Fethullah Gulen, the Turkish Muslim imam scholar who headed the Gulen Movement for decades, is no longer with us, having passed away at the age of 83 in October 2024 – but his extensive network of Islamic charter schools remains and looks to be expanding across the United States (U.S.).
Gulen was born in April 1941 in Turkey and rose to prominence as an imam and teacher in the jihadist Sufi neo-Ottoman tradition, closely aligned with the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood. Gulen taught from the perspective of the Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence, deriving much of that perspective from the teachings of another Sunni Muslim scholar, Said Nursi.
Key for that perspective is a teaching focus on conveying Islamic doctrine and principles through a modern approach to education and science.
Gulen's official website remains up online where some of his most significant writing is collected. Of note is his essay "Prophet Muhammad as Commander" that rather jarringly juxtaposes assertions about the supposed meaning of Islam as "Peace and Salvation" with a lengthy list of accounts about Muhammad's military campaigns and conquests.
Another reference useful to understanding Gulen and his influence may be found in the Center for Security Policy's December 2015 book, "The Gulen Movement: Turkey's Islamic Supremacist Cult and its Contributions to the Civilization Jihad," co-authored by Christopher Holton and myself.
Also, Mark Hall directed the film, "Killing Ed: Corruption and the Gulen Movement in America," a 2016 investigative documentary film about the Gulen network of schools.
Although there are over 2,000 Gulen charter schools in a global network, Hall focused on those in the U.S., which have a STEM studies focus, but which have also been the subject of allegations about abuse of the H1-B visa system and a lack of oversight for schools at least partially funded by U.S. taxpayers.
Earlier in his career in Turkey, Fethullah Gulen aligned with and supported Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) but later emerged as his rival.
He was forced to flee to the U.S. in 1999, settling at a 25-acre wooded estate near Saylorsburg and Wind Gap, Pennsylvania in the Poconos Mountains.
Although the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the FBI, and the Department of State all opposed it, Gulen was granted a green card (Permanent Resident status) in July 2008.
It was from that Pennsylvania compound that Gulen was permitted to direct the expansion of his charter school network across the U.S. despite Turkish claims that Gulen masterminded an attempted 2016 coup d’etat in Turkey.
Erdogan demanded his extradition, but the U.S. did not believe Gulen had been associated with that event or any terrorism and so refused to extradite him.
Concerns have been growing lately among local residents in Wind Gap, Pennsylvania (a Northampton County borough) known as the "Gateway to the Poconos" related to what may be another expansion of the Gulen Movement – or possibly, now that he's gone, that this expansion may be in the process of being taken over and directed by Turkish regime elements, loyal to Erdogan.
Specifically, a BG (Bulgarian) Learning Center was registered in July 2011 as a non-profit organization in Wind Gap.
Holding the position of both president and governor there is Erhan Muttalib, who previously worked at the School of Science and Technology Discovery, reportedly a Gulen-linked charter school in San Antonio, Texas.
(It may be noted that historically, a number of Slavic Bulgarians converted to Islam during the centuries-long rule of the Turkish Ottoman Empire across Southeastern Europe. That population minority in Bulgaria are called Pomaks.)
Additional recent concerns related to the BG Learning Center have arisen with the November 2025 opening of a mosque there.
Earlier in 2025, a fundraising flyer touted the benefits of building a new mosque at the BG Learning Center site in Wind Gap.
But Nedzhip Alendar, a Center representative, told media that there would not be a mosque at that site, but only a "place for people to gather and learn about the heritage of Bulgaria."
Nevertheless, a new mosque appears indeed to have opened on Nov. 28, 2025.
The proximity of the Wind Gap BG Learning Center to the Gulen compound, its senior leadership's Gulen Movement connections, and the newly-opened mosque there, have all given rise to concerns among the local population about increasing Turkish influence in their community and would seem as well to point to continuity for the Gulen Movement (now perhaps directed out of Ankara), not only in Pennsylvania but across the U.S. as well.
Clare M. Lopez is the Founder/President of Lopez Liberty, and is a Newsmax blog site contributor. Read more Clare M. Lopez Insider articles — Click Here Now.
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