CBS investigates Gulen's movement in the USA
CBS investigates Gulen's movement in the USA
CBS News has broadcast a feature, "The Gulen Movement" which aired on May 13, 2012. Lesley Stahl was the correspondent. Shachar Bar-On the producer.
The piece analyses the impact of Gulen's teachings and schools both in Turkey and the USA. Fethullah Gulen is the Turkish Islamic cleric at the center of a popular and growing movement, with millions of disciples who follow his teachings of tolerance, interfaith dialogue, and education. Some have even started a chain of successful charter schools here in the U.S., with an emphasis on math and science. Yet Gulen himself remains shrouded in mystery. Lesley Stahl had traveled from Turkey to Texas to report on how the movement is spreading, and on the man behind it all.
Stahl tells of how over the past decade scores of charter schools have popped up all over the U.S., all sharing some common features. Most of them are high-achieving academically, they stress math and science, and one more thing: they're founded and largely run by immigrants from Turkey who are carrying out the teachings of a Turkish Islamic cleric, Fethullah Gulen.
He is, Stahl argues, the spiritual leader of a growing and increasingly influential force in the Muslim world -- known as "The Gulen Movement" -- with millions upon millions of disciples who compare him to Ghandi and Martin Luther King. Gulen promotes tolerance, interfaith dialog, and above-all: he promotes education. And yet he's a mystery man -- he's never seen or heard in public -- and the more power he gains, the more questions are raised about his motives and the schools.
What Stahl confirms in her report is that indeed the Gulen's schools have been spreading like mushrooms.
"There are a total of about 130 charter schools like Harmony in 26 states. - tells a teacher to the CBS journalist - Together they form the largest collection of charter schools in the country. Here's what's curious: they're founded and run by immigrant businessmen and academics from Turkey".
Why are they building public schools here? she asked to which the same teacher replies: "Well, the answer seems to lie with this mystery man: the Turkish imam Fethullah Gulen who tells his followers that to be devout Muslims they shouldn't build mosques - they should build schools; and not to teach religion, but science. In sermons on the web, he actually says: "Studying physics, mathematics, and chemistry is worshipping God." So Gulen's followers have gone out and built over 1,000 schools around the globe - from Turkey to Togo; from Taiwan to Texas".
Businessman Alp Aslandogan chairs a foundation in Houston that advances Gulen's teachings.
Stahl puts it to him that "it's so counterintuitive that people from Turkey would come here to get involved here in education".
Alp Aslandogan reply is somehow illuminating: "People do go to other countries, including Africa. - he says - The United States, especially in math and science, is not really good. And many parents complain about that. So there is a need for skilled teachers in the United States in that fields".
The CBS crew went to Turkey to learn more and found Gulen's schools are everywhere and considered the best. They're often multi-million dollar hi-tech facilities where girls are equal to boys and English is taught starting in first grade. Gulen didn't only influence education. Starting in the late 60s, as a young imam, he urged crowds of middle class Turks to learn from the West and embrace its values - including an unexpected one: making money. In this Internet sermon, he even told followers: "If you don't seek ways to be wealthy...that is a sin in the eyes of God." So his disciples in Turkey became successful businessmen and built a multi-billion dollar Gulen empire that beyond the schools, includes TV stations, a major bank, Turkey's largest trade association, and biggest newspaper.
Stahl argues that "To his followers, Gulen's like a living prophet, and he used his influence to change the course of Turkey's politics; helping to make it a functioning moderate Islamic democracy".
What the journalists couldn't find in Turkey was Gulen. Actually, very few people ever see him in person. He preaches via webcasts from a prayer room in an isolated and unlikely location. For over a decade, Gulen has been living in self-imposed exile and seclusion in, of all places, the Poconos - in this gated Pennsylvania retreat.
Indeed when Gulen came to the U.S. in 1999, it was for medical treatment. But then this video surfaced in which he seems to order his flock to surreptitiously take over key government positions in Turkey in a stealth Islamic coup. Accused of treason by the government at the time, Gulen decided to stay in the Poconos -- even after he was cleared in 2008 in Absentia.
