page_title: Fethullah Gülen
section_title: Interfaith and intercultural dialogue
hierarchical_section_title: Fethullah Gülen / Thought and activism / Initiatives / Interfaith and intercultural dialogue
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Fethullah Gülen beim Papst in 1998
context_page_description: Muhammed Fethullah Gülen is a Turkish Islamic scholar, preacher, and a one-time opinion leader. Gülen is designated an influential Ottomanist, Anatolian panethnicist, Islamic poet, writer, social critic, and activist–dissident developing a Nursian theological perspective that embraces democratic modernity, as a citizen of Turkey he was a local state imam from 1959 to 1981. Over the years, Gülen became a centrist political figure in Turkey prior his there being as a fugitive. Since 1999, Gülen has lived in self-exile in the United States near Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania.
  Gülen says his social criticisms are focused upon individuals' faith and morality and a lesser extent toward political ends and self describes as rejecting an Islamist political philosophy, his advocating instead for full participation within professions, society, and political life by religious and secular individuals who profess high moral or ethical principles and who wholly support secular rule, within Muslim-majority countries and elsewhere. Gülen founded the Gülen movement, which is a 3-to-6 million strong, volunteer-based movement in Turkey and around the world.
context_section_description: During the 1990s, he began to advocate interreligious tolerance and dialogue. He has personally met with leaders of other religions, including Pope John Paul II, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, and Israeli Sephardic Head Rabbi Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron.
  Gülen has said that he favors cooperation between followers of different religions as well as religious and secular elements within society. Among his strongest supporters and collaborators has been for years the Greek Orthodox Turcologist and professor at the University of Ottawa, Dimitri Kitsikis.
  Gülen has shown sympathy towards certain demands of Turkey's Alevi minority, such as recognising their cemevis as official places of worship and supporting better Sunni-Alevi relations; stating Alevis "definitely enrich Turkish culture."
caption: Gülen with Pope John Paul II in 1998.
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