In broad terms, Islam is associated with violence, revolution, and rejection of the West and modernity. Its followers are associated with ignorance and irrationality, and its societies with backwardness and underdevelopment.
How did this happen? How can these negative and damaging stereotypes be overcome? And, more importantly, how can the realities that give rise to them be overcome?

One Muslim leader dares to tackle such difficult issues directly and provide answers rooted in an understanding of modern civilization and knowledge. No ivory-tower intellectual divorced from the plights of the common Muslim individual, he has spent his life moving among them and trying to find solutions to their problems.
What he discovered is quite simple yet profound: Islam is compatible with modern science and knowledge. There is no "church and state" divide, as in the West, for Islam encourages the acquisition of knowledge and glories in its spread to improve everyone's life.

Presented in this book are samples of Gülen's writings and ideas, accounts of how his vision has transformed people, and how his contemporaries view him as a person and as a social reformer, educator, and visionary.