MN7 Mangkunegara 7

Only recently I read the book by Madelon Jayadiningrat, Vorst tussen twee werelden (2006). The author is married (since the 1970s) to a grandson of Mangkunegara VII (his daughter married dr. Husein Jayadinigrat, from Banten and the first Indonesian to receive a Ph.D in Leiden University). Her husband, Husein Jayadiningrat Jr. lived and worked as a psycbhologist in the Netherlands, so, she never lived in the palace of the Mangkunegara, but still is a member of the family. She could make use of many personal documents of the great ruler who was born in 1885, became successor of the throne in 1916 and died in 1944.

The book is written more as a historical novel than as a collection of sources for a dissertation (and it was also never meant as a trule academic exercise). It begins with the visit of Dutch painter Isaac Israëls who in 1922 made a portrait of the ruler. MN VII did not like it and also did no buy it, although he later regretted this and bought a copy.
A major theme in the book is the position of MN VII: as a feudal vasal who had to live with a variety of residents, some considering him as a good friend and cooperator, others more or less as a hindrance and opponent of Dutch colonial rule. MN VII liked to British rule in Malaysia, where the traditional rulers had much more authority. He tried to organise a Council of Local Rulers with the idea that they should be the kernel for a new Indonesian autonomy in harmony with the Dutch. It was not welcomed by the young nationalists, like Soekarno, but also not by the Dutch. Nothing came out of it.
MN VII was a fervent promotor of Javanese language and culture, although his Dutch was perfect and more and more people around him began to use Dutch too. He did not reject Islam as a religion, but did not like its functionaries and its detailed claim on many aspects of society. Initially this made him not enthusiast about a close Association with Husein Jajadiningrat who was from Banten and grown up in a family where formal Islam was much stronger than in Surakarta. Still, he liked Husein for his powerful position in Batavia, at the political centre. He also was not really in conflict with formal Islam. He was not too eager on drinking alcohol.
Mangkunegara VII regretted that after Ronggowarsito no new pujangga kraton was nominated. Such a person should inspire and formulate the spirit of Javanese culture (p. 83). Sarekat Islam was not seen by him as an Islamic, but as an etnic Javanese movement.
Pages 349-50: the British were much more lenient in giving privileges and power to native rulers than the Dutch. He felt really at home in Britain (after his visit to Holland, related to the marriage of Juliana, January 1937).
A wonderful book.
Some words written after reading the short notice by Merle Ricklefs on private versus state wealth in BKI 175.1:59-66. In the 1920s the financial position of the Mangkunegaran was quite good, while the Sunan had financial problems. Resident Nieuwenhuys had written in his Memorie van Overgave that the sunan had no private fortune other than the regalia, the pusaka (page 311).

Presidential elections: a competition in piety

Our Dutch newspaper, De Volkskrant, offers today information by Michel Maas about the presidential elections in Indonesia  under the title:Een wedstrijd in vroomheid om de stem van moslims.. Both Prabowo and Jokowi have shown outward concern for Islamic values. Already during 15 years Prabowo Subianto has tried to become president. In 2004 he found no party willing to support him, in 2009 he became running mate for Megawati and lost with bitter, low numbers. In 2014 he was stronger and got 46,85%. Not yet enough. Now his presentation in Senayan was like a Salafi religious meeting. Habib Rizieq the self-appointed Imam Besar and now in self-chosen exile in Mecca (because the police wants to arrest him in a case of sexual exposures) was in the stadium with giant photographs, banners of FPI and the (officially banned) Hizbut Tahrir. Alumni 212 support him: this refers to 2 December 2016, the great demonstration against the Protestant Governor of Jakarta, Ahok, who due to these protests had to enter jail for two years. Former President General Yudhoyono complained about this radical Islamic show and Prabowo had to seek also a Catholic priest and a Papua leader in his largest show before the elections.

Jokowi (above on the right) was in 2014 seen as the liberal, secular, but he reintroduced the effective execution of death penalty, did nothing to prevent the religious agitation against the Protestant Ahok and in order to show more Islamic personality even took Ma'ruf Amin as his vice-president. This NU leader had issued a fatwa against Ahok, claiming that a non-Muslim cannot/should not rule over Muslims. In his fatwa he called it forbidden or haram that Muslims should vote for a non-Muslim candidate. Besides support from Muslim circles, Jokowi also sought support from generals who were strong in the Suharto period. Wiranto, suspected of supporting the unrest in Timor and Ambon after the fall of Suharto, is an important member of the Jokowi government. Michel Maas mentions the Golput movement: voting without choosing between the two candidates, alias blanco, as a third possibility. It will only weaken Jokowi.

Muhammadiyah leader Amien Rais has already threatened that he will start a protest group if Prabowo is not chosen, 'because the majority of the population wants him and votes for him.' This is in contrast to 1998, when Amien Rais was himself a candidate for presidency and opposed Prabowo. Well, it is all politics, already in so many cases mixed up with religious sentiments. Perhaps we should ask or even pray the divinity to lessen his or her influence?

