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By REUTERS
Filed at 9:54 p.m. ET
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Nine-year-old Burak says his favorite subject is maths, he loves studying and writing in English, and when he grows up he wants to be a policeman.
Smiling 11-year olds Serra and Liyna, fellow pupils at the $10,000-a-year Fatih College primary school in Istanbul, chime in similarly confident English that their favorite subject is science and they want to be doctors.
This is the 640-pupil school run by followers of Fethullah Gulen -- a Turkish Muslim preacher who advocates a moderate Islam rooted in modern life, and whose teachings have inspired millions of Turks to forge a powerful socio-religious community active in publishing, charity and above all education.
But if the Gulen movement is seen by outsiders as a moderating force in an increasingly fundamentalist Muslim world, it rings alarm bells for some Turks because it encapsulates the tensions between secular state and religious power.
Excerpt
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world...gewanted=print
Filed at 9:54 p.m. ET
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Nine-year-old Burak says his favorite subject is maths, he loves studying and writing in English, and when he grows up he wants to be a policeman.
Smiling 11-year olds Serra and Liyna, fellow pupils at the $10,000-a-year Fatih College primary school in Istanbul, chime in similarly confident English that their favorite subject is science and they want to be doctors.
This is the 640-pupil school run by followers of Fethullah Gulen -- a Turkish Muslim preacher who advocates a moderate Islam rooted in modern life, and whose teachings have inspired millions of Turks to forge a powerful socio-religious community active in publishing, charity and above all education.
But if the Gulen movement is seen by outsiders as a moderating force in an increasingly fundamentalist Muslim world, it rings alarm bells for some Turks because it encapsulates the tensions between secular state and religious power.
Excerpt
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world...gewanted=print