A symposium on the Gulen Movement was held at Columbia University in New York. Organized by the Turkish Cultural Center and Institute of Turkish Studies, the event was dedicated to examining Islam's role in contemporary Turkey.
Sessions focused broadly on the role of Islam in the Ottoman Empire, along with Islamic movements that sprung up in the aftermath of its collapse, from the more traditionally based to the well-known Gulen movement.
Other sessions spotlighted the current relationship between Islam and politics, examining both the 2007 elections and the interplay between culture and religion in Turkish politics.
Bekim Agai, an assistant professor for Islamic cities at the University of Bonn lectured on" the educational network around the Fethullah Gulen movement". He said that the movement had been successful because of the followers' strong networking within the community in what led them into the modern world by keeping them within the Islamic core.
