Leone Ceatani’nin Varaka b. Nevfel, Abdullah b. Cahş, Zeyd b. Amr ve Osman b. Huveyris Adlı Hanifler Hakkındaki Görüşleri
Authors: Doğanay Boncuk Fatma 
Published: September 2023

With the birth of Islam and the influence of other religions around it, there were those who opposed it. Islam has imposed itself on the world and brought peace and justice to the regions where it spread. In the following times, such an acceptance of Islam could not be accepted by members of other religions, especially Christians. The Westerners, who could not achieve the desired goal against Muslims in the Crusader attacks, changed their tactics and chose to weaken Islam, misrepresent it, and break it from its historical truth. With this, baseless allegations were made about the religion and its primary source, the Qur’an and its prophet, the Prophet Muhammad, and perception studies were initiated within this framework. Within the scope of these studies, many orientalists were trained in Western countries. These people, who carried out research in political, economic, and cultural fields, especially in Islam, were supported by the state they were affiliated with and produced many studies on the values of Eastern societies. Leona Ceatani from Italy was included in these studies in the West with his work titled Annali Dell’Islām. In this work, Ceatani distorted the basic principles of Islam and reached some conclusions of his own. As stated in Mustafa Asım Köksal’s refutation, in Ceatani’s work titled History of Islam, he made heavy accusations against our religion, our Prophet, and the Companions. In addition, the translation and presentation of Ceatani’s work as a reliable source caused some unrest in the public opinion of the newly established Republic of Turkey, and falsifying information about the Prophet, the Qur’an, and Islam was put forward. Ceatani, in his History of Islam, refers to the Hanif religion and its adherents and claims that these people were not Hanifs. The most important belief of all prophets during their prophethood was the belief in tawhid. Although the prophets differed in the system they applied during their mission of notification, their main duty was their determination in the belief of tawhid. Prophet Abraham, the sign of the belief in tawhid, has an important place in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, and the term “Hanif” is used for him in the Qur’an. Hanifism expresses the principles common to the messages of all prophets. In the Qur’an, the word “Hanif” is used against idolatry and against the corrupted belief in the tawhid of Jews and Christians. It is stated that there were people in Arabia who adopted the religion of Abraham before the Prophet Muhammad’s message. It has been observed that these people had moved away from the religion of Prophet Abraham in Arabia and questioned this situation. According to the sources, these people did not commit polytheism, rejected the wrong beliefs and customs of the tribe they belonged to, and thought of the existence of a single Creator by retreating in seclusion away from the oppression of their tribes. In this study, we have examined Ceatani’s evaluations of Hanīfiyyah and the Hanifs known in our sources, such as Waraga b. Nawfal, Abdullah b. Jahsh, Zayd b. Amr and Uthman b. Huwayris, according to Islamic sources and found that he has wrong assumptions about this subject.