How likely are fragmentation and schisms in the Gülen Movement?
Fragmentation and schisms are unlikely to form in the Gülen Movement for several reasons: the Gülen Movement does not have an ideology; its worldview or belief system is not dogmatically attached to some fixed orthodoxy of interpretation of values and ideals handed on from the past; it is not closed to fresh presentation of its own near reference-tradition or to ideas originating outside that tradition; neither is it closed to new formulations and practices that open up a large common source of compatible values and ideals between different traditions.
Gülen and the Movement are not occupied with dogmatic views, but with values such as compromise, stability, protection of the life, honor and dignity of the human being, dialogue and consultation and justice, equity, and human rights. It follows that the Movement’s SMOs cannot be demanding a return to the original purity of ideology, or something of that sort.
For its long-sustained positive, constructive and non-confrontational activism, the Gülen Movement relies on the social cohesiveness or unity of ideas, means and goals of its diverse participants. It does not rely upon an exclusivist solidarity that separates some of them from others or all of them from wider society and the world. What always matters most is not the numbers of participants but the quality of their inner commitment to the meaning of voluntary, altruistic service as broadly understood within the Movement.
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