Gulen's Paradox: Combining Commitment and Tolerance

Abstract

The conscience is illuminated by the religious sciences, and the mind is illuminated by the sciences of civilization, and wisdom occurs through the combination of these two."-Said Nursî 1 M ax Weber argues in his famous analysis of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism 2 that the foundations of the modern socioeconomic order were facilitated by the synthesis of two contradictory impulses -economic acquisition and religious piety. The consequences of that union were unanticipated in nature and global in scope, resulting in a transformation of society and culture, first of Western Europe and then most of the planet. As suggested elsewhere, 3 Weber's insights imply a theory of cultural innovation: when opposing tendencies or cultural themes are paradoxically fused, the process unleashes creative energy that facilitates the construction of new paradigms, movements, and institutions. This paper is a case study of that process. The paradoxical fusion by Turkish sage Fethullah Gülen of intense faith commitment with tolerance results in a paradigm of Islamic dialogue. As a movement founded to foster spiritual commitment to a faith tradition, it now reaches out to non-Muslim believers and even non-believers.As Emile Durkheim demonstrates in his foundational work on the nature of religion, 4 religious belief is usually bound up with social organization. A confession of faith in a belief system is a simultaneous proclamation of solidarity with a social group. A particular religious belief system emerges from and acts back upon a given social organization such as a tribe, ethnic group, or a people. 5 The fact that particular religious beliefs and practices are socially constructed and intimately bound up with the social institutions where they originate is what facilitates the use of religious beliefs, rituals, and institutions

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