Snouck Hurgronje: pilgrim or outsider?

Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (1857-1936) is still by far the best known Dutch scholar of Islam, in general and especially related to Indonesia. Hundreds, probably thousands of publications mention him, but until now there was no proper biography. In 2017 a journalist, popular writer of non-fictions books, has publlished a no too big, but fascinating book on him.

Dröge begins with a very realistic story of the bloody circumcision of the adult Snouck in 1884 in Jeddah, where the local barbar cut about 1 cm. from the skin of his penis as part of the process of becoming a true and formal Muslim. This was required for his entry to the town of Mecca, in January 1885. The period in Jeddah and Mecca cover the first 100 pages of this book after very short information about his adulterious father, his upbringing and study at Leiden University: it is not an academic but a journalistic book and Dröge selected the most interesting and even shocking stories for his book. A biography is a 'life story' and the author has the right to formulate his own image of the personality.

The word pelgrim in the title refers to Snouck's dissertation in Leiden (1880) about the hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage. However, due to problems in Mecca, Snouck could not join the hajj of 1885 and so never was a Muslim haji or pilgrim. One should also not conclude that he had a personal pilgrimage in life to God or a religion. In the introduction Dröge has two characteristics of his personality: an obsession, intense quest forknowledge about languages and cultures. Second is his ambition, legendary. But he never was in charge of a group of people. He was president of the Dutch Academy of Sciences, was Rector of Leiden University, but maybe more in a ceremonial sence than as a true administrator: he was an individual, a scholar, not a team worker. Nearly all his 'friends' or comrades were either afraid for his severe judgments or the object of his curiosity.
Dröge criticises him for inconsistency: he promoted good schools for Indonesians like Husein Jayadiningrat, but his children from two spouses lived in Ciamis, not in Batavia and pesantren was good enough for them. A somewhat split personality: close to the natives and Muslims in private contacts, but officially in all respects a colonial administrator.
And in the end: he remained an outsider, a keen observer, not someone who could bring calm or revolutionary changes in society. But definitely a good observer and fantastic writer!

Carool Kersten about the 'longue durée' of Indonesian Islam

In 1983 Ben Boland wrote the preface for the bibliographical survey of Islam in Indonesia, (most of the work was done by Irene Farjon!). Boland commented that there was no great overview of this history: Fragmenta Islamica, only fragments (quoting the title of a book by G.F. Pijper). Since this publication we have seen the article and three books on six centuries of Islamization in Java by Merle Ricklefs. There is Le Carrefour javanais by the late Denys Lombard. In some way Michael Laffan's The Makings of Indonesian Islam looks somewhat like a history of Indonesian Islam. But now we have a surprising thin book (just under 200 pages) by Carool Kersten, covering the theme in five chapters. Clear, based on recent publications and not too detailed.

