Tjilik Riwut (1918-1987) and the creation of Agama Hindu-Kaharingan in Central Kalimantan

On the same day of the first day of the Hizmet Conference in Brussels, police searched for complices of the last November attacks of paris. But one week later, Tuesday 22 March, terrorist attacks took place on Zeventem Airport and in the metro, on the very place of the Wetstraat where also had passed on the 15th.

Another topic: in Leiden I met last week Risa Aizawa from Rikkyo University in Tokyo. She wrote a PhD on Traja conversion to Christianity and holds now a Postdoc fellowship for two years in Leiden for research onthe rise of Kaharingan religion and its ambivalent relation to Protestant missions. Maybe there is a Catholic factor as well. Rikkyo University is the Anglican counterpart of the Sophia University in Tokyo, which is a Catholic and Jesuit institution.
I will still have to do my own homework for the MSF missionaries of Banjarmasin and their contact with Kaharingan. I have read some more material than I did for the chapter in A History of Christianity in Indonesiai (pp 497-9). I mention here Tjilik Riwut as a Protestant assistent to Heinrich Schärer, the Basler Mission scholar and missionary, but also as a short-term convert to Catholicsm in the 1940s (because of a marriage in Java). Anyway, he further developed as a cultural, political and religious nationalist. I have to ask P.M. Laskon further about him!

An interesting study on Kaharingan is by Martin Georg Baier, who read the books published in Central Kalimantan for primary and secondary schools, classes of Kaharingan religious instruction. Baier notices developments in Kaharingan, adaptations to modern Indonesian monotheism (as is also clear in Balinese Hindu booklets). In his discussion of the sources Baier is quite critical and suspicious about Riwut. What Riwut writes is often not documented. He takes long quotes from Adatrechtbundel when it is only written about one tribue and proclaims this as something valid for all Kaharingan (or all Dayaks). The High God of the Dayak has a co0nsort, a lady who is labelled by him as an 'angel', always close to the Highest God.  He identifies Ranying Hatalla 'with the Muslim and Christian God, who has no wife, no children and degrades the members of his family to angels'. (Dari Agama politeisme ke Agama Ketuhanan yang maha esa (2008?, 32).
This is an interesting observation of what also happens with Hinduism and Buddhism in Indonesia. I will have to give more attention to this interesting phenomenon in Indonesian religiosity.

A sad meeting of Gülen people in Brussels

A Gülen Chair is one of the many elements of a national branch of the Hizmet Movement (besides schools, dialogue centre, media, charity, journalists and writers association). The Leuven Chair began in 2011 or 2012 with Johan Leman as the first professor. 15-16 March 2016 an International Symposium was held in Brussels under the title of Countering violent extremism: Mujahada and Muslims' Responsibility.
About 60 national branches of the movement had sent representatives and people interested to attend the meeting. There were about some 30 participants from the Netherlands among the 300/400 people. Among the first I met were two from UIN Jakarta: Prof. Dr. Masykuri Abdillah (director of the Graduate School of Pasca Sarjana) and Dr. Ali Unsal, Director of the Gülen Chair at Syarif Hidayatullah (UIN) in Ciputat/Jakarta. He speaks fluent Indonesian!  This is quite different from what I heard about the Gülen school in Semarang, but I was really happy to see and hear this development of a Gülen corner in my first Alma Mater in Indonesia.
For the illustrations of this story I include some pictures of with special hat, turbans or other cover on their head.

People from the seven Muslim cultures can be seen through this special covering of the head.
The talks, debates in plenary sessions and workshops were all about the specific theme. But in the individual discussions there were many stories about the tragedy of the split between Erdogan and Gülen since mid-2013 (Gezi Park demonstrations). It was not only the closing of Zaman or even the stealing of this major symbol and instrument of the Gülen Movement. Wives of Gülen teachers abroad arriving in Turkey see their passports cut in pieces, because they are on the list of Gülen people. A man who had donated money for a student at a Gülen school: put in prison. The richest business people have lost their property, put in prison and their business taken over by the government. People who donated money to Kimse Yok Mu, the charity of Gülen now know that they will be on the blacklist.
There was a debate about examples in history when such a state attack on a religious organization had occurred. The Jesuits were banned in many European countries between 1760-1820, first in France, Spain, Austria and finally also by the pope and the Vatican. In the 1860s Catholic religious orders were banned from educational activities by the German government (Kulturkampf). It became clair to me that the situation of the attack against the Gülen or Hizmet related activities is much morw widespread and more intense than I thaught until now.

