VOC and WIC: the differences of a big and a little brother

VOC is well-known as the leading international company of the Dutch East Indies, in full Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, between 1602-1799. It was first of all business, in combination with a fight for power and trade monopoly. Also somewhat with a Calvinist/Christian label: in 1605 the Portuguese fort of Ambon was conquered, all Portuguese and the Jesuit priests removed from the new Dutch territory. The native Catholic converts were apperently without much problems included in the Reformed Protestantism of the Dutch in the Indies. Here they were an exception within a nation that moved towards more and more Islamic regions. Until 1806 no Catholic priests were allowed to enter the Dutch East Indies, while the Protestants were not too active in the propagation of their relation. In the many treaties with local rulers, freedom of religion and also abstention of efforts for conversion were included.
Quite different is the story of the Wesi Indian Company, established in 1621, it had more or less the same priciples about religion: the Calvinist doctrines and practices shold be promoted. In 1634 this company took over the Island of Curaçao was conquered and soon it became first a centre for piracy (the Dutch were still in war with Spain, all over the world, especially in the Netherlands) and later for the trade in slaves. The Dutch could only sell later slaves to the Spanish colonies when they were baptized Catholic. Therefore the WIC allowed priests to stay on the Island, but only in case they restricted their pastoral work to the black slaves, baptized as many as possible. This is the cause why until nowadays the majority of the population in Curaçao is black, Catholic and they speak a language, Papiamento, which had many Spanish words.

Yesterday Dr. Christine Schunck (b. 1942 in Kerkrade, the Netherlands), defended her doctoral dissertation on this strange contradiction: religious tolerance (Catholic baptisms tolerated in a Protestant Island) thanks to racial intolerance. The ruling elite of Curaçao did not allow Catholic pastoral care for other people than the black slaves. Also the governor and the protestant ministers had slaves and they asked the priests (of there was at the time any Catholic priest in the Island) to baptize children of these slaves. The slaves were not allowed to officially marry, but they had seks partners and produced children anyway. Schunck worked in many archives and could find much material about the priests who lived in the Island in such an awkward situation. Also this strange religious system was part of Dutch colonialism. May God forgive them all these things!
 

Christchurch, Snouck Hurgronje and the hegemony of Western countries

During Friday prayer right-wing extremist Brenton Tarrant killed 40 people in the Al-Noor mosque of Christchurch, while filming the terrorist act through a camera on his head. He then took his car to the Linwood mosque, shooting nine people dead. The director of the mosque attacked him, without a weapon, could even take his weapon, but not know what to do with it. Tarrant took his car, but was arrested by the police soon afterwards at a distance of three kilometre from this mosque.

Tarrant left on the internet a manifesto of 74 pages: The great replacement. Towards a new society. It begins with the complaint that through high birth rate and migration the Muslims take over the countries of white people and cause a ‘white genocide’. This is the biological racism of the alt-right ‘movement’ (or rather: alternative culture on the inter; term invented in 2008 by American Richard Spencer, 2008). Tarrant mentions in his manifesto Anders Breivik (Norway, 2011) who wrote (or copied!) a 1500 pages long European Declaration of Independence.
The first Muslims in New Zealand were some Chinese miners in the 1860. The number of Muslims was in 1990 still only 6.000, but has now increased some 45.000, still less than 1% of the total population of the vast country with 4,2 million people (census of 2013). About 50% declared no religious affiliation in 2013. So, New Zealand is also a highly secularised country like Western Europe.

A student of Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje wrote in 1909 in a statement attached to his doctoral dissertation:  It has to be regretted, with a view to the permanent global domination of the Caucasian race, that de Albuquerque could not execute his plan to conquer Mecca. In 1513, Albuquerque attacked Aden, thereby attempting to launch an Arabian campaign. However, the Portuguese admiral and viceroy of the Estado da Índia was not successful even in his siege of Aden. He died in 1515. The idea was never taken up again, but can be seen as symbolic of the interpretation that Iberian colonialism was conceived as a crusade directed against Muslim power, having as an ultimate goal the (final) annihilation of Islam. 
The last paragraph of Snouck Hurgronje’s great book on the Acehnese is a rare advice to the Muslims of Aceh to seek new creativity and a modern interpretation of Islam, in combination with a dream about European superiority. They should ‘frankly abandon the tenets of jihād and abide by the practically harmless doctrine respecting the last days when a Messiah or a Mahdi will come to reform the world. …  But before that day arrives the last political stronghold of Islam will probably have been brought under European influence and all less civilised Mohammedan people will have been compelled to submit to the control of a strong European government.’ (The Achehnese Vol II:351) This stronghold undoubtedly refers to Mecca and probably also to the irreal plan of Albuquerque to conquer the town in 1513.

