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November 2, 2008
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Turkish Muslim Missionaries Plan to Take America: Fethullah Gülen‘s Missionaries in America
Kurdishaspect.com - Aland Mizell
After the Soviet Union collapsed, the super powers began to fight over Central Asia’s oil and gas wealth, as well as the geopolitics of the region. The U.S. did not want Iran to have control over the Central Asian republics. The U.S. knew that it could not easily have access to the region; therefore, it used the movement of a Turkish Islamic imam, Fethullah Gülen as a perfect proxy to gain control quickly and effectively because Turkey shared the same history, culture and religion with Central Asians. However, this odd but fortuitous relationship made it easy for Gülen later to have entry into America. The U.S. used Gulen’s movement by comparing what it perceived to be a bigger threat to a lesser threat. Rather than standing by for a radical Islamic group to infiltrate Central Asia in the vacuum left by the Soviets, the U.S. choose to support Gulen’s missionaries who were armed with Turkish Sufism. Similarly, the U.S. reasoned that allowing the CIA to support Osama Bin Laden to defeat the Soviet troops in Afghanistan in1979, would ensure the defeat of the Russians.
Central Asia is a key strategic prize in the Great Game as Russia, the U.S., and China battle to obtain energy supplies. Wanting to be an influential player, the U.S. government used Gülen as a proxy to influence affairs in Central Asia via Gulen’s religious mission activities. The U.S. did not want Iran to have too much power in the former Soviet republics, so it supported Gulen’s Sufi Ottomanism rather than the Shia religion. His clandestine activities were disguised under a platform of setting up schools. These strange bedfellows of U.S. foreign policy and the Turkish-brand of “moderate Islam” lead Gülen into a cozy relationship with the U.S. In 1999, Gülen escaped to the U.S. citing health issues as an excuse; however, in 2000, he was charged by the Turkish government with forming a terrorist organization to dismantle the secular state in order to replace it with a pro-Islamic government. Today Gulen’s Islamic party is in charge of the Turkish government, and they seek out those who want to act against Gülen, one by one putting them in jail and naming them “the Erkenekon gang.” For example, the Turkish government has charged the owner of the Cumuhuriyet newspaper, some high military officials, and some other party leaders with various crimes, but this strategy is just another way Gülen is taking revenge and wanting the military to be under the control of the civilians or the police because most of the police chiefs are his followers.
The United States’ law allows Gülen Muslim missionaries to operate easily in America. Gülen does not have to challenge the existing political order; he knows how to achieve his goals without violating U.S. law. Actually, it is much easier to gain followers and then position them in key institutions in the U.S. than it was in Turkey. Because the Constitution of the United States guarantees freedom of religion, Gülen uses that existing system for his Islamic aims. In Turkey Gülen initially had problems and lacked the freedom to gain power because the military did not allow his religious activities to be used as a tool to take over the government. Gülen has always taken advantage of situations and used them as opportunities to spread his global Islamic missionaries’ activities under the platforms of Interfaith Dialogues, opening schools around the world, holding conferences, and starting more house mosques, as in the U.S. Gülen believes the best way to defeat the enemy is to use the enemies’ weapon. What are the enemy America’s weapons? Democratic institutions. Gülen uses them to spread his message; for example, he brings thousands of graduate students from Turkey, at the expense of American taxpayers, to study at American universities. He also developed lobbies to cultivate politicians, in conjunction with his placing American-born Muslims in the CIA, FBI, NSA and other top security agencies and with Americans electing Muslim representatives. Gülen has a highly sophisticated net of information, first using it to infiltrate his people into Turkey’s top agencies, and now repeating the strategy in the U.S. Gülen wants to create a strong lobby in Washington for the promotion of Islam and its cause in this country as well as around the world because Gülen sees the importance of power in Washington.
