| Submit your comments on this article |
| The Grand Turk |
| Mystery surrounds Muslim cleric in US mountain compound |
| 2016-02-02 |
| [YAHOO] The influential Muslim holy man lives quietly on a gated 26-acre compound in the Pocono Mountains, where he prays, works, meets admirers and watches from afar as terrorism accusations that have landed him on ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... 's most-wanted list unfold in court. Rarely seen in public, Fethullah Gulen has long been one of Turkey's most important scholars, with multitudes of followers in his native country and around the world. More recently, Turkey's increasingly autocratic president, Recip Erdogan, has accused Gulen of plotting to overthrow the officially secular government from his Pennsylvania idyll some 5,000 miles away. Gulen's supporters call the charge baseless and, so far, the U.S. has shown little inclination to send him back to Turkey to face a trial that began without him Jan. 6 and is expected to last several months. A second trial, involving accusations that his movement took part in espionage, opened Monday. If the reclusive leader worries about the possibility of deportation, he hasn't shared it with confidants, they say. "He said that the United States has a long tradition of democracy and rule of law," said Y. Alp Aslandogan, who sees Gulen about once a week as president of the New York-based Alliance for Shared Values, a group that promotes Gulen's ideas. "They will see that these are politically oriented charges, and they will not allow Erdogan to spread his ambition into the United States." Justice Department front man Peter Carr declined to comment on Gulen's case. Gulen's followers run a loosely affiliated global network of charitable foundations, professional associations, businesses and other projects, including about 150 taxpayer-funded charter schools throughout the U.S. But details about Gulen's personal life and his ties to those ventures have long been murky, giving rise to suspicions about his motives. Some of the U.S. schools have been investigated by the FBI amid allegations of financial mismanagement and visa fraud. One of the most explosive claims, leveled by a lawyer who is representing the Turkish government in a U.S. lawsuit against Gulen, is that the schools are importing Turkish teachers to identify impressionable students and indoctrinate them into Gulen's movement, sometimes called Hizmet, Turkish for "service." Nobody associated with the U.S. schools has been charged, and there has been no public outcry from parents or students about teachers promoting Islam, Gulen's supporters say. In America, the schools are public and open to students of all faiths. "Try proselytizing evangelical Christians in the center of Texas. See what happens," Aslandogan said. "Anybody who knows American society and climate today would know that's a ridiculous claim." In any event, he said, Gulen has nothing to do with the schools' finances or operation. Trained as a holy man, or prayer leader, Gulen gained notice in Turkey some 50 years ago, promoting a philosophy that blended a mystical form of Islam with staunch advocacy of democracy, education, science and interfaith dialogue. Supporters started 1,000 schools in more than 100 countries. In Turkey, they have run universities, hospitals, charities, a bank and a large media empire with newspapers and radio and TV stations. |
| Posted by:Fred |