This is a reprint from NewsBred.
The world has woken up to Fethullah Gulen after Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan blamed him for failed coup of Friday . My book , "HOW UNITED STATES SHOT HUMANITY: Muslims Ruined; Europe Next" has given a detailed background of this feud. Excerpts:
Fethullah Gulen is a 74 years old bachelor of rather sad countenance, despite his white moustaches and strong, wide nose. For 27 years now, he has lived in a self-imposed exile in a tiny Pennsylvania town called Saylorsburg in the US. Here is his "The Camp" consisting of series of houses, a community center, a pond and acres of space. It's the headquarters of a worldwide religious, social and political movement, "The Cemaat" or "The Community".
Gulen leads six million followers who, in the spirit of his name, operate schools, universities, corporations, nonprofit and media organizations around the globe. In a 2008 online poll, devised by the British magazine Prospect and the American magazine Foreign Policy, Gulen was voted as the most significant intellectual of the world. Graham Fuller, a former CIA agent and author of several books on political Islam, termed Gulen as leading "one of the most important movements in the Muslim world today."
Somehow everything in Turkey is linked to Gulen. Whatever you do, buying bakery or filing up gas, it could all be going back to Gulen's network.
Fethullah Gulen was born in 1941 in a village outside the eastern city of Erzurum. He began praying when he was only four years old, and learned Arabic from his father. At school, he joined Kurdish intellectual Said Nursi's movement, which was similar to Sufi brotherhood. He became a state imam in 1958 and after his military service, moved to Izmir. In 1969, he began preaching his own version of Nursi's ideas. Soon his following grew.
In due course, Gulen built schools. He formed "lighthouses" where rural kids who had come to cities to study, could stay. He founded publishing companies. By the 1980s, the statist economy in Turkey had opened up. Restrictions on religious groups had eased. In 1983, Gulen's followers founded a conglomerate Kaynak Holding which today has several companies in retail, IT, construction and food industries. Its' main division, Kaynak Publishing, maintains 28 publishing labels. It controls several TV stations. In 1996, loyal men encouraged by Gulen, established Bank Asya, now Turkey's largest Islamic bank. A charity called "Is Anybody There" gives 5 to 10 per cent of its income to projects.
Schools though remain central to Gulen's orbit. He has them in Central Asia; he runs them in far-flung places like Indonesia, Sudan and Pakistan. Even non-Muslim countries like Mexico and Japan have them. Gulenists' school and universities are spread over 100 countries. They even had schools in Afghanistan in the 1990s.Gulen found a way to ease Islam back into Turkey's mainstream. He played on Turkey's past. "Turkey was once very successful and then it became so badly considered in the world," he said. "You cannot expect to sit in one place and hope things will change. You have to go out, represent your culture and values in a good way."
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