Unsuspected victims of Salafism in the Netherlands: two professors of Tilburg University

What was labelled as Muslim fanaticism, or 'Islamism' now is called Salafism in the Netherlands.
Maurits Berger of Amsterdam University was the leader of  research term, reading and summarising 46 studies on Salafism for the period 2003-2018. The quite sensational conclusion was that the great majority of Salafi Muslims are quite Dutch citizens, rejecting terrorism of jihadi fighters. They accept the Dutch democratic rules, can sometimes utter strong statements, but do not practice these harsh words (so about the right of men to physically punish their spouses: it is said, but not or seldom practised; death sentence for apostacy: not done!). Their number is also decreasing.
But with this summary of 46 studies, the debate has not yet finished!
In early September 2018 Mohammed Soroush defended his doctoral dissertation on Salafist Movements in the Netherlands at Tilburg University. His research was heavily criticised, because of the soft and unclear definition of Salafism. ‘Salafi people seek confrontation with Dutch society’ was one of the statements. They do not accept democratic rules or society in general and want to live in a separate community, apart from Dutch society in general. This was not accepted by colleagues in the Dutch academic world. Tilburg University even installed a committee to scrutinise the dissertation again and it came with a very negative conclusion. Mohammed Soroush cannot further spread his dissertation, promotor Ruben Gowricharn lost his right to be a promotor and Copromotor Jan-Jaap de Ruijter is officially reprimanded for being a poor tutor. This is very unusual in the academic world of the Netherlands. The main criticism of the dissertation was that its classification of Salafism is not well defined, taken too broad. Besides, the fieldwork was executed in a sloppy way: organisations that were very only during two short visits were classified as Salafist without a good argumentation and with poor sources.

The pictures: above we see Professor Ruben Gowricharn in happier days as the promotor at the PhD ceremony of Gürkan Celik on "The Gülen Movement. Building social cohesion through dialogue and education". Below Jan Jaap de Ruiter.

Nadlatul Ulama converts kafir to muwathinun or 'fellow citizens'

The Jakarta Post had last Sunday a nice item on the big meeting of the fatwa-experts of the bahtsul-masail. Non-Muslims should no longer be mentioned as unbelievers of kafir, but given a name a fellow citizens who enjoy same rights as Muslims in the Indonesian nation. Reason for this was the easy condemnation of Ahok in 2016-7 with the slogan the Muslims tolak pemimpin kafir  (Muslims should not be ruled by pagans/unbelievers). In this case it was not a religious, but a political debate and in that situation. Muwathinun or for women muwathinat should be used, in the meaning of fellow citizens. Also in the debate about Shi'a or Ahmadiyyah people not too easy the denigrating qualification of kafir is a proper label.

In Utrecht we have now a small exhibition of black/coloured people on family portraits. Between 1600-1800 many rich families had black or coloured people as housemaids, servants for cleaning, driving horses and other purposes. They originated from Indonesia, South Africa and South or Central America. In the description of the big museums they were given names as 'slaves, kaffers'. But now this has changed to 'servants'. Here we must know that kaffer was the name for coloured people given by Dutch citizens in Southern Africa!

Researcher Joyce Vlaming made a small exhibitions of 12 paintings, where she also put enlarged photographs of the coloured servants, who usually only are seen on the background. Now they are presnted in their own value as full images, although usually much more is known about their 'owners' or patrons than about themselves.

One may say: 'What is in a name?' In fact proper qualification can be nice, not only for those who were given the name of kafir in modern Indonesian, but also in present-day Europe.

Islamism under attack in a Dutch Newspaper

Cartoon by Max Kisman

The newspaper De Volkskrant had today a review of 3 books on Islam and fundamentalism. The first is Het vervallen huis van de Islam (The collapsed house of Islam) by Ruud Koopmans. The author is Dutch born, but teaches since the 1990s at Humboldt University in Berlin. He is someone who warns against the ‘soft policies’ of European countries as to the cultural roots of migrants from Muslim countries. He even wrote about a ‘collective euphoria’ in Western European intellectual circles about the great wave of migration in the early 2010s. Instead he warns that 44% of the new Muslims in Germany are ‘fundamentalist’(research of 2015). The causes of the decay and backwardness of Islam are not the result of Western colonialism and oppression, but the inner weakness of Islam.

Joram van Klaveren proud as a 'murtad' or apostate!

The second book is by a recent convert to Islam of a right-wing politician (even member in parliament, 2010-2014 for the party of Geert Wilders) and conservative Christian, Joran van Klaveren. Quite surprising he was writing a negative book about Islam, but then discovered good aspects of Islam and openly converted to Islam. His book has the title: De afvallige  (‘The Apostate). His basic reason were that God is love and did not ask that his son should be executed and suffer until giving his life and blood for the redemption of sinners, through the original sin of Adam. Also the doctrine of Trinity is not true teaching of Jesus: the Jesus of Islam is a much better image of this great prophet. And Muhammad is also OK.

The third book is a translation of a book by Ibn Taimiyya, Al Siyasah. It has the quite free Dutch title : Bid vecht en heers. Regeren in overeenstemming met Gods wil (Pray, fight and rule. How to govern a country in accordance with God’s Law).

The writer of the book review blames the shari’a  for the backwardness of many Muslim societies. In the preface by Ayaan Hirsi Ali it is said that ‘Islamism’ combines politics and belief by the concept of a fixed set of laws, the shari’a and prevents modernizing Muslim societies.

As a student a read Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The meaning and end of religion. Smith sees the rise of a religion as a rigid whole of doctrine, rules and organization, ‘reification’. Buddhism and Christianity, like other great religions were not yet fixed entities during the lifetime of their ‘founders’. The were flexible, not some kind of ‘totalitarian systems’ with all rules for daily life already fixed. Is that the original sin of Islam: reification finally imposed by shari’a?