Imitating non-Muslims in sleep, food, drink and others is a necessary and natural matter, and there is permissibility and legitimacy in imitating them for worldly purposes, as in agricultural and industrial matters, weapons and tools of war, and even in kitchens and beds. .

(Sheikh Atef Al-Askilbly)

With the advent of the Industrial Revolution in Europe and the failure of the Ottoman Empire in the industrial and technological progress from the middle of the eighteenth century onwards, and with the military dominance of the West and its success in achieving victories on several fronts and the Ottoman Empire losing vast areas of land throughout the nineteenth century from the Balkans to the Caucasus to the North Africa in Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt, this led to deep tremors in the social, cultural and economic structure of the Ottoman state.

Some sultans tried to keep pace with the processes of industrial, military and administrative modernization, and the era of the so-called organizations began in the Ottoman Empire during the reign of Sultan Abdul Majeed I in 1839, and these organizations were in fact a reaction to the great European progress in the industrial and military fields, and a response that the Ottomans were forced with Their successive defeats were faced by the rebellious ruler of Egypt, Muhammad Ali Pasha and his son Ibrahim, who managed to control Syria and Palestine until their forces reached Konya in central Anatolia. Therefore, as Bernard Lewis says in his book “The Emergence of Modern Turkey,” “Turkey had to either modernize itself in the world.” During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, or you die.”[1]

The modernization process actually continued, but it coincided with serious events inside the Ottoman Empire, specifically with the murder of Sultan Abdul Aziz in 1875, and the rise of his nephew Sultan Abdul Hamid II (1876-1909), who introduced the parliamentary “democratic” conditional system, a feature that distinguished European societies at the time. Egypt followed the same pattern in 1866, with the parliament of Khedive Ismail, but both experiences did not last long.

Sultan Abdul Hamid II realized that conditionality or parliamentary rule was not suitable for the Ottoman Empire, which arose six centuries before him, and was administered throughout this period in the style of the sultans and Khalif countries or the old monarchies in force in Europe. A large and diverse geographic area will inevitably lead to the disintegration of the state, and he believed that the best solution to this dilemma is to return to what the Ottoman Empire had settled on for centuries through the “military” system, where each sect returns to its religious and intellectual origins for arbitration, provided that the political and military issue remain in The Ottoman House and its great patrons, the "Prime Ministers", the Ottoman bureaucracy and the army.

For all these reasons, Sultan Abdülhamid soon abolished the conditionalities and dissolved the Ottoman Parliament.

The truth is that Sultan Abdul Hamid was different from his father Sultan Abdul Majid and his brother Murad V, and as the Turkish historian Yilmaz Oztuna says: “Sultan Abdul Hamid was living in the preservation of the eastern Islamic Ottoman Turkish traditions, and he thought that it was necessary to stop at quoting the technology and science of the West only, and to know the culture the West without imitating the West in its way of life”[2].

Sultan Abdul Hamid

But a general trend of the Turkish, Kurdish, Bulgarian, Albanian, and other young generation who lived in these volatile modernization times, and were influenced by the discourse of European freedom and liberalism and linked it to progress and prosperity, were discontented with the gathering of all powers in the hands of Sultan Abdul Hamid II and dissatisfied with his view of the West. The generation of civilians and military at the end of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century, an association known as “The Young Turk” brought together by the Union and Progress Assembly, the Freedom Party and the Liberal Union or the Liberal Union, the Ottoman Socialist Party, the Young Arab Society and others, in order to push the tide of modernization or Westernization, as they believed that the administrative and political corruption in the Ottoman Empire was the reason for its backwardness.

The "Young Turkey" bloc was the nucleus of the July 1908 revolution against Sultan Abdul Hamid, a revolution that forced the Sultan to restore the conditional system again and retreat into the shadows, and at that time, large layers of people and the military realized the danger of what was happening in response to Islamic and Ottoman traditions and ideas In the balance of governance and administration, groups supporting Sultan Abdul Hamid turned against the modernizing coup, but the first putschists rushed to depose Sultan Abdul Hamid in April 1909.

Since that date, the Ottoman Empire entered into a spiral of secular dictatorship under the totalitarian rule of the "Young Turkey", which was less receptive to non-Turks, and soon the country fell into successive cycles of wars, beginning with the Italian in 1911, the Balkan War in 1912, and the First World War ( 1914-1918).