Like with so many Gülen events, there were many more Western academics given a talk than Gúlen people themselves. Paule Weller (above) from Derby University in the UK was one of the best in formulating the difficult subject of what terrorism and extremism, radicalism etc. is.  Below a picture of myself with a Kurdish participant.
In fact we were not even able to give good definitions of the long series of radicalism, violent extremism etc., let alone to formulate a good medicine for this social disease, but it was a good meeting.
On Dutch television Prof. Beatrice de Graaf gave a historical overview of 4 terrorist movements in the last 150 years: 10 the anarchist from Bakoenin, 1870s until 1914: First World War; 2) nationalist movements from Algeria, Ireland, to Indonesia, finally successful, between 1920-1960; 3) leftist movements between 1970-1990 (dying out with the end of Communism). Among these Rote Armee. 4) Islamic extremism since the 1990s.

Hizmet in Africa

Monday 14 March the Dialogue Centre INS of Rotterdam held a meeting in The Hague (not at a great distance, and in cooperation with the new branch of INS in The Hague: some Hizmet people are really fond of founding again and again new organizations!). The occasion was the visit by former American Ambassador to East African countries (last in Ethiopia 1997-9) and the book this man, David  H. Shinn, wrote about Hizmet in Africa. The activities and Significance of the Gülen Movement, (Los Angeles: Tsehai 164pp; 2015).

Shinn was in the region in the period  1983-2000 and then moved to Washington, to teach in an academic position. It is a no-nonsense book with chapters 3-7 on the major activities. 3 is about the business people who entered the region (often before embassies were established, in 2008 only slightly over ten embassies in Sub-Shara Africa; this changed to 27 in 2014). In 2008 there were already Hizmet schools in 27 African countries. Business people of TUSKON began with the first activities. They also introduced Bank Asya as a shari'a interest-free banking system. Chapter 4 is about the schools. There is only one in the Arab speaking countries of North Africa (in Morocco),because Arab people seem to be less receptive to Hizmet and the Gülen Movement (46, also 67, 74, 131-4).  Nigeria has at least 17 schools and the only Hizmet university in Africa. Chapter 5 is about the Dialogue Centres, 6 about Kimse Yok Mu, 7 about the media.

Chapters 1/2 and 8/9 have more general discussions about the international Gülen movement. Shinn has some criticism: the teachers who were sent from Turkey sometimes have a poor command of English. The same I heard from the son of Syafa Almirzanah who followed the Hizmet school  in Semarang. This boy was in a primary school in the USA and found the Turkish teachers also quite deficient in their English.
Shinn describes Hizmet in Africa as a very Turkish organization. Most students in schools and also people who join the TUSKON activities think that these are initiatives  by the Turkish State and not by a religious organization, based on the teachings of Fethullah Gülen. In these societies the influence is also quite recent and still very modest.
The whole Muslim world is divided in seven great cultures that are quite separate: the three old ones (Arab, Persia, Turkish) remain distinct. The three later regions (India/Pakisten, Southeast Asia and Subsahara Africa) also have their own organizations. Probably support for the ideas of Gülen is most artuculated in the most recent Muslim culture of the western countries of Europe and America.
I have written more about this book, but will place the longer version of the review on Academia.edu.

Turbans

For the CMR project: the bibliography of Christian-Muslim Relations, i have written the entry on Rumphius (together with Lucien van Liere). Rumphius is a naturalist, interested in geology, but most of all in biology, plants and animals. He writes also about circumcision in Ambon: pre-Islamic and the Protestant ministers were not able to ban it from the Christian community.
The most obvious sign of being Muslim is wearing a turban, while Christians wear the Dutch hat. He has a nice (but also cruel) story of  Joan Paijs from Hative, a Christian village on the eastern beach of Hitu. Close to the 'Muslim half' of Ambon, or even encircled by it. At one moment in history Joan Paijs joined the Muslims against the Dutch and converted to Islam. He was taken to Ambon castle where he was interrogated. In the book by Livinus Bor on the war of 1651-1566 of Arnold de Vlaming van Oudshoorn, it is told that  when he was asked why he had joined the Muslim party, although born a Christian he is quoted to have said: Het Kristen geloof (dit waren Pays eige woorden), is voor my maer een uiterliken schijn, want ik Moors van inborst ben (Christianity is only and outward appearance for me –according to his own words- because my soul is Muslim). 

But the story of Rumphius is even more interesting. In the process it was mentioned that he had slept often with a turban (Historie I:53-56). Also other documents from this period tell us that wearing a turban, rather than circumcision, was the outward sign of being a Muslim (Niemeijer and Van den End 2015: I:248, Muslims re-converting to Christianity burn their turbans). Rumphius has here nice additions to the story of Livinus Bor. The society as suggested by Rumphius shows the mirror image of the Ottoman empire with its dhimmi status for non-Muslims. In the Moluccan VOC territory the Muslims could be ruled by their own people, had some freedom for free practice of their religion, but conversions were prohibited and there were special privileges for Christians as members of the dominating religion.