Gülen heads this vast organization in the U.S. and around the world, holding absolute authority over all aspects of it, although the organization operates seemingly as independent cells. It is based on a hierarchy of activists on different levels: municipalities, businesses, families, secret services, educational institutions, and individuals. Another group of activists, the abi or elder brothers, deal with the recruits, mostly from among the poor youth, by providing them with housing and education in the isik evelrs or what Gülen called “light house.” There, the youths receive intensive Islamist training following the teachings of Said Nursi and the Nur movement. Today there are thousands of students coming from Turkey, more than any other country, under the platform of the graduate degree, and most of them secure teaching positions at the top ten universities and marry American citizens thereby becoming a citizen of this country, so that they can continue their missionary activities.
Another platform he uses is Interfaith Dialogues, founded to call for tolerance among religions. If Gülen is really a tolerant person, why can no one in his movement dare to object to his views or even to challenge him on a proposition? He or she would be excommunicated from his organization, and if not excommunicated, would be considered one of the most disgraced of his followers. Gülen is not what in the media he claims to be; he is very authoritarian and absolutely non-tolerant. Even a brief inquiry of one of his former friends would reveal this same truth. For example, because Nurettin Veren objected to Gulen’s view and did not listen to him, his life is now in danger, and Gülen has excommunicated him. Nurettin Veren went public to speak out about how Gülen is authoritarian and dangerous, especially to a secular state. Gülen is Machiavellian in that the end justifies the means to manipulate and indoctrinate the people for his personal gain and for the cause of spreading Turkish Islam. Dialogue is a misnomer for indoctrination.
I am not objecting to people conducting dialogues. Any reasoning person, however, would argue that interfaith dialogues need to be held in Turkey, where there is no room for freedom of religion or freedom of thought. For example, why can he not hold these interfaith dialogues between the Kurds and the Turks? How many American Christians who converted to Islam are being killed or threatened with death by Christians? By contrast many converts to Christianity in Islamic countries face death, as in the torture of three men in Malayta last year, or at the least imprisonment. How many mosques in America are being bombed? So then, why are interfaith dialogues being held in the West? If indeed there is a need for dialogues among faiths, they need to be held in the countries that have problems, those where there is no freedom of religion, opinion, or thought.
Many of Gülen’s people worship Gülen, and even bought title and honor for him by electing him, according to the UK’s Prospect magazine, the most intellectual man today. Prospect ran a global public intellectual poll last month to find the world’s greatest living intellectuals. Gülen won this global poll, making him the most intellectual person on the Prospect /Foreign Policy list. Gulen’s newspaper Zaman, with its circulation of over 800,000 and a string the international editions, ran the story and asked his people to vote. Gülen has more than seven million followers with the result that they rushed to vote to elect him, a stepping stone that his strategists hope will secure him the Nobel Peace Prize as well. The question is whether a person can buy himself or herself an honor and title of such magnitude? The larger question is for what purpose would he do so?
Footage aired on Turkish TV showed Gülen explaining the methods that his followers should use to attain Islamist goals. In his sermon he said, “You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence, until you reach all the power centers, until the conditions are ripe.” Today, few Americans notice the many Muslim missionaries infiltrating into the top security agencies; they do not notice thousands of Muslims missionaries coming from Turkey under the graduate platform and getting scholarships from the U.S. government and using the nominally Christian culture’s tax money to continue Gulen’s missionary activities in the U.S. Similarly, Raindrop Turkish Cultural House, Ebru TV, the Gulen Institute, and the Rumi Foundation are but a few of the arteries to their ends. Gülen always urged his followers to look for opportunities but not to do anything prematurely because the world will crush them, if they do; Muslims will suffer everywhere like they did in Egypt, Africa, and the Middle East, among other places. He urges his followers to wait for the right time and the right power, so that they can shoulder the entire world, carry it, and gain all the states’ power. Until that time, he cautions them that any step taken prematurely and early will be like breaking an egg without waiting the forty days for it to hatch and thus killing the chick inside. The work to be done is in confronting the world. In his sermons Gülen urges his followers to be loyal and keep their secrets, “in confidence trusting your loyalty and sensitivity to secrecy. I know that when you leave here, you will discard everything. What we talked about here must stay here. The philosophy of our movement is that we open the web to wait for people to be caught in the web and to teach them but not to consume them; we pour life to their dead souls and give them life.” Interestingly, Turkey used his messages to present evidence against him in the charge that he was attempting to overthrow the state. Now, however, the Turkish governing party adheres to his message.