In the wake of the defeat in that war, the Turks and some divisions of the Ottoman army, including Ataturk, rose up against the occupation of Greece, France, Britain and Italy of large parts of Anatolia and others, which eventually led to the official death of the Ottoman Caliphate in March 1924, and the declaration of the Turkish Republic months before that in October 29, 1923.

But the remarkable thing about the new republic, which was founded on the principles of union and progress, and that Turkey belongs to the Turks and has nothing to do with the Arabs or others, is that it soon began waging war against everything related to Islam, and against those in charge of it from its sheikhs and scholars;

The eldest of them, the great scholar and Sheikh of Islam in the Ottoman Empire, Mustafa Sabri (d. 1954), had to emigrate from Turkey, moving between Europe and the Hijaz before settling in Egypt, where he died.

As for the vast majority of religious scholars and sheikhs, they were imprisoned and killed for nothing but their opinions, which violated the laws and regulations introduced by the secular Ataturk Republic and separated modern Turkey from its Islamic intellectual heritage and geographical neighborhood and began to move towards the West enthusiastically. One of the victims of this secular extremism of the nascent Turkish Republic was the Sheikh Mehmet Atef Al-Askilbli who was executed in 1926 for his opposition to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's new authority.

And why was I executed?

The coup and the declaration of the Turkish Republic

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish Republic, was one of the most important men in the War of Independence that liberated Anatolia and the capital, Istanbul, from the Allied forces in the aftermath of World War I.

His endeavors for national liberation from occupation soon succeeded, and he then established the National Assembly "Parliament" in Ankara, then he and his nationalist companions proceeded to get rid of the entire Ottoman legacy[3].

On October 29, 1923, a few hours before the proclamation of the republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk explained his ideas to a supportive French writer, Maurice Bernaud, saying: “France inspired the struggle for freedom all over the world,” stressing that “Turkish nationalists do not They hate foreigners, but they are friends of civilized nations, and they are jealous of their independence, and throughout history the Turks have moved from east to west, and modern government means a Western government” [4].

Atatürk's orientation towards the West in this way entailed a deep ideological hostility with the sheikhs and scholars of the Ottoman Empire who were found in all its geography, especially in Anatolia. The Ottoman Caliphate was only the beginning of the road [5].

Atef Al-Sakilbly and the call for reform

Among them was Sheikh Muhammed Atef Al-Askilli (İskilipli Âtıf Hoca) (1875-1926), one of the sons of Anatolia from the conservative social classes. He was born in the village of Tobkhane, in the İskilip district in the province of Çorum in northern Turkey. And the love of science headed to Istanbul in the last decade of the nineteenth century to complete his studies on its senior scholars, and engage in religious teaching at the Sultan Mehmed Al-Fateh Mosque, before being promoted in various religious positions, including the Council of Senior Scholars.

Sheikh Atef Effendi saw the shortcomings in the system of religious schools and teachers, so he sent a detailed report to Sheikh Al-Islam and the Grand Mufti of the Sultanate at the time, Sheikh Muhammad Jamal Al-Din (1848-1917) describing to him the necessary reform in the religious education system, and because this report touched the positions of some Sheikhs, several complaints were submitted Against him, he was transferred from Istanbul to Bodrum on the Mediterranean[6].

Sheikh Muhammad Atef Al-Askilbly

After a while, Sheikh Atef Effendi returned to Istanbul to form, with a number of reform scholars and sheikhs at the end of the Ottoman Empire, the Association of Teachers, whose name was changed to Association Refaat al-Islam (Teâlî-i İslâm Cemiyeti), on February 15, 1919. The first president of the association was Sheikh Mustafa Sabri Effendi, who was soon appointed, a few days later, to the position of Sheikh Al-Islam (Mufti of the Sultanate), and he was unanimously succeeded in the presidency of the Assembly by Sheikh Muhammad Atef Al-Askilbli Effendi on February 19[7].

