outstanding contributors

present a very informative selection about the different aspects of one of the most under-

studied religious communities, and provide very useful insights to understand the

alternative religious movements in the Islamic world. From the horizon that this bookopened for the readers, one can have some further questions for the future studies

about the movement. For instance, what is the relation between Fethullah Gulen and

his community and can we assume the community as a true representative of Gulens

ideas? In addition, how homogenous is the community within itself and what are the

cleavages among the members of the community or what is the relation among the

bystanders, adherents and constituents of the community?

KILIC BUGRA KANAT

HindutvaTreason and Terror

I.K. SHUKLA, 2005

New Delhi: Pharos Media

181 pp., Rs. 130 (E10, US$15), ISBN: 81-7221-026-4

Hindutva, the Indian version of fascism, has been much written about. This collection of

essays entitled HindutvaTreason and Terror by I.K. Shukla focuses particularly on the

politics of Hindutva, linking this to its underlying agenda of seeking to transform India

into what the author calls a fascist theocracy.

Shukla argues that the notion of a singular, homogenous majority Hindu commu-

nity, which Hindutva organizations claim to represent, is nothing but fiction. The word

Hindu is itself absent in all the classical Hindu texts, which suggests that the ancient

Hindus did not think of themselves as members of a single community. What is today

regarded as the Hindu community is actually a motley collection of castes and sects,

often mutually opposed to each other, hierarchically divided as they are on the basis of

the principle of purity and pollution. Hence, they cannot be collectively referred to

as a single community.

Shukla opines that the construction of the notion of a single Hindu community was a

project jointly undertaken by the Orientalists, British colonial officers and the upper

caste elites. For the upper castes, a minority among the Hindus, the project helped

bolster their own claims to authority, for it enabled them to assert their claims as therepresentatives of this imagined community. (The same could be said of the process

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transcended sectarian, ethnic, linguistic and caste divisions.) Hinduism, as it came to be

constructed as an organized religion, thus was inseparable from the interests of the

upper caste minority. The same holds true in the case of Hindutva, which, Shukla

tells us, essentially represents the interests of the dominant castes/classes.

Preserving upper caste/class interests, rather than the interests of India as a whole, is

the major agenda of the Hindutva project, Shukla argues. This is reflected in the fact that

the Hindutva organizations played no role in Indias freedom struggle, and, instead, actu-

ally collaborated with the British to oppose the joint Hindu Muslim movement for

Indias independence. Indeed, Shukla notes, the Hindu Mahasabha, the progenitor of

todays myriad Hindutva groups, came up with the theory of Hindus and Muslims

being two separate and hostile nations even before the Muslim League did, and many

years before Pakistan came into being on the basis of Muslim nationalism.

Hindutvas indifference, if not hostility, to the interests of India as a whole, Shukla

argues, is also amply evident from the fact that Hindutva organizations have no

agenda for the poor (other than perpetuating their subordination), from their willingness

to ransom Indias economy to foreign multinational corporations and from their closenexus with American neoconservative groups and with Israel.

Violence is intrinsic to the Hindutva project. Indeed, Shukla shows, violence, as

directed against low castes and dissenters, is deeply ingrained in the Brahminical

Hindu texts themselves. In this sense, then, the large-scale violence perpetrated by

Hindutva groups is not a new development, a deviation from a presumed non-violent

Brahminical Hinduism.

The Hindutva project is based on fortifying the myth of a Hindu monolith transcend-

ing caste and class divisions, for which purpose-organized massacres, particularly of

Muslims, serve as a major mobilizational device. Dalits and Tribals, victims of upper

caste/class Hindu oppression, are routinely instigated by Hindutva groups to launchanti-Muslim pogroms, as most recently evidenced in Gujarat. In Hindutva propaganda,

Muslims are inevitably portrayed as enemies of the Hindus (including the lower

castes) and as the principal cause of all their ills. Pitting the lower castes against the

Muslims is, Shukla rightly points out, a well-thought-out strategy to prevent the

former from challenging upper caste hegemony.

While the books basic theses are valid, what it lacks is a well-thought-out strategy to

counter the Hindutva challenge. Shukla does note the importance of a broad-based unity

between various marginalized communities in Indiathe Bahujan Samajalthough he

notes that this is easier said than done. But precisely how this unity can come about is

something that Shukla fails to deal with. That, however, should not detract from the

merits of this thought-provoking book.

YOGINDER SIKAND

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Turkish Islam and the Secular State

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