Ten to twenty years ago Europe did not see Islam as a big threat, but now more than sixty percent of the people in Europe see Islam as the biggest threat to their national identity. Today we are seeing the Islamization of Europe; this not just a threat to Europe but is a threat to America as well. Because Gülen sees America as the last bastion of Western civilization, he wants to conquer from within. Not so many years ago many Westerners did not expect that Europe would be under siege from the Islamic religion. Yet, currently many people in Europe probably ask themselves how they lost Europe. In a generation or two the U.S. will ask itself how it lost its way and became an Islamic nation.
The core of Islam is the importance of the Quran because the Quran is Allah’s actual words revealed by an angel to Mohammed, the Prophet. If every word in the Quran is Allah’s word, then there can be no such thing as a moderate or contemporary Islam; it cannot exist. Gulen’s missionaries may fool their hearers about their intentions and say that Islam and Christians believe in the same God and that both the Bible and Quran talk about Jesus. But they will never tell you that the essence of Islam is a political ideology. It is a system that covers all aspects of society, dictates every aspect of life, gives rules for society to live by, and signifies submission, as even the name Islam suggests. There is no equivocation; a follower must obey, cannot object to the imam’s or Mohammed’ teaching, and must follow the dictates of both. As mentioned, Gulen’s followers never object to Gulen‘s ideas for fear of being excommunicated from the community, a fate that will result in their failure in every area of their lives, according to his teachings. Individuals are not entitled to tell their individual opinions, making his teachings a kind of totalitarian ideology. An Islamic American means an America without freedom and democracy, an economic wasteland, and an intellectual nightmare. George Orwell warned against becoming slovenly in our thinking, so that a regime could take over as he protrays in 1984 or Animal Farm. The United Kingdom may realize that this warning has come to fruition as Shar’ia law supersedes British law in some Muslim communities in England. Will the U.S. fall prey to the same ideologies because of slovenly thinking? For example, any attendee at an Institute for Interfaith Dialogue dinner may go to its website and see that all of the articles refute Christianity’s essence and Jewish tenets, leaving no doubt that no ecumenical acceptance of each other’s faith is intended. Ecumenical means that the mainstream faiths will attend to hear about why Islam is the true religion.
Many American universities are completely naïve and foolish in not recognizing that they are effectively allowing Islamic fundamentalism on their campus, embracing it, and spending alumni and government resources on its promotion. Today Gülen has become the Einstein for many Turkish people. But many people fail to understand that Islam allows some exceptions for lying, so the question needs to be asked, “What makes people believe he is what he says he is because the Quran allows followers to lie whenever it serves the purpose of proselytizing. Gülen also admonishes, “You can know the truth, but you cannot tell the truth any where or any time.” He practices what he teaches.
Gülen believes that if there is hope for Muslims to be in charge of world affairs one more time, it will result from the Turkish people who come from Anatolia not from the Turkish secular elites. Gülen believes change can only happen from a grassroots level. His movement has reached that grassroots level in Turkey and taken control of the political, legal, and media establishment. Now they have charge over the Turkish secular government. Gulen’s focuses his effort to establish Islamic law in order to bring back the Ottoman Empire, since the Ottoman Empire was administrated by Shar’ia law. Shar’ia law not only limits religious, social, and political freedom, but also gives non-Muslims a second-class status or citizenship. Shar’ia law for Muslims is not an option, but it is mandatory and obligatory; it is a code of law for the Muslim’s way of life that Allah revealed to all mankind and commanded them to follow because Muslims believe Shar’ia law comes directly from Allah while other laws are man-made. Gulen’s missionaries, like their leader, are charlatans if they use another claim, such as tolerance, to advance Islam in the U.S., or in any of the scores of countries where they have cadres of missionaries.
Aland Mizell With the MCI aland_mizell1@hotmail.com
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