“Dialogue between people with vastly different worldviews, however, is what interests me. Moreover, I believe that such dialogue is vital in today’s world, where globalization, mass communications, and technology have pushed individuals and groups together in ways never before seen in human history. People living in the 21st century interact with and are impacted more than ever before by other people and groups very different from them. We are increasingly confronted by people and groups whose worldviews are utterly different from ours, and these people are our neighbors, co-workers, schoolmates of our children, our in-laws, our clients, our employers, and more. Often, we may try to minimize our contact with those who are different from us, so that we do not have to extend ourselves outside comfortable boundaries. We may isolate ourselves and craft the arc of our lives into familiar orbits of people who look, think, speak, believe, and pray like us, but such isolation or minimizing of difference is not workable over time. In today’s world of global connectedness, we must develop the capacity to dialogue and create relatedness with people vastly different from us. Part of that project involves finding ideas, beliefs, purposes, projects, and so forth, on which we can achieve resonance with each other. That is we do not need to be the same, but we should find just enough similarity between us that, for a certain distance down the road, we can hold hands as fellow travelers in this life, all the while mindful of our differences in myriad ways.” p. 11

“Gülen, in his career as a state preacher in Turkey and as an inspirational scholar and teacher to people throughout Turkey and beyond, has championed dialogue as a necessary commitment and activity in the contemporary world. Therefore, it is appropriate to place Gülen, via his texts, “in dialogue” with other thinkers and writers coming from very different perspectives from his. Such a project models for us as readers a way of becoming comfortable with difference. More importantly, though, such a dialogue among individuals renowned for their knowledge and gifts can help all of us who care about such things to focus more deeply on the enduringly great issues of human life. While human lives in their particularities change era to era, the deep nature of human life, and the questioning and anxiety it provokes, has not changed. We ask today the same kinds of questions as our ancestors about the meaning of existence, the value of human life, how we are to set up society, and what the limits of freedom are. My hope is that this mock interaction between Gülen and the others listed above provides an opportunity for us, on whose shoulders the future rests, to take seriously our charge to create ourselves, society, and the world according the highest and best possible ideals.” p. 12

“Clearly, Gülen echoes the spirit of Kantian analysis despite coming from a completely different framework, namely, the religio-philosophical worldview of Islam. The inherent value, even holiness, of humanity demands universal protection and categorically forbids any transgression of it. In the West, the ideas of Kant (and of Locke) about inherent human dignity and basic rights find their political manifestation in the liberal democracy of the modern nation-state. Muslim societies have actualized their commitment to human dignity in other ways. Despite the differences here between the West and Muslim countries, Gülen sees no inherent incompatibility between Islam and democracy in general; the basic commitments to human beings and their essential rights, albeit grounded in different starting points (one religious, the other secular) cohere with one another.” p. 23

“Mill and Gülen are committed equally to this ideal of freedom within their respective contexts primarily because they are both humanists in the broadest sense of the term and the ideal of freedom is central to humanistic thinking. Moreover, as champions of human freedom, both are also champions of human greatness, not merely as an abstract ideal but as a necessary part of human collective life in the actual world. Gülen, like many others, has a clear vision of human greatness, of the traits that define great human beings, those who actualize in themselves the highest and best of human potential.” p. 38

“Both Sartre and Gülen give their complete intellectual energies to highlighting the urgent need in life for people to take responsibility for the world, and to reiterating the fact that the world has always been and will continue to be that which we make of it.” p. 116