This paper explores the discourse surrounding the compatibility of modern science with Islamic piety in the teachings of Fethullah Gülen, and particularly its enactment in the activities of certain Gülenist educational communities in Turkey. It begins by outlining Gülen’s distinctive philosophy of science, which draws on the popular contemporary doctrine of i’jaz (the ‘scientific miracle of the Qur’an’). Following in the tradition of his intellectual predecessor Said Nursi, Gülen exhorts his followers to engage pro-actively with Western scientific progress and finds no a priori incompatibility therein with Islamic values and beliefs. Rather, he locates the origins of, and rationale behind, scientific advancement and discovery in the word and spirit of the Qur’anic text itself. Science is therefore a prominent component of the curricula in the educational establishments which characterise the Gülen Hizmet Movement around the world, and through which Gülen seeks to create a so-called ‘golden generation’ of pious Muslim believers, who are educated according to Western pedagogical standards and able to participate fully and ably in a competitive global society. Drawing on anthropological fieldwork amongst five Gülen-influenced educational institutions (high schools and universities) in Ankara and Istanbul, this paper investigates approaches to learning and teaching in science, as well as understandings of scientific and religious (particularly, Qur’anic) authority, in the Turkish Gülen community. The major contention of the paper is that the Gülenist discourse on science and Islam can only be accurately understood in light of the socio-political and cultural context from which it emerged and in which it is sustained. Accordingly, it analyses the experiences and testimonies of followers of Gülen’s teachings by linking the emergence of an apparently universal idiom of Islamic science with such local factors as Turkish and neo-Ottoman nationalism, the 20th-century encounter with Kemalist secularism, and Turkey’s burgeoning economic and geo-political aspirations. The paper concludes by questioning the implications of this rootedness in the specificities of modern Turkish history and socio-cultural norms on the Gülen Movement’s aspirations to universality and trans-nationalism.