The Muslim World and Politics in Transition Creative Contributions of the Gulen Movement

As a leading movement in contemporary Turkey with a universal educational and inter-faith agenda, the Gülen movement aims to promote creative and positive relations between the West and the Muslim world and to articulate a critically constructive position on such issues as democracy, multi-culturalism, globalisation, and interfaith dialogue in the context of secular modernity. Many countries in the predominantly Muslim world are in a time of transition and of opening to democratic development of which the so-called "Arab Spring" has seen only the most recent and dramatic developments. Particularly against that background, there has been a developing interest in "the Turkish model" of transition from authoritarianism to democracy. The Muslim World and Politics in Transitionincludes chapters written by international scholars with expertise in relation to the contexts that it addresses. It discusses how the Gülen movement has positioned itself and has sought to contribute within societies including the movement's home country of Turkey in which Muslims are in the majority and Islam forms a major part of the cultural, religious and historical inheritance. The movement and initiatives inspired by the Turkish Muslim scholar Fethullah Gülen began in Turkey, but can now be found throughout the world, including in both Europe and in the 'Muslim world'. Bloomsbury has a companion volume edited by Paul Weller and Ihsan Yilmaz on European Muslims, Civility and Public Life: Perspectives on and From the Gulen Movement.

Paul Weller is Professor of Inter-Religious Relations at the University of Derby and Visiting Fellow in the Oxford Centre for Christianity and Culture at Regent's Park College, University of Oxford, UK.Ihsan Yilmaz is Associate Professor of Political Science at Fatih University, Istanbul, Turkey.Greg Barton is the Herb Feith Research Professor for the Study of Indonesia, Faculty of Arts, Monash University, Australia.