How was I take a deep soul under the shadow of Profesor Hüseyin ATAY?

In these days when I am over 60 years old, I feel very lucky and fortunate to know him and to have learned directly from him. Another beautiful person, in whose shadow I always say that I was shaped, has passed away. 

In the columns I write in the context of popularising academic knowledge, I talk about my professors, I tell anecdotes about them, I actually see them as civil academy texts.

Imam Hussein also says:

I think I was in the 3rd year of the Faculty of Theology in Ankara, he took our theology class, at that time there was a theology and philosophy department, there was no strange classification like now. Theology, history of sects, history of Sufism and Islamic philosophy departments were together. My teacher Atay, who, in my opinion, was an example of a theologian-philosopher, gave lectures centred on Ibn Sina'da Varlık Nazariyesi (The Theory of Being in Ibn Sina), which was a few shirts too much for us at that time. He would occasionally touch upon current issues, express the views of the Imams, and at the end he would say that Imam Hussein would think like this and smile slightly.

I graduated in 1985, the same year I won a master's degree in METU Philosophy with a few friends and we started to study English preparatory school. In February 1986, I started to work in the Archive Department of the General Directorate of Foundations, there were Süleyman Hayri Bolay and Bahattin Yediyıldız (I did not know them personally at that time) at the interview. They made me read a text, they said, "OK, you can go," I said, "No way, please present something else," and since they saw this as arrogance, they asked me a heavier text, and when I read it easily, they asked me how it was, İbrahim Ateş, our head of the department. I said that when I was a student at the faculty, I attended the Siyakat courses of the General Directorate of Land Registry and Cadastre, where I spent two weeks with Professor İlber Ortaylı (the Military Junta of the period, who had been dismissed from politics when he was an associate professor), and when I say that, I open the shadow of the plane trees I was shaped a little more. When I read the more difficult second text in the archive exam, one of the lecturers asked, "What did you read last time?". When I answered Aziz Lahbabi's National Cultures and Civilisation, we had a little mutual discussion about it, and finally he asked "Who translated it?". I said, "Bahattin Yediyıldız." He asked me if I knew him, I replied that I did not, and the surprise of the day was when he said, "He is me.

My Assistantship and the Trees in whose shadow I was shaped

Since I was working in the foundations, I could not attend classes regularly in the second semester; but I passed the English preparatory exam in June. In the autumn (1987), I started classes in the new semester, and in the meantime, with the encouragement of my teacher Alparslan Açıkgenç, I took the assistant exam. 

I started to work as an assistant in the Department of Theology and Islamic Philosophy at AUSBE. I think that was the first time I was recruited to the academy with 50 D staff. My brother Şamil Dağcı won the Department of Tafsir and Hadith, and I sat in the same rooms for years. When I finished my PhD studies, Şamil was given tenure, but I had the alternatives of Tokat, Kırıkkale and Çorum Gazi Theology, so I chose my hometown. My late teacher Salih Akdemir had already said, "You are a good, nice, hardworking young man, but you are grumpy, I think they will not give you tenure". There was a possibility for my teacher Alparslan to establish a philosophy department in Tokat, but it did not materialise. They were also acquainted with Hasan Katipoğlu, and when he said that since he was from Çorum, I also needed a faculty member in philosophy, Alparslan thought it would be better for me to go there, and it was indeed so.

At that time, the head of the department was İbrahim Ağah Çubukçu, and at the same time I was happily studying in the shadow of great sycamores at METU Philosophy. Since we were graduates of a five-year faculty, my classmates started their PhDs, but since we were assistants at the Institute, this was not accepted, and we were asked to do a master's degree.

One day in the theology class, my teacher Atay made evaluations about classical logic and said, "This is the way it is". When I said that Ibn Taymiye and al-Ghazali in the classical period, and serious criticisms in the modern period, my teacher, who was from the Black Sea region and could not stand objections, got angry and said, "How much logic have you read?". I think our dean at that time was Mr Necati Öner, another sycamore of ours, who taught us very serious logic, may his place be in heaven.

I don't know whether there was tension between my teacher Atay and him, or whether he was angry with his usual impetuosity, but I was very bored at that moment. When I continued to argue, he said, "Get out!" I said yes, and as I was going towards the door, he asked, "Who are you?" 

I told him that I graduated from this faculty and that I was an assistant at the Institute of Social Sciences. Of course, since it was the first time such recruitments had been made, he said, "Is that how it is now?"  Well, then come and sit down, he called me. But when he started to talk about the inadequacy of classical logic education at the faculty, I got really bored. But when I told him that I was taking classical logic from Professor Alparslan, modern (symbolic logic) from Professor Ahmet Inam, and methodology from Professor Teo Grunberg at METU, that we were currently reading Descartes' Lectures on Method, and that two of my esteemed professors had recently discussed a problem of logic at the same time in a seminar there, he was even more surprised. When I said, "Come and sit down, tell us what they say then," the atmosphere softened. 

"I Think Then..." 

Nowadays, the name of my column in Geçerken Magazine, where I share my readings on Islamic philosophy with short texts, is "I think, then...", perhaps it is the effect of that period. 

When I came to Çorum, it is certain that these readings were the main reason why I taught al-Ghazali's al-Munkız after introducing philosophy with Farabi's work titled Enumeration of Sciences. As an introduction to criticisms against the criticisms of al-Ghazali, I taught Ibn Rushd's Faslu'l-Makal, which is actually an effort to carry the method of doing philosophy through classical texts to the Theologies.

