Greg Barton

The Gülen Movement, Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama: Progressive Islamic Thought, Religious Philanthropy and Civil Society in Turkey and Indonesia

This article looks at three Islamic movements, two (Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah) almost exclusively contained within Indonesia and the third (the Gülen movement, known amongst those associated with it as the hizmet or “service”) originating in Turkey but now global in its extent. These movements are Islamically inspired and generally described as Islamic social movements, but much of their activity is concerned with the provision of social services, particularly education, and all three run extensive school systems. It is often insufficiently understood that these school systems are committed to teaching modern curricula in a secular fashion. Although these movements are very concerned with the development of character and the promotion of morality, and may be described as socially conservative, they are essentially progressive social movements, looking to the future with confidence and at plural society around them with an optimism that their understanding of Islam can thrive in modern society. The hizmet and NU share a similar traditional Sunni approach, strongly imbued with a Sufi sensibility, whereas Muhammadiyah is inspired by Islamic modernism. The hizmet, seen from an Indonesian perspective, combines the modern organizational competency of Muhammadiyah and the spirituality of the NU. All three movements share similarities with Western philanthropic religious movements committed to providing high-quality education.

Beyond social relationships: investigating positive and negative attitudes towards violent protest within the same social movement

Social relationships play a vitally important role in enabling political mobilization because they link people into networks of trusted others and they provide a sense of belonging, affirmation and sense of purpose. It is much less clear, however, why some individuals who are socially connected with individuals with positive attitudes towards violence, and who experience the same structural conditions, do not themselves have the same attitudes. This article investigates this research question by presenting original data from two networks of individuals with positive and negative attitudes towards violence in Italy, exploring the factors that might explain why some individuals reject violent protest despite having crucial bonds (i.e. friendship, kinship or romantic relationship) with individuals who have positive attitudes towards violence and despite belonging to the same social movement. The findings suggest that individuals with positive attitudes towards violence tend to have narrower and less sophisticated political views, are less professionally engaged, and are more driven by the search for meaning in life than individuals who reject violence.

Islam and Muslim–Buddhist and Muslim–Christian Relations in Southeast Asia

Studies of Muslim society and Islamic thought tend to focus on region-specific case studies and, where there is a comparison across regions, the comparison is generally between the centre and the periphery. Although the majority of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims live in Asia, the vast bulk of scholarly writing focuses on Islam in the Middle East. In recent years, however, a growing body of scholarship has emerged that considers Islam and modern society in Asia in its own right. Much of this focuses on South Asia, which is understandable given that more than half a billion Muslims live there, but increasing attention is being given to the one-quarter of a billion Muslims living in Southeast Asia. Even so, there are relatively few comparative studies of Muslims living on the Asian periphery. This special issue of Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations contributes to this emerging pool of scholarship by offering an insight into the Muslim periphery of Southeast Asia. It focuses on Islam and Muslim communities in four Southeast Asian nations: two in predominantly Buddhist mainland Southeast Asia (Myanmar and Thailand), and two in archipelago Southeast Asia (in majority Muslim Indonesia and in majority Christian Philippines). In addition, the first of the five articles in this special issue makes a comparison between two Islamic movements in Indonesia and a prominent Islamic movement in Turkey. Whereas the other four articles focus on issues that complicate relations between Muslim minority communities and Buddhist and Christian majorities, this first article, by Greg Barton, makes a case for the three movements in question being understood as progressive Islamic movements that are very similar in many of their attributes, and much of their vision and activities, to Jewish and Christian religious philanthropic movements in the West that are concerned with providing modern secular education. Barton’s article compares broadly similar Islamic movements in Indonesia and Turkey. He looks at the Turkish social movement inspired by the writings of Fethullah Gülen, commonly referred to as the Gülen movement but known amongst the more than one million people associated with it in Turkey and around the world as the hizmet, which means “service.” Those working in the movement see their activity as being very much one of serving society in general – not just Muslim society. The movement began in the late 1970s in the overwhelmingly Muslim majority republic of Turkey, but in the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, it spread rapidly into Turkic Central Asian states, whilst at the same

Reflections on the ‘Arab Spring’: introduction

This special ‘Arab Spring’-themed issue of ICMR brings together a diverse range of papers that speak to each other in interesting ways. ICMR regularly publishes papers dealing with Islam, Muslim society and modernity, including secularism and democracy, and papers dealing with Muslim–Christian relations. This issue is no exception. In approaching matters associated with, or arising from, the ‘Arab Spring’, however, this issue of ICMR does make a temporary deviation from past practice in considering political and socio-economic factors that are not intrinsically tied to religion at all. At ICMR we believe that religion is vitally important and that contemporary social-science too often overlooks the role of religion and religious communities. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that, when we examine phenomena as complex as the current social and political upheavals at the heart of the Muslim world, religion is but one part of the story. In his article, ‘Challenges for democracy in countries affected by the Arab Spring’, Borna Zguric gives due consideration to the challenges facing Islamist parties to transform initial success in the polls to sustained legitimacy and relevance. But, looking beyond that, he maps out the scale of the challenge faced by newly democratized societies to consolidate democracy in institutional and cultural terms. Muslim Turkey, Indonesia and Malaysia, he suggests, point to what is possible, but it is in Catholic Latin America that we find the most compelling parallels for democratic transition. Burcu Kaya Erdem picks up on some of these same themes in her study of the relevance of Turkey’s experience of secular democracy to the nations of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Each nation has its own story, she concludes, and the ‘Turkish model’ cannot be imposed on others. Nevertheless, Turkey’s experience does demonstrate that it is possible to uphold simultaneously secular values, engagement with the West and a strong sense of Muslim identity in the framework of a modern democracy led by an Islamic party. In their article, ‘Will the revolution be tweeted?’, Francesca Comunello and Guiseppe Anzera chart a course between an exaggerated emphasis on social media driving and controlling social change and an appreciation of the socio-economic, demographic and political factors behind the ongoing upheavals in MENA. Not dismissing the importance of culture and religion, they nevertheless remind us that this is but part of the story. At the same time, while new social media did not, of themselves, produce the ‘Arab Spring’, they are part of a phenomenon that has broad implications that go well beyond the states in which it began. Ben Rich’s article explores some of these implications for geo-political relations and the potential for state-on-state conflict in the Persian Gulf region, while Maher Abu-Munshar and Hakan Coruh explore in their articles a very different set of implications arising from the recent successes of Islamist parties in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt and the likelihood of a much greater role for Islamists in future Syria, potentially resulting in increased discrimination against the region’s Christian minority communities. Radical Islamists often invoke Q 5.51 to justify antagonism towards Christians. Coruh examines the scholarly reasoning that speaks against such a reading of this text, while Abu-Munshar addresses the same issues in a broader context, setting out a normative framework for upholding good relations between Muslims and People of the Book. Finally, Ilan Shdema, in his study of 43 years of inter-communal relations, approaches this issue from the direction of the lived experience of Israel’s 1.5 million Arab citizens. His findings remind us that, while religious sentiment can certainly be