Pieter van Dam on the effectivity of Catholic missionaries in Timor, 1600-1800

On 20 October this month, the Catholic University of Kupang, Universitas Katolik Widya Mandira,will an international seminar on The Power of ProximitybetweenEastand West Timor. I am asked to give a talk about the 'historical link between Eastand West Timor, created by the Catholic Church'.
In my paper I will give comparisons, contrasts between the Moluccas and NTT. The British scholar of the period Charles R. Boxer is very positive about the Jesuits who worked in the Moluccas, butverycritical, even negative aboutthe Dominican Friars who worked in East Flores (Larantuka), Solor and Timor. Through accidental reasons (the Dutch gave priority to the Moluccas and banned the Jesuits from Ambon and that whole region in 1605), Catholicism disappeared from the Moluccas.
After 1800 he Portuguese several times tried to ban all religious orders (the Jesuits already worldwide from the 1770s) and only remnants of Catholicism continued in these islands. Most Obvious were the giant crosses that were erected in many places. It is still popular among people from the region to plant these crosses, as seen below.  This is a cross recetly erected in Laktutus, onthe border between Indonesian Timor and Timor Leste.

While reading more in Boxer about the topic, I came across his biography of Francisco Vieira de Figueiredo. Here he quotes Pieter van Dam, the VOC official who never made the trip to Indonesia, but was head of its office in Amsterdam. He underlined that the Dutch never could establish a permanent occupation of the southeaster islands, because their were loved by the population. The Portuguese were successful , thank ‘to their priests and clergy having got most of the natives on their side; and having thus secured a great advantage over us, they have been able to reap the full benefits’.  This is quite an unexpected appraisal about the great work done by the Dominican Friars in this region. The VOC kept his description secret and it was only published in the 20th century!

A universal medicine with the name of Darurat?

In 2016 the MUI, the Council of Muslim Clerics of Indonesia issued a fatwa about the prevention of the rubella disease through vaccination. The common method through preventive vaccination is haram, because gelatine is used, usually made from pork skin or bones. Although chemically changed, it should still be considered as haram.
This fatwa looked quite similar to the former fatwa against the extremely popular fast food of instant Mie about 15 years ago. That was a nice issue for the MUI because it opened the financial gold mine of registration the halal character of all kind of food, against a proper financial payment. I heard from well informed people that this is now the true financial basis of the MUI, which formerly was paid by the State (in fact the Ministry of Religions). Halal certification is big business, also in non-Muslim countries like the Netherlands, but definitely in Indonesia.

The couple Jokowi-Ma'ruf Amin at a hospital for their medical examination

Now Ma'ruf Amin is in a problematic situation. As candidate to become Vice-President, but also head of NU and of MUI, he is considered responsible for quite dramatic cases of children with many defections because of the spread of rubella since the fatwa of 2016. Instead of 90%, in this year only 50% of the children have been vaccinated and in Aceh the percentage has dropped to 7% only.
Ma'ruf Amin has now given a quite verbose declaration, where he stated that in case of darurat (urgent situation) the haram status is nullified and it is allowed to practice  vaccination. The situation is quite chaotic now and we will see whatcomes of the debate.

Shafaatun finds her way again

This is the first blog of Relindonesia2: after ten years writing regularly messages about Religion in Indonesia, I bought a new computer and can no longer send message to the former blog. I hope that this second series of Relindonesia may be continued forthe next ten years and find as many readers as its predecessor.
First about another change in the life of myself and my wife, Paule Steenbrink-Maas. We moved from the big house to a nice appartment in a big building, also in Utrecht. Its name is Rheyngaerde and it has 108 appartments.  It looks mor orless like a traditional longhouse in Minangkabau or Dayak area: many families sharing some facilities, but also living in their own appartment.
Inthe big house we could easily have up to five-six visitors, here the facilities arelimited. But still some Indonesians could find us in the first two months: Father Dr. John Prior from Maumere cane for a long weekend. Elga Sarapung followed. Finally for a short week we had Shafaatun Almirzanah as a guest.

Here you find above a selfie of Karel Steenbrink(= this author) with Shafa and my wife, Paule. Below is the pond in front of the town hall and the cemetery of the little old town of Oudewater, where my parents lived a long period of their lives. On the background there are three statues of ladies washing their hair. The trees are called in Dutch treurwilgen or weeping willows
With Shafa the talk seldom moves towards the two  great mystics and  philosophers she studied for her dissertation, Meister Eckehart and Ibnu 'Arabi, but mostly on the present state of religion in Indonesia with a strong turn towards Salafism.  But from the Christian side we could her not give a very positive account, due to the general problem of the sexual misconduct of the clergy in so many countries.
In the margin of this we also asked:  when will thisbe an open debate in Indonesia about the pesantren: homosexuality within these communities and the older classes dominating and urging the younger ones?  And what about kiai who marry very young, even extremely young girls? Their parents like these engagements, but what about the young girls?
Finally, Shafa left our country amidst a quite heavy storm, to Iran: she wisely said that interreligious dialogue is  more easily found between the various world religions than amongst denominations within one great religion. We wish her good success in hermission of dialogue, also in Iran.