Respect for Halil (Gönenç) Hodja

While Turkey moves quickly toward the elections, and amid the dust and smoke of bickering and low blows flying about, the Başakşehir Municipality hosted an interesting and meaningful gathering. It organized a night of respect for Halil Gönenç hoca, from whom, or from whose students, almost all the muftis serving in Turkey have taken lessons. Although I was invited as a speaker, it was not my lot to attend, but I both sent a speech text and kept one ear constantly on the program. I learned by phone that attendance at the program was very heavy, and truly this moved and gladdened me greatly. Amid this dust and smoke, what else can one do but rejoice at such intense interest in a night of respect for a scholar?

First of all, it must be said that showing loyalty to venerable scholars like Halil Hoca is of no benefit to their persons. As the head of the Presidency of Religious Affairs, Prof. Dr. Mehmet Görmez, also put it very aptly, commemorating scholars and showing them loyalty undoubtedly gives those scholars no benefit, but for the generations that remember them and form a connection with them it signifies an invaluable appreciation, a revival. In that respect, this is gladdening on behalf of a society that knows its scholars.

Halil Gönenç is one of the important scholars raised in the Republican period. In fact, in this period all measures were taken so that no scholars would be raised; from the beginning, the practices concerning religious education aimed at the liquidation of a class of ulema and of the institutional existence of religion. With the closing in 1933 of the faculties of theology, which by then had no students left anyway, the institutional existence of religious education in Turkey would enter a long period of nonexistence.

Halil hoca was born precisely in the period of these pressures, and spent his first education years in the period when these prohibitive and repressive practices were at their most intense. The gaps and opportunities he found and made use of for religious education in this period also show under what conditions religious education could nonetheless be sustained in this period of the Republic. In this period, those who wanted to live what they believed had options such as either leaving this land or shutting themselves in their homes. Shutting oneself in was not enough either, because a rumor that one was receiving religious education at home, or reading or keeping an Arabic Quran, could result in a gendarmerie raid.

Rasim Özdenören portrayed very beautifully, with the metaphor "The Man Who Raised Roses," the ulema who in this period tried to continue religious education in seclusion despite all these pressures. Earlier, I had tried to describe, adapting this metaphor, the situation of the ulema who tried to continue madrasa education secretly in this way, particularly in the madrasas of Siirt and the East.

Halil Hoca, in terms of his period, is counted among the roses of the generation of men who raised roses. But as he lived this experience in Turkey, he was not content with this and demanded more; for the sake of knowledge he risked an extremely arduous journey and life, and used a channel that was difficult but possible for those living in the East at that time. In those years (the forties) he went to Syria, which was under French occupation, and there, for ten years, took the entire curriculum of the madrasa tradition that was being continued relatively freely.

Crossing mountains and hills on foot to Syria in all manner of deprivation, crossing freshly set borders, experiencing differences of regime beyond the borders crossed, and the intense experiences of living for ten years full time in a madrasa must have had very deep effects on Halil Gönenç hoca's personality and given him a very different horizon. These experiences are very hard to live, they are of course not lived as they are told in one breath, but in their lived form they make an invaluable contribution to the making of a man of knowledge.

The journey of knowledge has from old been treated, in the raising of the highest-quality men of knowledge, as a quite distinct method of acquiring knowledge. I think that the journey Halil hoca undertook at this early age also played a distinct role in his formation, and gave him a strong faculty of fiqh concerning different life experiences. When the faculty of fiqh is defined above all as deep knowledge of what is for and against the believer in changing times and environments, its importance is better understood.

After Halil Hoca came to Turkey following his education in Syria, the conditions of Turkey also began to change rapidly. The pressures on religious education had been lifted, but as the result of a long interregnum there was no one left competent in the religious sciences. In the newly opened faculties of theology, in the early period, people who would do philosophy and sociology about religion were sought rather than people with knowledge of religion. Therefore, far from meeting the needs of religious people yet, it would work for a while like orientalists from within. In this period, the Islamic sciences for all of Turkey would be carried by men of knowledge raised from the madrasa system, which had found a way of staying relatively more alive in the East, and by teachers like Halil Hoca who had completed their scholarly careers in Syria.

That the hoca, who began his muftiship in 1960, gave fatwas also taking into account the people of the regions where Hanafis lived, though he was Shafi'i, is one of the important aspects that make him a "mufti of Turkey," but undoubtedly not the only one. His command of matters, and his approach, which in addition to changing times and conditions also took into account the personal characteristics of the people requesting fatwas, further nourished the dimension of his being a mufti of Turkey.

The very concept of fatwa in fact requires such a delicate reading of the circumstances of time, place, events and persons, and the resolution of personal matters and matters between people by taking the role of arbiter. It is known that men of knowledge raised in the eastern madrasas still assume such a role in society.

To know men of knowledge, and at least to remember to give them the value they deserve, is among the true signs of vitality of a society. Greetings to those who remember.