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?

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.