The goal of the association, which was established five days before the arrival of Al-Askilbli to its presidency, was to work on the renaissance, development and reform of the Ottoman Empire in the scientific, industrial, religious, political and military fields. A serious attempt by the sheikhs and scholars of the Ottoman Empire to advance it after its heavy and humiliating defeat in the First World War, according to the vision of these scholars for the concepts of the Islamic renaissance, which re-presented itself strongly in the Ottoman Empire and the Arab countries as well.

The Battle of the Hat and the Execution of the Skelly

However, the subsequent developments and the declaration of the republic in 1923, and before that, the dissolution of the “Rafat al-Islam” Association and other religious associations and organizations in 1922, then the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924 and the rush of Ataturk and his companions towards complete “Westernization”, and the issuance of the era of laws known as “Ataturk’s Tanzimat”, which It stipulated the prohibition of religious schools, the abolition of titles, Sharia courts, the Arabic letter and the use of the Latin letter, and the prohibition of wearing the turban and the fez and wearing the European hat in their place, and considering it a symbol of progress and civilization[9].

For this reason, Sheikh Mukallidliği ve Şapka wrote in 1924 his famous treatise “The Hat and the Tradition of the Franks” (Frenk Mukallidliği ve Şapka), in which he declared his refusal to wear the European hat and to switch from wearing the turban and the fez because of the blind imitation of the Western approach.

Atatürk and his companions understood the significance of this message, as the turban and the fez were nothing but symbols of the struggle between the new secularists and the sheikhs of Islam, so they considered those who refused to wear the European hat ignorant and lagging behind civilization.

However, Sheikh Al-Iskibli was clever and fair when he emphasized that he did not oppose completely imitating the West in beneficial matters, saying: “There is no prohibition or general prohibition against imitating every innovation or innovation, whether it was introduced by the Sunnis or the infidels and others, and imitating them in sleep, food, drink and other things is necessary. It is natural, and there is permissibility and legality in imitating them in worldly purposes, as in agricultural and industrial matters, in the manufacture of weapons and tools of war, and even in kitchens and beds.

Execution of Sheikh Al-Askilblei

Thus, Sheikh Al-Askilbli and his supporters saw the boundary between the accepted tradition and the identity and civilizational fragmentation, and because of his views, a popular movement in favor of the turban and the fez spread in the local and rural areas of Anatolia, and the objection soon turned into signs of a social revolution, which made the Kemalists tired and decided to put an end to it strictly enforced [12].

In violation of the "hat law", Sheikh Atef Al-Askilbly and Sheikh Ali Reza, the Mufti of Baba Eski of the province of "Girglar Eli" in western Turkey, and other opponents of wearing the European hat and imitating the West, were arrested on 7 (December) 1925, and were sent by the Independence Court. In Ankara to the city of Giresun in northern Turkey, the proceedings of their trial are hastily.

According to the law of the hat, which was issued half a year before the start of this trial, Sheikh Al-Eskilli and Ali Reza were to be sentenced to a maximum of three years in prison, but the supreme orders came from the Kemalists, so they were sentenced to death by hanging, and the sentence was executed near the old parliament in the capital, Ankara on 4 In February 1926 [13], the execution of Sheikh Al-Askilli would be one of the early signs of the extremism and totalitarianism of the secular Ataturk authority, and its brutality against all its opponents, even if their opposition was directed against wearing a hat.

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Sources

  • Bernard Lewis: The Emergence of Modern Turkey, p. 157.

  • Oztuna: History of the Ottoman Empire 2/99.

  • Bernard Lewis: The Emergence of Modern Turkey, p. 303.

  • Andrew Mango: Ataturk... The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey, p. 423.

  • the same previous.

  • İskilipli Atıf Hoca kimdir?

  • İSKİLİPLİ MEHMED ÂTIF EFENDİ, islamansiklopedisi

  • Cem'iyyet-i Müderrisîn Nizamnâme-i Esâsîsi, s.

    3-6

  • ŞAPKA MESELESİ VE KILIK KIYAFET İNKILÂBI

  • ŞAPKA MESELESİ VE KILIK KIYAFET İNKILÂBI.

  • İskilipli Âtıf Efendi, Frenk Mukallidliği Ve Şapka, s 11.

  • İSKİLİPLİ MEHMED ÂTIF EFENDİ, islamansiklopedisi.

  • Previous.