Contemporary Islamic Conversations

Discusses the ideas of the most important living Muslim thinker and leader in contemporary Turkey.

Contemporary Islamic Conversations discusses the ideas of Turkey's most significant Muslim figure, M. Fethullah Guelen. Originally published in Turkish by Nevval Sevindi, one of Turkey's top journalists, this edited translation makes Guelen's work and ideas accessible to the English-speaking world for the first time. It includes interviews conducted by the author with Guelen, who has been living in self-imposed exile in the United States since 1999. The book explores his ideas regarding Islam and the West, Islam and violence, and religion and the future of the nation-state in Turkey and the Muslim world.

Guelen has worked hard to revive the religious tradition of the Turkish theologian Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (1877-1960), and while his debt to Nursi's ideas is clear, he has a passionate interest in Islamic theology and Arabic and Turkish literature, and is also deeply interested in poetry, philosophy, sociology, and the classics in general. Guelen offers a moderate perspective on Islam, is open to interfaith and intercivilizational dialogue, and defends a notion of Islam in which Muslims are able to fully engage the world without any fear or prejudice. His community of followers has opened 500 high schools around the world, including the United States, and also owns seven universities in Central Asia and Turkey.