For this issue I looked also inthe six volumes of Niemeijer/Van den End on the Protestant Documents for East Indonesia in the VOC period. There are 8 places where the turban in mentioned as a signof a Muslim identity. Among these some three stories of villages who (re)converted to Christianity and as a sign of this they set fire to their turbans (I,1:248) or took of their turban. Propagating Islam takes place through the donation of beautiful and splendid turbans (I,1 412; II,1: 155).

Hardliners versus soft voices: LGBT in Jakarta and Kotagede

The Universitas Indonesia in Jakarta-Depok is planning-developing a Resource Center for Sexuality Studies, with a Support Group. This initiative was denounced by Muhammad Nasir, minister of Research and Higher Education in the Jokowi Cabinet. He also added that he considered the initiative as a support for homosexuals and ´violators of the moral values of Indonesia´.
His call was followed by a rare common declaration of the major religions of Indonesia: Majelis Ulama Indonesia, MUI, the Conference of Catholic Bshops, KWI, the Buddhsts of Walubi and the High Council of Confucians in Indonesia. Majelis Tinggi Agama Khonghucu Indonesia or MATAKIN. No reason was given why the Protestants and Hindus were not part of this declaration (UCAN, 10-02-2016).
A critical voice in this debate was of Franz Magnis Suseno (UCAN, 18 February 2016). He stated that sexual orientation is something discovered by an individual person on the way to adulthood. This must be accepted and not discriminated because people are born in natural diversity. Most of them are attracted to the other sex, but if this is not the case, people should not be discriminated. Magnis Suseno rejects the idea of a blessing or legal possibility for a homosexual marriage. 'And it is not necessary because these couples will have no children. And marriage is for the legalisation of children. But how these homosexual couples act according to their own will and in private live, is not a matter for the state and other people.´

In Islamic Law there is a third category besides man and woman: the hermaphrodyte. In fiqh books they are mentioned as a status between man and woman. For Indonesia the word is waria, (a word combining wanita-pria). In the debate this concept is not mentioned until now.
A small house, called pondok-pesantren Al Fatah was opened in 2012 in Kotagede, Sayangan, under supervision/connectin to Nahdlatul Ulama, especially for transgenders. It became the focus for protests by FPI, Front Pembela Islam, but also for supporters of this initiative. Initially the local police defended the place, a private house on Joglo style, built in the 1800s for a family and donated for this purposem by the family of its director, Shints Ratri. The best known transgender is Maryani, who  failed to make the hajj-pilgrimage in 2013. The following year she was successful to do it. She died in 2014. Notwithstanding the support of NU leaders, the police later withdraw the protection and closed the religious school on 25 February 2016 to defend 'public order' (it is located in a narrow street; at events many youngsters come and bloc the road with their motorbikes). - Will be continued.

Postcolonial Comparisons

George-Henry Bousquet (1900-1978) is a famous scholar on Islam in North Africa, as well as on Al-Ghazali and sexual ethics. In the mid-1930s he made a comparative study of colonialisms, especially their policy towards Islam. The British were lazy and ignorant according to him: through indirect rule they allowed all kind of old traditions. Shari'a courts could continue as such, without interference. The Dutch were over-active. They had taken over the authority of most indigenous rulers and in the field of marriage and family law, as well as inheritance. They created but also controlled facilities for islamic courts. Snouck Hurgronje even started the practice to examine candidates for penghulu or high mosque officials who also presided the shari'a courts. The French were most perfect according to Bousquet: they imposed their own culture in public life. I have written elsewhere on this subject.

The director of KITLV  since about a decade, Gert Oostindië was mostly known as a specialist in the Caribbean colonialism of the Netherlands, but he is now working more broadley, including Indonesia as well. Only recently I read his book of 2010: Postkoloniaal Nederland (Postcolonial Netherlands: a history of 65 years of forgetting, of memorial days and repression).

Oostindie included Portugal in the comparison, but as to Muslims there are very few from the former Protuguese colonies. France and Britain  have large Muslim communities: in France from Algeria, Tunesia, West Africa. In the UK from Pakistan, India, East Africa and Nigeria. British migrants were much better educated than those who arrived from North and West Africa to France. This has for our generation made these Muslim communities quite different.
In the Netherlands Oostindië sees three major groups of migrants from Indonesia in the later 1940s and 1950s: Eurasians, Moluccans and Chinese. All three groups counted very few Muslims and therefore they are not the pillars for the Muslim community in the Netherlands. In the 1970s quite a few migrants came from Surinam: about one third of that colony (out of 500,000) opted for the European country. Among them were a quite strong group of Muslims who originally migrated from India to Surinam. There was also a smaller group of Muslims from Java who lived for about three generations and now form a small community in the Netherlands. But much larger groups of Muslims came after 1965 from Turkey and Morocco and therefore Dutch society considers Islam mostly as a Turkish and Moroccan religion.

