Continuing Values, Different Expressions and Future Trajectories

Abstract

AbstractThe concluding chapter traces the emerging recognition within Hizmet in Europe that, while Hizmet’s values to do with education, dialogue and the relief of poverty may continue into the future, they should not be replicated in a “copy-paste” manner. Rather, in Hizmet’s future trajectories, these values will need always to be contextually reconsidered and reinvented, taking account of national differences and changing human needs. Indeed, Weller argues that, alongside its “de-centring” from Turkey, Hizmet in Europe (and internationally) is becoming more of a networking of diverse experience than a common but differentiated programme. And this is all happening in a period during which Hizmet in Europe will increasingly need to prepare for a future without the person of Fethullah Gülen in which it will need itself to find ways of appropriately building upon his heritage of a properly confident Islamic engagement, informed by self-criticism, with a focus on the human.