By Max Farrar on August 12, 2016
Hizmet, the social movement inspired by the neo-Sufi thinker Fetullah Gülen, is currently being dismembered by the autocratic president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He accuses Gülen of ordering a coup attempt on 15th July 2016, saying it was was led by Hizmet members in the army. This is strenuously denied by Gülen and Hizmet, but the crack-down has nevertheless been enormous in its range (see here for more information and for Hizmet’s response).
I am a supporter of Hizmet. Since 2006 I have enjoyed meeting their members (some of whom did their PhDs at my university), learning about their work and experiencing their hospitality. In every encounter, in Leeds, London, Istanbul, Seoul and São Paulo, I have found their members (male and female) to be sincere, intelligent, open-minded, humorous and kind.
In May this year (2016) they invited me to speak at their academic conference in Brazil on the role of Hizmet as a social movement. Because they are a huge, world-wide social movement inspired by Islam but largely engaged in educational and charitable work (Gülen has said we have enough mosques, what we need is more schools), I wrote a paper which suggested they enlarged their remit to address five challenges facing the world today:
• Climate change
• Globalised economies that are increasing the polarisation of wealth and income
• Mass migration
• Increasing political violence, claiming religion as its justification
• Decreasing social solidarity
Here is the paper I wrote up after the conference: Hizmet Conference paper It includes more detail of my work with Hizmet; more importantly it contains a lot of detailed factual information on the scale of these challenges.
Already Hizmet does important work on some of these issues. If it survives Erdogan’s onslaught, it will no doubt do more. As a movement inspired by religion but committed to secular, democratic government that respects universally-agreed human rights and prioritises modern, high-quality education for all, Hizmet can contribute to progressive change in Islamic countries. It has much to offer to multicultural society across the globe. I do not believe that Gülen ordered the coup attempt.
(To save time on reading the paper, you could look at the slides I used in the presentation Max Farrar Hizmet Conf paper slides PDF.)
Posted in blog, engagement, public sociology, Public talks | Tagged climate change, Fetullah Gülen, Hizmet, migration, social movements, social solidarity, violence, wealth income inequality |
By Max Farrar on December 9, 2015
I wrote this article with Dr Rumana Hashem, prompted both by the death threats issued against Rumana, a Bangladeshi-born Muslim academic at a British University, and the disagreement I had earlier (supported by Rumana and other feminists) with British academics who support the organisation called Cage.
It forms part of my ongoing investigations into Islamism, and it sits alongside my life-long opposition to racism, xenophobia and its variants (e.g. discrimination against, and hostility to Muslims and Jews).
On the day the article was published in opendemocracy (3.12.15) I gave a talk at the monthly event organised by Leeds Taking Soundings based on the arguments developed in the article. The slides I used can be accessed here Islamist terror-dilemmas PDF
Posted in blog, journalism and media, writing | Tagged Islam, Islamic State, Islamism, Islamophobia, terrorism |
By Max Farrar on October 4, 2015
This is so important that I’m uploading a PDF of the article in the Independent on Sunday last week explaining the abominable actions of the Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT). The ABT have already murdered several people simply for their rationalist, secularist views. These violent Islamists have now issued a list of people they intend to kill, including Dr Rumana Hashem, a Bangladeshi Muslim feminist working at the University of East London in the UK.
For some reason the IoS has not uploaded this article, so I’m placing it here for wider circulation. Karen Attwood Bangla Hit List 27.9.15
Posted in blog | Tagged Islamism, jihadis, terrorism, violence |
By Max Farrar on July 13, 2015
Qari Asim MBE, the Chief Imam of Makkah Mosque in Leeds, asked me to contribute to the community Iftar on 12th July 2015 which was dedicated to remembering the murder of 8,000 or so Muslim men and boys in Bosnia twenty years ago. I was given five minutes so I didn’t read the text I’d written (it would have taken 20 minutes). I concentrated on the last section of the document. You can access the full text here Understanding genocide 12.7.15 — if you want to.
This was an enlightening event for me, bringing together a survivor of Srebrenica and of the Holocaust with significant figures in the civic life of the city of Leeds. Makkah Mosque is notable for its open-ness and its progressive role in the city. Eating together with local Muslims as they broke their fast was another highlight of the evening.
[Since posting this article, one of my friends has reminded me of the first genocide of the 20th Century, perpetrated against the rebellious Herero-Nama peoples by the Germans who had colonised present-day Namibia. Read about it here.]
Posted in blog, public sociology, writing | Tagged equality, genocide, Holocaust, Islam, love, massacre, Muslims, peace, Rwanda, social justice, Srebrenica |