"Contemporary Islamic Conversations" discusses the ideas of Turkey"s most significant Muslim figure, M.Fethullah Gulen. Originally published in Turkish by Nevval Sevindi, one of Turkey"s top journalists, this edited translation makes Gulen"s work and ideas accessible to the English-speaking world for the first time. It includes interviews conducted by the author with Gulen, who has been living in self-imposed exile in the United States since 1999. The book explores his ideas regarding Islam and the West, Islam and violence, and religion and the future of the nation-state in Turkey and the Muslim world. Gulen has worked hard to revive the religious tradition of the Turkish theologian Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, and while his debt to Nursi"s ideas is clear, he has a passionate interest in Islamic theology and Arabic and Turkish literature, and is also deeply interested in poetry, philosophy, sociology, and the classics in general. Gulen offers a moderate perspective on Islam, is open...