Erick Stakelbeck at CBN News posted a story today about Fetullah Gülen, who has been called the world's top public intellectual and the face of moderate Islam. The 70-year-old Muslim leader directs a global Islamic movement from the Pennsylvania mountains.
The article reports:
""It's not just a religious movement; it's the Fetullah Gülen movement. They call themselves that. So it is, you can say, a cult. It is a highly personalized movement," Ariel Cohen, a Middle East analyst with the Heritage Foundation, said. Cohen has been tracking the Gülen movement closely."
The article also reports that French-Turkish scholar Bayram Balci claims that the Gülen movement has three goals:
"the Islamization of the Turkish nationalist ideology; the Turkification of Islam; and the Islamization of modernity.""
The article reports:
"Currently, there are about 125 Gülen schools spread out over 25 states. One school in Philadelphia receives some $3 million annually in taxpayer money."
This is part of the government's outreach to so-called moderate Muslims. Meanwhile the schools select the students they feel will be most likely to spread Islam and the concept of close ties between religion and state, and the United States taxpayer underwrites the effort.
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