| Press Release | |
 LOS ANGELES, Dec. 1 - Pacifica
Institute – The Gulen Movement, inspired by the Turkish Islamic thinker
Fethullah Gulen, will be the subject of a conference exploring ways to find
peace and tolerance between religions and societies. The event is called The
International Conference on East and West Encounters: The Gulen Movement and it
will be held at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, Dec.
4-6, 2009. It is part of a series of such discussions organized by the Pacifica
Institute that look at clash of civilizations and other global
challenges. Voted The World’s Top Living
Public Intellectual in 2008 by Foreign Policy Magazine, Gulen is the
inspiration of this social movement, also known as Hizmet (meaning “service” in
Turkish) which aims at promoting interfaith and intercultural dialogue around
the world. Gulen was born in Erzurum, Turkey
in 1941 and after receiving an education in classical Islamic studies became a
licensed preacher in 1958. He began to teach in the province of Edirne and then
moved to Izmir, acquiring a following as he gave sermons in mosques, coffee
houses and theaters. In his sermons Gulen addressed
subjects that ranged from peace and social justice to philosophical naturalism.
His dialogue stood out for its sensitivity, knowledge, logic, proper
referencing and eloquence and attracted the attention of academics as well as
ordinary people. Gulen himself describes his appeal as “a gathering
around high human values by means of education and dialogue.” Gulen’s appeal eventually spread
to people from different backgrounds, including non-Muslims who share his
humanistic message. He used his growing influence to urge younger generations
to adopt intellectual knowledge with a spirituality based in the faith
tradition, and to serve fellow humans. Today this social phenomenon has
become a civic movement with pietistic roots. Students, teachers, academics,
business owners and other volunteers participate in different ways helping to
set up tutoring centers, schools, colleges, hospitals, a major relief
organization, publishing houses and media institutions in Turkey and in more
than one hundred countries. The conference will kick off on
Friday, Dec. 4th with a dinner featuring Dr. Reza Aslan as
keynote speaker. Aslan is an Iranian-born internationally-acclaimed writer and
scholar of religion who is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the
University of California, Riverside. He is the author of “No God but God: The
Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam” and he most recently edited the
anthology, “Words Without Borders: Writings from the Middle East,” which will
be published by Norton in 2010.
A second reception will be held at
Pepperdine University in Malibu, California on Saturday, Dec. 5th featuring
Leroy Baca, LA County Sheriff and Jannah Scott, Deputy Director at the
Department of Homeland Security, Center for Faith Based and Community
Initiatives. Both receptions are free and by invitation only. The conference is organized by
Pacifica Institute, a non-profit organization based in Los Angeles and it is
sponsored by the Office of Religious Life at the University of Southern
California, the Department of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount
University, the International Education Center at Santa Monica College, the
Department of Religious Studies at Humboldt State University and the Department
of Religious Studies at Whittier College. Previous conferences on the Gulen
Movement were held at Georgetown University
(2008), The House of Lords and The London School of Economics (2007),
the University of Oklahoma (2006) and Rice University (2005).
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