My teacher Atay, in my opinion, did not like al-Ghazali at all, he considered him as an important breaking point in the history of Islamic thought, and this may have been the reason why he got angry in the class. But when I took lessons from my teacher Mehmet Bayrakdar in the same period and read al-Ghazali's contributions to theology and philosophy, especially his influence on Western thought, please imagine the richness of reading two different views on one thinker at the same time. 

Carrying my teacher Atay to Çorum Theology

My late teacher Hasan Katipoğlu, as the founding dean, handed over most of the philosophy courses to me due to his busy work, and I prepared for each course by blending my knowledge of Ankara Theology and METU Philosophy, resulting in the works titled Introduction to Philosophy (Ankara: Elis Publishing House 2003,2012,2021) and Principles of Islamic Belief (Ankara.1997).

In the course on the principles of Islamic belief, I read Atay Hoca's Principles of Belief in Islam, Fazlur Rahman's The Qur'an with its Main Topics, Mahmud Şeltut's Islam and Sharia, and tried to make a Qur'an-centred lecture presentation by centring on Ibn Taymiye's method, that is, by trying to use verse translations in the form of plain text. Now I wonder if one of the reasons why I studied Ibn Taymiye in the master was the discussion in Atay Hoca's course? The other main reason was that he called Ibn Arabi "Sheikh ekfer" and considered Sufism as shirk. 

I would like to take this opportunity to remember another sycamore, Salih Akdemir with mercy, he had a similar idea in his undergraduate courses, and later he started to call Shaykh-i Akbar, he went to his Lord very early, may his mercy be upon him. Maybe one day I will talk about the good discussions we had in the faculty room of the editorial board of the Journal of Islamic Research at the house of my teacher Alparslan, my teacher Salih or my teacher Hayri Kırbaşoğlu, and the slightly contentious negotiations.

The Truth of Islam

There was a book called The Truth of Islam, of which my teacher Hüseyin Atay was one of the authors (I wish my teachers Beyza Bilgin and Rami Ayas a good life). In addition to my own professors, Yaşar Nuri Öztürk and Hasan Elik also contributed to this booklet (1995, 8/2). Ahmet Y. Ocak used the concepts of horizontal and vertical differentiation of Turkish Islam and wrote about the shifts of meaning in the views discussed in this booklet. (https://www.academia.edu/72550008/Islam_Ger%C3%A7e%C4%9Fi_Komisyon_tan%C4%B1t%C4%B1m_%C4%B0slami_Ara%C5%9Ft%C4%B1rmalar_Dergisi_8_2_1995_) 

The academic-ethical attitude of the Ankara Journal of Theology and Islamic Studies is important for us, and no matter how much I express my gratitude to the great sycamores mentioned here, it will not be enough. Because please pay attention to the date of this study, if you remember, the late Necmettin Erbakan, who achieved an unexpected success in the 1995 elections, formed a coalition government with the True Path Party. This was followed by a gradual increase in social incidents and the post-modern coup d'état of 28 February 1997. Therefore, it is useful to consider this booklet and the critical introduction to it from the point of view of evaluating the period before this process. 

Of course, it is also necessary to examine the process of 8 years of uninterrupted education and the coefficient applied to vocational high schools during the 28 February process, the reduction of the student quotas of the faculties of theology, the abolition of the teaching formation, the opening of Religious Culture and Moral Knowledge departments affiliated to the faculties of education in the 1998 academic year, and the faculty members who made possible contributions to these processes. Because if we want to understand the theological reasons for the 15 July 2016 coup attempt and if we do not want it to happen again, it is essential to make rational analyses of the events that have taken place since 1995. 

Journal of Islamic Research and Ankara Faculty of Theology for Gaining the Ability of Free and Original Thinking 

For a period of time, the journal Islamic Researches was published according to the principle of "the truth is born out of the confrontation of ideas", which preserved the intellectual richness in the field of theology where different ideas were presented in the same issue.  Alparslan Hodja published my article "The Concept of Islahat in Islamic Thought", which included a critical view of his teacher Fazlur Rahman's view of modernity, without any reservations or objections (İslami Araştırmalar, June 1990, vol. 4, no. 1). (https://www.academia.edu/8396433/G%C3%BCn%C3%BCm%C3%BCz_%C4%B0slam_D%C3%BC%C5%9F%C3%BCncesinde_Islahat_Kavram%C4%B1

In this context, Fazlur Rahman had asked me to translate the most criticised article of the late Fazlur Rahman, which led to his takfir at the end of a series of events led by Mawdudi. At that time, when I objected, "Hodja, there are people in the board who are closer in terms of ideas, why don't they translate it?" he replied, "But then it would be said that they translate articles that support their own views, whereas we have published your critical article, so your translation would better show the academic ethical situation in the journal", as I remember. (İslami Araştırmalar, 1990, Vol. 4, No. 4) (https://www.islamiarastirmalar.com/magazine/tr-eyub-han-doneminde-bazI-islm-meseleler-559.html?page=archive&sid=1c62ed4380e56805694e2495c8d4892a) It is possible to read this article in our book titled The Historical and Universal Reading of the Qur'an (Fajr Publishing House, 1997, 2011, 2017), which consists of copyrighted and translated articles. 

I would like to take this opportunity to mention that one of Huseyin Atay's texts written in an easy-to-understand and beautiful Turkish is his work titled "A New Islamic Civilisation", which I edited together with Alparslan Hodja, published in Islamic Research (1989,3/3).

I wish my Hodja, who offered important solutions to the historical and current problems of Islamic Civilisation, mercy and longing, and I wish my living Great Çınar Hodja a blessed, fruitful and fruitful life.