İskilipli Mehmed Atıf Hoca

Mehmed Atif Efendi (a.k.a. İskilipli Âtıf Hoca)

İskilipli Mehmed Atıf Hoca (1875 – 4 February 1926) was an Islamic scholar. He was born in Tophane, Çorum, Turkey. He started his early education in his village. In 1893 he came to Istanbul for Madrasa ("school" in Arabic) education. In 1902 he started Darü'l-fünun ilahiyat Fafültesi (Darü'l-fünun Divinity School). He finished his faculty in 1903 and started working as Ders-i Amm (Ulema, a person who teaches the Madrasa students) in the Fatih Mosque. He was later arrested and taken to jail several times, but freed. He was the founding member of Cemiyet-i Müderrisin together with Mustafa Sabri, an Islamic group that supported the government under Damat Ferid and advocated the British Mandate and the Greek invasion of Turkey. They were fiercely against the national government in Ankara which later led the Turks to the Turkish War of Independence.

Before the westernization movement in Turkey, he wrote a book titled Frenk Mukallitliği ve Şapka (literally, Westernization and the (European) Hat) in 1924. In it, he advocated Sharia law and opposed what he called western influences like "Alcohol, Prostitution, Theater, Dance" and the "western hat". From his viewpoint, the western hat was a symbol of the infidels, and the Muslims had to distinguish Muslims from non-Muslims visually, therefore wearing it was Kufr.

After Atatürk enabled the "The Hat Act", a law that passed on 25 November 1925 and ordered that no other headwear except the western hat was allowed (therefore banning the wearing the fez), violent rebellion broke out in some provinces, which the government violently suppressed.

Atif Hodja was arrested and accused being an organizer of the rebellion. He stood trial in Giresun Liberty Court but was found innocent and was released. However, he was later re-arrested and was sent to Ankara on 26 December 1925. He stood trial on 26 January 1926, in Ankara. The attorney general demanded three years of imprisonment, but the court postponed the trial to the next day, when the chief justice of the court saw no need to defend the Hodja and declared his decision. The Hodja was sentenced to death. He was hung to death on 4 February 1926.

His life was made into a 1993 film, İskilipli Atıf Hoca (Kelebekler Sonsuza Uçar).

External links

Media related to Mehmed Atıf Efendi at Wikimedia Commons