The feature by Stahl goes on with an interview to one of the former teachers of one of Gulen's schools in the USA.
Mary Addi was fired as a teacher from a school in Cleveland, Ohio -- part of a Gulen- inspired chain of 27 charter schools in the Midwest.
Mary Addi said that "They want to give you the impression that they're just hard-workin' guys over here to try to educate our kids because American teachers are just too stupid".
Stahl then ask her why, in her opinion, "is an Islamic imam, which Gulen is, interested in setting up schools in the United States?"
To which Addi replied: "Because it's a great money-making operation".
Gulen's followers can make money through contracts to build and maintain the schools, but Addi has gone to law enforcement with charges that the schools also make money by bringing in foreign teachers in order to take a cut of their salaries. She says she learned this after marrying a Turkish teacher.
Addi said that her husband told her "that every pay period, he would have to cash his check and give-- he had to give 40 percent of his check back "
Addi turned documents over to various federal agencies.
The schools dismiss Addi's claims, calling her a disgruntled employee. But federal authorities told CBS they take her seriously and are looking into allegations of immigration fraud and misuse of taxpayer money in various states, and whether it's somehow being funneled to the Gulen movement.
There are major criticism's of Gülen's movement. For example, according to a 2011 article on the Voices Empower website by Donna Garner and Alice Linahan, "two of the basic tenets that Fethullah Gulen uses to indoctrinate his followers at an early age are 'taquiya' which is an Islam belief that permits them to lie to “infidels” (i.e., anyone who is not a Muslim), and total secrecy — a belief that if a person never shares a secret, then he never has to worry about his secrets becoming known. In fact, secrecy is an obsession for Gulenists. In Pearls of Wisdom, Gulen explains, 'The secret is your slave but you become its slave if you disclose it.'"
Gulen image has been carefully manufactured to make him appear as a tolerant Muslim.
Fetullah Gulen says he predicates his teaching on that of Said-i Nursi's who is known as Said-I Kurdi by his Kurdish students.
Religious Kurdish circles say that Gulen has distorted the Said-I Kurdi teaching and changed it into a form to serve the Turkish-islamic thesis.
The piece analyses the impact of Gulen's teachings and schools both in Turkey and the USA. Fethullah Gulen is the Turkish Islamic cleric at the center of a popular and growing movement, with millions of disciples who follow his teachings of tolerance, interfaith dialogue, and education. Some have even started a chain of successful charter schools here in the U.S., with an emphasis on math and science. Yet Gulen himself remains shrouded in mystery. Lesley Stahl had traveled from Turkey to Texas to report on how the movement is spreading, and on the man behind it all.
Stahl tells of how over the past decade scores of charter schools have popped up all over the U.S., all sharing some common features. Most of them are high-achieving academically, they stress math and science, and one more thing: they're founded and largely run by immigrants from Turkey who are carrying out the teachings of a Turkish Islamic cleric, Fethullah Gulen.
He is, Stahl argues, the spiritual leader of a growing and increasingly influential force in the Muslim world -- known as "The Gulen Movement" -- with millions upon millions of disciples who compare him to Ghandi and Martin Luther King. Gulen promotes tolerance, interfaith dialog, and above-all: he promotes education. And yet he's a mystery man -- he's never seen or heard in public -- and the more power he gains, the more questions are raised about his motives and the schools.
What Stahl confirms in her report is that indeed the Gulen's schools have been spreading like mushrooms.
"There are a total of about 130 charter schools like Harmony in 26 states. - tells a teacher to the CBS journalist - Together they form the largest collection of charter schools in the country. Here's what's curious: they're founded and run by immigrant businessmen and academics from Turkey".
Why are they building public schools here? she asked to which the same teacher replies: "Well, the answer seems to lie with this mystery man: the Turkish imam Fethullah Gulen who tells his followers that to be devout Muslims they shouldn't build mosques - they should build schools; and not to teach religion, but science. In sermons on the web, he actually says: "Studying physics, mathematics, and chemistry is worshipping God." So Gulen's followers have gone out and built over 1,000 schools around the globe - from Turkey to Togo; from Taiwan to Texas".