Look at the green colour above: about one third of migrants to European countries is Muslim, but on the whole the number is only 6% and will rise probably to not much more than 8% in this generation.
Especially France has had a strong tradition of a secular society, laicité, not giving attention to religion as a cultural force and relating it to private sphere only. French society had a strong feeling of mission civilatrice, a cultural mission, without giving much attention to religion (pp. 213-6). In this way the colonial characteristic of Bousquet has been continued until now. The cruel attacks in Paris last year may have been partly caused by this strong secular sentiment in society.
In the United Kingdom there is still a feeling of Britishness and some continuation of pride: the colonial empire is still a reason of pride and glory for many British people and they resent that this glory has gone forever now. But instead, Britain itself has been turned into a multicultural society with a strong acceptance of differences between communities, as long as they do not interfere too much the other traditions. A national Commission on Integration & Cohesion published in 2007 a report on Our shared future and the colonial past was not even mentioned here. We should never exaggerate the burden of the past, surely not when it is once called the white man's burden!

The seven plagues of Indonesia, according to Jaspert Slob

Living in Holland, retired from university, most of my contact with Indonesia is through historical documents. Nowadays it is often for writing for the great CMR project, Christian-Muslim Relations, a Bibliographical History. This is about Coen, Rumphius, Pieter van Dam and other VOC officials. But besides through personal contacts, there is daily news, reading the Jakarta Post and UCAN News in an Indonesian daily bulletin. Magazines like Hidup or the website Mirifica.com are not really important or people abroad. I read also once a month the blog by Lambertus Hurek, a journalist in Surabaya, originally from Lembata. He has much news about Flores, Catholics in Java, his contacts with Muslim society in Surabaya. Like a friend in a distant country! His blog has some 16.000 hits per week. Ten times more than mine! But there is also a weekly service, provided by Jaspert Slob, once a lecturer at a theological seminary in Indonesia (Manado, 1976-1983) and between 2005-2010 (more or less so) animator for Muslim-Christian encounter in Salatiga, together with his wife Josien Folbert.

 

Jaspert sends every week two emails to a circle of friends about what is going on in Indonesia, especially related to religious and socsial development. It is raw material, taken from newspaper and magazines. Much from the internet. It is usually bad news, because most news is about problems that yet have to be solved. Below I give a summary of the sending of last Saturday, week 6 of 2017, early February 2016. I gave it the title of The seven plagues of Indonesia. This week the series counts 27 pages, besides the summary of one page only
1. Papua. Jaspert is very much involved in the fate of this most eastern part of Indonesia. He reports about a 'Day of memory' in the Netherlands, Amersfoort, where some 100 people came together, to discuss human right abuses.
2. Terrorism. Coordinating Minister for safety/law and order wants to extend law 15/2003 against terrorism. He proposes that anything said or done against the unity of Indonesia must be seen as terrorism. Vague definitions are very dangerous and do not really help. A democratic society also needs criticism.
3. Poso. Actual terrorism is still around in Poso. A police officer was shot close to the town of poso, while terrorists still have a base in the forest of this region.
4. PKS is not only a political party, working in the democratic system, but also an activist organization seeking to reach its goal of an Islamic society through any means, mostly through small cells.
5. RUU, there is a proposal for the bill on the protection of religious life (the new formulation for the old Bill on Religious Harmony): rancangan Undang-undang Perlindungan Hidup Beragama. Lukman Hakim has formulated here five problems: a) what about the religious groups outside the big six? allow? ban? b) how to regulate religious propaganda, directed to people outside one's own group? c) building permits for houses of worship; 4. internal definition of doctrines in the big religions; e) FKUB, the formal encounter of religions at the level of provinces, districts and sub-districts.
6. Dissidents like the mayor of Bogor who fights a court decision allowing the building of a church, but supports and attends the opening of a new office of Hizbut Tahrir, an organization that does not recognize the Indonesian State.
7. Corruption. Realistic goals are often forgotten and covered by empty slogans. One of these is about Manokwari as the City of the Gospel, but it is dangerous due to drunkenness. Further political parties: there is much wrong in GOLKAR, the party of the vice-president Yusuf Kalla, but also the president, Jokowi, only pays lip-service to the fight against corruption.