Fethullah Gulen (27 April 1941-20 October 2024) was a Hanafi Muslim preacher who was the founder of the Gulen movement. Gulen was known for his initiatives to promote interfaith relations, meeting with Christian and Jewish leaders to build bridges with the fellow Abrahamic faiths, as well as his rivalry with his former ally President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.
Biography[]
Fethullah Gulen was born on 27 April 1941 in Erzurum, Turkey, the son of a father who was a Muslim imam and a mother who taught the Qur'an to students despite Mustafa Kemal's forbidding of religious instruction. He gave his first sermon when he was 14, and he was a preacher until 1981. In 1999, he fled to the United States after his remarks hinted that he wanted to establish an Islamic state, a notion which could lead to imprisonment; he claimed that he was going to America for medical treatment instead. In 2001, he was given permanent residence in America, and he formed the Gulen movement, followers of his beliefs, which were called "Islamic Calvinism". Gulen initially supported Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party, but after they were accused of corruption, Gulen became an enemy of them, and in 2014 a warrant for his arrest was released due to his leadership of a "terrorist group". However, he was known in the West for believing in a tolerant Islam that promoted altruism, hard work, and education, and he lived in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania in exile. On 15–16 July 2016, a section of the Turkish Army attempted to overthrow the Turkish government and restore democracy, and Erdogan blamed Gulen for the coup attempt. After the coup was defeated, US Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the US government was considering extraditing Gulen to Turkey, where he would likely be jailed for life or executed (Erdogan promised the highest punishments to the coup plotters). He died in America in 2024.