Businessman Alp Aslandogan chairs a foundation in Houston that advances Gulen's teachings.
Stahl puts it to him that "it's so counterintuitive that people from Turkey would come here to get involved here in education".
Alp Aslandogan reply is somehow illuminating: "People do go to other countries, including Africa. - he says - The United States, especially in math and science, is not really good. And many parents complain about that. So there is a need for skilled teachers in the United States in that fields".
The CBS crew went to Turkey to learn more and found Gulen's schools are everywhere and considered the best. They're often multi-million dollar hi-tech facilities where girls are equal to boys and English is taught starting in first grade. Gulen didn't only influence education. Starting in the late 60s, as a young imam, he urged crowds of middle class Turks to learn from the West and embrace its values - including an unexpected one: making money. In this Internet sermon, he even told followers: "If you don't seek ways to be wealthy...that is a sin in the eyes of God." So his disciples in Turkey became successful businessmen and built a multi-billion dollar Gulen empire that beyond the schools, includes TV stations, a major bank, Turkey's largest trade association, and biggest newspaper.
Stahl argues that "To his followers, Gulen's like a living prophet, and he used his influence to change the course of Turkey's politics; helping to make it a functioning moderate Islamic democracy".
What the journalists couldn't find in Turkey was Gulen. Actually, very few people ever see him in person. He preaches via webcasts from a prayer room in an isolated and unlikely location. For over a decade, Gulen has been living in self-imposed exile and seclusion in, of all places, the Poconos - in this gated Pennsylvania retreat.
Indeed when Gulen came to the U.S. in 1999, it was for medical treatment. But then this video surfaced in which he seems to order his flock to surreptitiously take over key government positions in Turkey in a stealth Islamic coup. Accused of treason by the government at the time, Gulen decided to stay in the Poconos -- even after he was cleared in 2008 in Absentia.
The feature by Stahl goes on with an interview to one of the former teachers of one of Gulen's schools in the USA.
Mary Addi was fired as a teacher from a school in Cleveland, Ohio -- part of a Gulen- inspired chain of 27 charter schools in the Midwest.
Mary Addi said that "They want to give you the impression that they're just hard-workin' guys over here to try to educate our kids because American teachers are just too stupid".
Stahl then ask her why, in her opinion, "is an Islamic imam, which Gulen is, interested in setting up schools in the United States?"
To which Addi replied: "Because it's a great money-making operation".
Gulen's followers can make money through contracts to build and maintain the schools, but Addi has gone to law enforcement with charges that the schools also make money by bringing in foreign teachers in order to take a cut of their salaries. She says she learned this after marrying a Turkish teacher.
Addi said that her husband told her "that every pay period, he would have to cash his check and give-- he had to give 40 percent of his check back "
Addi turned documents over to various federal agencies.
The schools dismiss Addi's claims, calling her a disgruntled employee. But federal authorities told CBS they take her seriously and are looking into allegations of immigration fraud and misuse of taxpayer money in various states, and whether it's somehow being funneled to the Gulen movement.
There are major criticism's of Gülen's movement. For example, according to a 2011 article on the Voices Empower website by Donna Garner and Alice Linahan, "two of the basic tenets that Fethullah Gulen uses to indoctrinate his followers at an early age are 'taquiya' which is an Islam belief that permits them to lie to “infidels” (i.e., anyone who is not a Muslim), and total secrecy — a belief that if a person never shares a secret, then he never has to worry about his secrets becoming known. In fact, secrecy is an obsession for Gulenists. In Pearls of Wisdom, Gulen explains, 'The secret is your slave but you become its slave if you disclose it.'"
Gulen image has been carefully manufactured to make him appear as a tolerant Muslim.
Fetullah Gulen says he predicates his teaching on that of Said-i Nursi's who is known as Said-I Kurdi by his Kurdish students.
Religious Kurdish circles say that Gulen has distorted the Said-I Kurdi teaching and changed it into a form to serve the Turkish-islamic thesis.
