Gülen: The Ambiguous Politics of Market Islam in Turkey and the World

3. An Ambiguous Leader

56 > 57 In a piously identified conservative advocacy community like the GM, the desire to maintain “unified diversity” is essential because the alternative gives the impression of a cultlike group of followers who blindly obey the commands of an all-powerful leader. Indeed, the relative freedom of GM affiliates to participate at different levels of dedication , and to express their individuality as journalists, writers, teachers , engineers, doctors, and businesspeople, creates an organizational environment of “unified diversity” that facilitates a graduated system of affiliation. For instance, when GM institutions in Turkey and in the United States invoke the same symbolic categories (e.g., “dialogue,” “tolerance,” “universal values”), they do so in a way that leaves room for interpretation. Dialogue with whom, and tolerance of what? The answers are contextual; “ambiguity is used strategically to foster agreement on abstractions without limiting specific interpretations” (Eisenberg 1984, 233). Second, concerning organizational change, the employment of ambiguously defined categories—what Eisenberg refers to as the “careful use of metaphor”—allows for a very loose understanding of “community” (cemaat) and “service” (hizmet) to be applied by different actors, in different ways, and for different reasons. Such autonomy facilitates a leaner, more flexible logic of organization. In the case of the GM, the community’s identity is rooted on the fact that in the 1970s, Gülen encouraged his followers to build schools instead of mosques, and for affiliated businessmen to look on their faithful obligations as Muslims to give alms, as opportunities to provide an economic foundation for the community’s expansion. GM institutions, therefore, emerged autonomously, connected via a loose network of social, financial , and ideational ties. This ambiguous organizational model allowed for school administrators, businesspeople, editors, and outreach coordinators to choose when they wanted to freely associate their institution’s identity as being “part” of the GM, when they wanted to simply refer to their institutions as “Gülen-inspired,” or when they wanted to deny any affiliation whatsoever. Depending on where a particular school was, and depending on who was inquiring about that school’s connection, different loyalists provided different answers to the same questions. When do I know if I am visiting a “Gülen-school,” a “Gülen-inspired school,” or simply a publicly funded charter school that just so happens 58 > 59 this claim, in 2006 Gülen was acquitted of all charges against him. In 2008, Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals (Court of Cassation) rejected an appeal to overturn his acquittal. Yet, despite his legal vindication, Gülen remained in the United States, where for the better part of the last decade he lived in a multihouse compound in the foothills of the Pocono Mountains. After two years in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania, the Golden Generation Students Association (now the Golden Generation Worship and Retreat Center) filed an I-360 application with the Vermont Service Center of the U.S. Center for Immigration Services (USCIS) for a change of residency status on Gülen’s behalf. The original application requested a change from temporary visitor to “special immigrant religious worker” and was approved in August 2002. In signed testimony given to USCIS, Fethullah Gülen addressed his relationship to the transnational network of schools attributed to his leadership as follows: USCIS: Has anybody on your behalf established schools in Turkey and elsewhere? Gülen: Not on my behalf, but with promotion or encouragement maybe they have, because they know I appreciate education, and where they have opened schools I don’t know. USCIS: Do you have any role in the teachings in those schools? Gülen: Absolutely not. I have nothing to do with it. USCIS: Are you responsible for what is taught in those schools? Gülen: No, not me. The government is responsible. It’s happening under the supervision of the government.1 In an interview with a major Turkish newspaper, Fethullah Gülen explained that “volunteers” run the schools, and that the Turkish state was free to take them over: The state can either back these activities carried out by voluntary organizations , and finance them, or they can totally take over them—by the army or civil servants . . . but they must do this. It would be wrong to ascribe different meanings to these schools and to show antipathy towards them just because some certain people are involved in them. (Gülen 2005a, in an interview with Mehmet Gündem) 60 > 61 Plaintiff has authored more...