This book seeks to develop an appropriate discourse for studying the Gulen Movement and phenomena like it. The established discourse concerns itself with social movements as protest, as challenge to the System, as contentious actors looking to alter or even overturn existing structures and/or policies in some field, usually political or economic. Approaching the matter from social movement theory and taking an insider's perspective, the author argues that the Gulen Movement is, as it has always been, non-contentious' it is not a marginalized actor working on the System from the outside. On the contrary, it has always worked within the System - within the boundaries of the laws and public norms that obtain in the different local and national settings where it has set up institutions.

This book is about a contemporary social phenomenon which is known by a number of different names: "the Volunteers' Movement", "the Service Movement" or just "Hizmet". Hizmet is also often referred to as the Gulen Movement by researchers and journalists, using the name of the Islamic scholar who inspired the Movement, Fethullah Gulen. The Movement originated in 1970s' Turkey as a faith-inspired initiative to improve educational opportunities for a local community; since then, it has grown into a transnational educational, intercultural and interfaith movement. It is estimated that participants number in several millions. Hizmet has securely established respected institutions (of different kinds, but mostly schools) on every continent revealing the capacity of an Islam-inspired movement to mobilise huge numbers of religiously minded and observant individuals not only to accept but to cherish a secular, pluralist, democratic social and political order. Hizmet has attracted a great deal of academic attention in recent years. This book is intended to summarise and represent the conclusions of much of that academic work in a manner more easily accessible to the lay person or non-specialist.