İskilipli Mehmed Atıf Hoca, Turkish author and scholar (b. 1875)
Mehmed Âtıf Hoca (Ottoman Turkish: محمد عاطف خوجه) was an Islamist. He was born in the village of Toyhane, in the district of Bayat, Çorum Province, in the Ottoman Empire (present-day Turkey) and went to school there. After a couple of years as a imam in İskilip (hence "İskilipli" meaning "from İskilip") in 1893 he went to Istanbul to continue his education, first at a madrasah and from 1902 at Darü'l-fünun Faculty of Divinity. He graduated in 1903 and took a job teaching as Ders-i Amm (Ulama), at the madrasah in the Fatih Mosque, Istanbul. He was later arrested and jailed several times, but freed. He and Mustafa Sabri were the founding members of Cemiyet-i Müderrisin, an Islamic group that supported the government of Damat Ferid Pasha and advocated the British mandate for Turkey and the Greek invasion of Turkey. They were fiercely against the national government in Ankara which led the Turks to the Turkish War of Independence.In 1924, before the westernization movement in Turkey, he wrote a book titled Frenk Mukallitliği ve Şapka (Westernization and the [European] Hat). In it he advocated Sharia law and opposed what he called western influences, such as "Alcohol, Prostitution, Theater, Dance" and the "western hat". From his viewpoint, the western hat was a symbol of the infidels, and wearing a hat would make Muslims lose their Islamic identity. After the passing of "The Hat Act" on 25 November 1925, which ordered that no other headgear except the western hat was allowed thus banning wearing the fez; violent rebellion broke out in some provinces, which the government suppressed.He was arrested and sent to Ankara on 26 December 1925, where he stood trial on 26 January 1926. The prosecutor demanded three years imprisonment, but the court postponed the trial to the next day. The next day, the Hoca declared that he no longer desired to defend himself. He was sentenced to death and hanged on 4 February 1926.