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Humanism in Islam and East Asia: Gülen’s Vision in Dialogue with East Asian Religious Cultures |
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This paper presents humanism in Islam and East Asia with a comparative analysis of Fethullah Gülen’s thought and East Asian cultures. Gülen is a leading activist of dialogue in and for the contemporary globalized humanity. His prolific writings have manifested a consistent effort to rediscover humanism by means of an interactive dialogue among people of different races, cultures and religions. This effort has been actualized through the activities of the Gülen movement. As the growing presence of the movement over the world sparks encounters of Gülen’s humanism and dialogue with diverse cultures, it provides opportunities for academic and public discourse on intercultural dialogue toward humanism. Nevertheless, discourses on dialogue have been prominent concerning ‘Islam and the West,’ leaving the arena of ‘Islam and the East’ relatively unexplored, both in relevant academia and the Gülen studies. This fact, along with the increasing confrontations of Islam with the East that the Gülen movement represents, necessitates the present research. As a pioneering attempt of its kind, this study surveys humanism in Gülen’s thought and East Asian cultures with a wider implication for a shareable locus that proves fruitful for dialogue between Islam and the East. For this, the methodological emphasis is not a simple comparison but a dialogical analysis of the two seemingly distanced landmarks. The first part of this paper examines Gülen’s humanism, accentuating its feature of ‘dialogic humanity’ as opposed to ‘dialectically conflicting relationship of humanity.’ This parallels East Asian humanism in the second part. Three concepts are elucidated as representations of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism to illustrate a cultural consciousness of humanism. In comparatively analyzing these two approaches, the final section argues that East Asian humanism corresponds to Gülen’s dialogic humanity, and proposes dialogic humanism as a common locus of the two for ensuing dialogical interactions.
Heon C. Kim received his doctorate from Department of Religion, Temple University in 2008. The title of his thesis is “The Nature and Role of Sufism in Contemporary Islam: A Case Study of the Life, Thought and Teachings of Fethullah Gülen,” which is currently under revision for publication. He received his B.A. in Arabic Language from Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, South Korea. He subsequently studied Arabic and Islamic theology for years at Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt. His academic career continued at Marmara University in Istanbul, Turkey, where he obtained an M.A. degree in Islamic Philosophy. He is the author of Din Değiştirmenin Entellektuel Arka Planı (Intellectual Background of Religious Conversion), which was published in Turkish and is in translation into English. His publications include journal articles, “Conversion Motif: A Study of Present-day South Korean Converts to Islam” in Journal of Academic Studies (2003) and “A Phenomenological Approach to the Modern Trends of Islamic Studies” in Journal of the Institute of the Middle East Studies (2004); and, translations of several Arabic, Turkish and English books into Korean. His research interests span Sufism, mystical philosophy, comparative religions, inter-religious dialogue and Muslim minority issues.
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