24 January Carool came to Leiden and gave a talk about recent developments in Indonesian Islam. It was for me a good incentive to read his history book.
Kersten studied Arabic and Middle East developments, then worked with the oil business for nearly 13 years before returning to academic life and concentrating on Indonesia. It is clear in the book that he has good feeling for the international, especially Arab connections of the archipalego. Chapter I is on the arrival of Muslims in Sumatra, chapter II on the conversion of parts of Java to Islam. I noted 'more about from where Islam came than why people embraced Islam?' In fact: our sources do not give much real information. The historical novel by Pramoedya Arus Balik is a fascinating picture of the period, but it is a novel, not the history we want to find in books like this.
Chapter 3 is on the 19th century and concentrates on 'Islam as resistance': the Java War/Diponegoro, the Paderi Wars and Aceh are the major issues here. Kersten gives here ample space to the Malay sources, written by 'Fakih Saghir' Jalaluddin and by Imam Bonjol. For Aceh he does not join the school of Snouck Hurgronje, but has lucid summaries of the findings by James Siegel. Acehnese society is divided in four interest zones: the sultan, the ulebalang, common peasants and the ulama. The first three were connected to the soil, but the ulama were outgoing people. They did not study on their home villages, travelled elsewhere. He quotes Siegel stressing that the ulama were not really interested in a community on earth 'but in Paradise....  It was not until the 1930s that men began to realize a new life in this world was possible' (p. 90).  I must check this with the book by Siegel again, because it sounds somewhat mysterious.
Chapter 4 is about the period 1890-1945 (rise of SI, Muhammadiyah, NU) and chapter 5 about the last 75 years. Also here we find a cosmopolitan Islam: much about the Egyptian sources for Reform in Indonesian Islam.
In his oral presentation he introduced the terminology of watershed years. 1998 as the turn to democratization; 2005 as the conservative turn (the well known serious of fatwa against Ahmadiyyah, pluralism, liberalism; 2015-6 again a turn towards Islam Nusantara and the 16-point statement of NU and ISOMIL, 9-11 May 2016, the International Summit of Moderate Islamic Leaders.  However, 2016 was also the year of street politics, FPI against Ahok. It remains difficult to give clear and simple qualifications for historical developments. This small book will remain a standard work, stgimulating broader perspectives. Thank you, Carool for this.

The little first man of Flores: a Catholic one?

Frank Westerman is a Dutch journalist who worked for some time in Russia and Turkey as a foreign correspondant. In his twenties he studied agricultural biology, had much interest in evolution, any way interest in many things. From 2000 on he publishes books with scientific themes, in a funny way. While reading him you have often have the feeling that he writes about anything interesting he meets, but still he is able to concentrate on a major theme.

His most recent book (in translation We, the humans) is about the quest for the first human being, in case related to the findings in Flores of fossiles of what may have been the link between apes and human beings. The first of these findings were from the 1950s when Catholic missionary Theodor Verhoeven SVD (of the order of the Divine Word) discovered in a cave in West Flores fossile bones of a very small examplar of the homo Floriensis. Unfortunately he should have digged deeper, because only few decades later better examples of the same were found, besides huge mouses, giant bats. Apparently animals could grow bigger, humans in Flores were small, according to modern standards.
Westerman begins his books with reports as 'writer in residence' with students of the Humanities Department of Leiden University, late 2016. His students find data about missionary Verhoeven, who was a well trained teacher of Latin with a PhD on a Latin theological tekst, but also some training in archeology of Pompei, the Italian town covered by a volcanic eruption in about 70 CE.
They visit the SVD museum in Steijl. The excavations in Java by  Dubois are also recalled at large, until in the last chapter many new findings in Georgia are mentioned from the last decade. So, besides the discovery of the fossiles in Flores, many other items enter the book, which sometimes also has more philosophical thinking about the difference between animals and humans and the bad role of religion in negating the theory of evolution.
Westerman also came to Flores to see the site itself. Here in Flores he met the daughter of a Protestant minister who discovered the truth about the 1966 killings of suspected Communists in Sumba. She later married a Catholic man in Flores. She was allowed to marry, but had to observe the initiation rituals, seven days in the adat house of Leko Lembo. But through clever discussion she could also buy off this obligation: a liberal donation of palm wine (236).
Chapters 18 and 19 (or pp. 237-258) are about the killings of 1966 in the Maumere region, finally decribed by Father John Prior SVD. It is the story of an internal fight in the Catholic Party of Flores around late 1950s, how the elite took revenge by giving the label of 'communists' to critical people, how the clergy obeyed and dares not even to give a proper burial to between the 800-2000 who were killed: no digging has been taken place, just only 'covering the whole affair with sand'. In this way Westerman is connecting the story of the 1966 killings with the main theme of the book, the quest for the oldest man on the earth, also in Flores.
There are many themes in this book. One of these is a continuing theme of Westerman: leaving the religion of his youth and becoming an atheist. Another is his surprise about tenacity of religion and even its return. But he did not see a first Catholic some 100.000 years ago in Flores. Not yet.