Justice and the Beloved Community in Fethullah Gulen’s Thought

Dr. Joseph Stoutzenberger *

Fethullah Gulen (Photo: AP)

When I heard that the theme of this conference was to be “The Beloved Community,” I decided to revisit Fethullah Gulen’s writings about Sufism since love is so central to that expression of Islam. Sufism entails spiritual training that leads to self-purification so that one can experience God’s love for oneself the practitioner, and out of that realization of God’s love he or she goes out and loves in return—God, of course, and other people as well. As I read through Gulen’s two volumes, I realized that he was not writing about Sufism as if it were practiced by a group of specialists who live in another time and place. Rather, he was speaking about qualities that all of us should strive for.