This comprehensive study explores sufism as a form of self-purification, offering a deeper understanding of the sacred acts and a greater knowledge and love of the divine. The first volume of the series presents such sufi concepts as repentance, reflection, self-criticism, asceticism, piety, abstinence, self-supervision, and sincerity.

his second compelling volume includes an introduction to the heart and its dynamics, as well as detailed examination of such concepts as freedom, altruism, wisdom, sainthood, intoxication and sobriety, wakefullness, and the universal man.

This book contributes to understanding of the contemporary relationship between Muslims and the Western societies in which they live, focusing particularly on the UK. Chapters reflect on the nature of multiculturalism, as well as a wide range of specific aspects of daily life, including religious dialogue, gender, freedom of speech and politics.

David Tittensor offers a groundbreaking new perspective on the Gülen movement, a Turkish Muslim educational activist network that emerged in the 1960s and has grown into a global empire with an estimated worth of $25 billion. Named after its leader Fethullah Gülen, the movement has established more than 1,000 secular educational institutions in over 140 countries, aiming to provide holistic education that incorporates both spirituality and the secular sciences. Despite the movement's success, little is known about how its schools are run, or how Islam is operationalized. Drawing on thirteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Turkey, Tittensor explores the movement's ideo-theology and how it is practiced in the schools. His interviews with both teachers and graduates from Africa, Indonesia, Central Asia, and Turkey show that the movement is a missionary organization, but of a singular kind: its goal is not simply widespread religious conversion, but a quest to recoup those Muslims who have apparently lost their way and to show non-Muslims that Muslims can embrace modernity and integrate into the wider community. Tittensor also examines the movement's operational side and shows how the schools represent an example of Mohammad Yunus's social business model: a business with a social cause at its heart. The House of Service is an insightful exploration of one of the world's largest transnational Muslim associations, and will be invaluable for those seeking to understand how Islam will be perceived and practiced in the future.

Concluding a textually long but spiritually endless journey toward insan al-kamil?the perfect human?this fourth volume approaches Sufism through the middle way, an approach that revives the legacy of the Prophet Muhammad. With an awareness of the social realities of the 21st century, concepts such as tranquility, the truth of divinity, life beyond the physical realm, the preserved tablet, the glorified attributes, and the beautiful names are delicately explained.

This book opens up a dialogue between pre-modern women identified as mystics in diverse locations from South Asia to Europe. It considers how women from the disparate religious traditions of Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity expressed devotion in parallel ways. The argument is that women’s mysticism demands to be compared not because of any essential "female" experience of the divine but because the parallel positions of marginalization that pre-modern women experienced led them to deploy intimate encounters with the divine to speak publicly and claim authority. The topics covered range from the Sufi devotional tradition of Sidis (Indians of African ancestry) to the Bhakti poet Mīrābaī and the nuns of Barking Abbey. Collectively the chapters show how mysticism allowed premodern women to speak and act by unsettling traditional gender roles and expectations for religious behavior. At the same time as uncovering connections, the juxtaposition of women from different traditions serves to highlight distinctive features. The book draws on a range of disciplinary expertise and will be of particular interest to scholars of medieval religion and theology as well as history and literary studies.

M. Hakan Yavuz offers an insightful and wide-ranging study of the Gulen Movement, one of the most controversial developments in contemporary Islam. Founded in Turkey by the Muslim thinker Fethullah Gulen, the Gulen Movement aims to disseminate a ''moderate'' interpretation of Islam through faith-based education. Its activities have fundamentally altered religious and political discourse in Turkey in recent decades, and its schools and other institutions have been established throughout Central Asia and the Balkans, as well as western Europe and North America. Consequently, its goals and modus operandi have come under increasing scrutiny around the world. Yavuz introduces readers to the movement, its leader, its philosophies, and its practical applications. After recounting Gulen's personal history, he analyzes Gulen's theological outlook, the structure of the movement, its educational premise and promise, its financial structure, and its contributions (particularly to debates in the Turkish public sphere), its scientific outlook, and its role in interfaith dialogue. Towards an Islamic Enlightenment shows the many facets of the movement, arguing that it is marked by an identity paradox: despite its tremendous contribution to the introduction of a moderate, peaceful, and modern Islamic outlook-so different from the Iranian or Saudi forms of radical and political Islam-the Gulen Movement is at once liberal and communitarian, provoking both hope and fear in its works and influence.

Western perceptions of the East have been shaped by and large within the framework Western social sciences have drawn. The dress sewn for the Western context did not fit the Muslim world and social movements therein; however, social analysts work on the same model in their efforts to understand the East. The Gulen movement, which flourished first in the "East" but now spread across a hundred countries, is not immune from such a bias. This book on the Gulen movement is an effort to deconstruct this bias and the author points to a need for a comprehensive look on Muslim social movements. The author scholarly treats the Gulen movement in cultural, sociological, and religious standpoints, while laying out the main concepts he finds relevant with the movement's far-reaching spread across the world. As concisely phrased in the title, the Gulen case is an interesting encounter of the "tradition" and "modernity" both in the person of Fethullah Gulen and in the education and dialogue initiatives of the movement. The author sees in Gulen an embodiment of wisdom that peacefully harmonizes the benefits of the modern age and the heritage of a long past. Book jacket.

This is an attempt to reflect on Islam as it appears in the context of Fethullah Gulen's teachings, an influential Turkish-Muslim scholar who inspired a movement of education and interfaith dialogue. Grinell's extensive study of Islam and of Gulen allows him to pinpoint a unique expression of values and beliefs that could alter the typical understanding of Islam and Muslims in the West. He draws upon his previous studies of the Gulen Movement and comparatively places Gulen in a wider context of faith and society. What is the concept of knowledge in Islam as understood by Gulen? How is faith and service to people connected? Is Gulen after building a sultanate? Does the Gulen movement have a (hidden) political agenda? How traditional or modern is Gulen? These are some of the questions Grinell attempts to answer from his perspective. As a humanistic researcher on Islam, Grinell believes we definitely have something to learn from Islam.

Emphasizing the esthetic concerns of the Islamic civilization as well as underlining the true nature of the religion, this insightful opus contains a collection of essays on the art of language from a revered contemporary scholar of Islam. Written separately as lead articles for the Turkish literary magazine, Yagmur, the volume eloquently articulates the author’s approach to speech as well as his definitions of poetry, history, and beauty, all of which are deeply embroidered around the lacework of Islam. With powerful emphasis on belief in God, each essay addresses an important matter of language that aptly relates to the current state of affairs in the Muslim world and the nature of human existence in the 21st century as a whole.