In memoriam Neles Tebay, 1946-2019

It was shocking news yesterday: on Palm Sunday, 14 April 2019, Father Dr. Neles Tebay passed away due to leukemia or blood cancer, in the Carolus Hospital of Jakarta. Neles was born in the mountainous regions of Indonesian Papua, the region of the Paniai lakes., and he published  one of his first articles in our journal Exchange on the vision of the Me people about the ideal human being and liberator, Jesus. I wrote in my book on Catholics in Independent Indonesia, p. 222, that he 'combines a deep concern for the need to foster and develop religious spirituality with the struggle for human rights in this part of Indonesia.' He studied at the Fajar Timur Seminary in Abepura, then for a MA in Manila and finally in the Urbaniana University in Rome (Ph.d. in 2006 on the Papua struggle for recognition of their own identity and independence). I was surprised that he quickly adapted to speaking Italian in Rome and felt at home in the world of the Vatican. He was several times in the Netherlands and we visited him in Abepura at Fajar Timur, where he was the rector, in 2009.

He was always a big, noisy, loud speaking and optimistic personality. Although the Catholics are a small minority in the northern section of Indonesian Papua, only 5% against more than 50% Protestants, he could become a major figure in the civil struggle for dialogue, recognition of human rights and freedom for Papua culture and concerns. This was partly because of the division of the Protestant Churches, partly also because of his realistic vision of absolute denial of the use of violence. He wanted dialogue, first between the Papua people themselves, then also with the national government in Jakarta. He was nominated something like the national embassador for dialogue by Jokowi.
From 2010 on he promoted the idea of Papua land of Peace, seen as an alternative for the violent efforts of those who supported a free and indepent West Papua. 'The idea of full independence as the goal of OPM, Organisasi Papua Merdeka was denounced by him as unrealistic at least for the short term.' (Same book, 362) But he was not a dull and meak fighter for peace in Papua: he was a powerful speaker and writer, Always with humour and concern to stay in good contact, naming but also solving conflicts. It is a great loss for Indonesia.

A convert to Islam in 1915: Carl Wolff Schoemaker

I am now finishing my last assignments for the great CMR: Bibliographical History of Christian Muslim Relations. In the entry on Ache I wrote about a father and a son. First the father: Jan Prosper Schoemaker was born in Ambarawa, south of Semarang, Fort Willem I, on 12 July 1852 apparently in a family of the KNIL, the Royal Dutch Indies Army. He married in 1877 and had three children between 1880 and 1886. He died in The Hague 23 February 1918. He was active in the KNIL in the 1870s and 1880s in Aceh and afterwards started a career as a writer on popular colonial history. His first book was on the Aceh War in two volumes, published in 1887 and 1890. They were followed by one on Lombok, another on wars in Java, Boni and Banjarmasin and several other works. He sometimes gave other titles to previous work and also published sections of it as separate booklets.  The two volumes on Aceh were also translated in Malay. Most of his books were several times reprinted in sometimes more than ten thousand copies. He was definitely a popular writer about the heroism of the colonial army. In 1908 he published with the prestigious firm of Brill a book on ‘the Asian Danger’ (Het Aziatisch Gevaar).  

The son is more adventurous: His son Charles Prosper Wolff Schoemaker (born 1882 in Banyubiru, Semarang, and died 1949 in Bandung) was a very successful architect in the last decades of colonial Indonesia. He was a professor at the Technical University of Bandung since 1922 and mentor of the first President of Indonesia, Soekarno. He converted in 1915 to Islam, but his five successive spouses were all Dutch ladies. In 1921 he became the architect for the new Catholic St. Peter’s Cathedral, built in neo-gothic style. In 1933 he built the mosque in the new European section of the town of Bandung on Nijlandweg (now Jalan Cipaganti). The mosque was built in traditional Javanese joglo-style with three roofs. However, in the history of architecture he is best known as the architect for great villas, like this Vila Isola (see above) in the mountains just outside Bandung. It was for one of the owners of the colonial newspapers in the 1920s.

In 1937 he published a small book of 116 pages, together with Muhammad Natsir, with the titel Cultuur Islam. It was reprinted in 1948 by Sinar Ilmu or Tintamas in Jakarta under the title of Keboedajaän Islam. In the copy I borrowed from KITLV/Asian Library in Leiden, there was a review by Baahrum Rangkuti. He writes that pages 67-114 are on international Islamic architecture and written by Schoemaker. The first section of the book must have been written by Natsir, although this is not clear from the book itself. The first section discusses early Muslim history, the results of the translation from Greek philosophers and other science to Arabic and the glory of Islam in Baghdad, Basra, Damascus, Toledo, Cordova. Quite much here about the excellence of medical knowledge with the Arabs, the decline of Europe in the period until 1100.
Wolff Schoemaker als writes about architecture of later periods like the Mughal of India and Muslim architecture in Indonesia.
Is this apologetic, a style so clearly rejected by Mukti Ali as not productive? While reading this material now, one may also conclude that this memory of the glory of Islam in previous centuries also may give confidence and pride to Muslims, esepcially in the colonial period. This somewhat apologetic pride about the past is better than the simple convictions of Salafi Muslims about a reclaimed but never changing past for doctrines and social commands.

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.