A response to Der Spiegel’s attack on the Hizmet (Gulen) Movement

PRLog (Press Release) - Aug. 9, 2012 - Der Spiegel has published a piece about the Hizmet (Gülen) movement. Unfortunately, the piece does not look like a work of journalism. The wording, selection of so-called experts, and most importantly distortions, misleading points and false information make the piece very problematic.

The piece starts with a claim that "Gülen likes to present himself as the Gandhi of Islam". However, Gülen has never made such a comparison. Without giving any background information about the Turkish politics and law, the piece accuses the movement being secretive. Its readers have a right to know that still in 2012, it is a crime to establish Islamic groups, movements and brotherhoods. These of course exist but they can only exist unofficially and depending on the socio-political situation, the authorities will turn a blind eye to these groupings that would operate normally in any proper democracy. Whenever conditions change, the authorities heavily punish these groups. Thus, as the piece puts the movement does not have an address or bank account but this is not its fault. This does not mean that the movement is secretive. It consists of volunteers, schools, businesses and so on. They operate as loose informal networks that the authorities know about and all these institutions are transparent institutions that regularly inspected by the relevant authorities.

The piece quotes a German academic who says this about the movement volunteers: "They are everywhere." Well, history seems to be repeating itself in Germany and Germany's new "Jews" seem to be the Hizmet movement volunteers, a good target for the Neo-Nazis who are obviously very active under the watchful but forgiving eyes of the German authorities. By publishing this piece, Der Spiegel has done a very good job for them.

Read the whole article: http://www.hizmetnews.com/index.php/interviews/item/566-d...