Kaffir

Kaffir is an Arabic term for non‑believer used in the Malay translation of the Burda to describe those who are blind to the prophetic signs. The poem contrasts the enlightened believers with the kāfir who “refuse the signs of the messenger”.

Kafir — the Arabic term for unbeliever, in Acehnese usage kaphè — was applied to the Dutch by the Acehnese, and was quoted in that sense by H. van Kol in the Tweede Kamer on 16 November 1897.

Usage in Acehnese Texts

Acehnese scholars employed the term to denounce rival Muslim factions and foreign powers, especially during the Aceh War (c. 1873–1904). The Burda’s language reinforced a binary worldview of faith versus disbelief.

Account from Kruisheer’s ATJEH ‘96 — Kafi / Kafir in 1896

Kafi — also kafir, kafr — was the Achehnese rendering of Arabic كافر, “unbeliever”, “infidel”, the term the Achehnese used for the Dutch colonial enemy throughout the Atjeh-oorlog. Kruisheer’s ATJEH ‘96 quotes the term directly in a key passage on Teuku Umar’s pre-defection conduct: “elke schade aan materieel en menschenlevens door Oemar, tijdens hij den ‘kafi’ diende…” (“every damage to matériel and lives caused by Oemar while he served the ‘kafi’…”). The label was applied not only to the Dutch as such but, after Umar’s defection, to Umar himself and his bands by the oelama Teungkoe Tanah Abée — a remarkable reversal in which the religious hierarchy declared the defector to have become an unbeliever for having served the Dutch. Panglima Polim’s condition for any cooperation with Umar after the defection was likewise framed in the language of the kafi: Umar must first prove he had broken with the unbeliever.

Etymology and Meaning

The word kafir is Arabic, the active participle of kafara (to disbelieve, to be ungrateful). In Quranic usage a kāfir is one who rejects the message of Islam; in Islamic jurisprudence the term carries consequences for marriage, inheritance and the law of war. In the Acehnese context the term was applied specifically to the Dutch (and, by extension, to any Christian European) and was the operational counter-term to moslemin (Muslims), used to denote the enemy. Kruisheer’s spelling kafi reflects the Acehnese phonological adaptation: the final r of the Arabic is often dropped in spoken Acehnese, and the short vowel i substitutes for the i of the Arabic kāfir. The Dutch text preserves the original spelling in quotes (“‘kafi’”) to mark the term as an Achehnese utterance.

Historical Context of 1896

The label kafi was the ideological hinge of the Aceh War. It framed the conflict as a jihad, sabil Allah (path of God), and united the disparate Achehnese moekims and sagis against the colonial invader. Before his defection Teuku Umar was — by Kruisheer’s account — careful to ensure that his legion’s engagements with the moslemin were sham battles precisely because he was still in the service of the kafi and could not seriously fight fellow Muslims. After the defection, the oelama Teungkoe Tanah Abée labelled Umar and his bands kafir for having served the Dutch — a startling application of the term to a fellow Acehnese Muslim. Panglima Polim’s condition for cooperation with Umar — that Umar must first fight the kafi — shows the term functioning as a test of allegiance. The Dutch, in turn, recognised the potency of the label: Lt.-Gen. Vetter’s Proclamation of 27 April 1896 carefully distinguished Umar personally from the populations of the VI and IV Moekims, promising no harm where no resistance was met.

Examples in the Source

Kruisheer’s principal direct quotation of the term is the passage on Umar’s pre-defection conduct: “elke schade aan materieel en menschenlevens door Oemar, tijdens hij den ‘kafi’ diende…” — a passage that explicitly identifies the Dutch as the kafi whom Umar had served. The labelling of Umar himself as kafir by Teungkoe Tanah Abée is recorded in the discussion of the religious hierarchy’s response to the defection. Panglima Polim’s condition — that Umar must first fight the kafi before any cooperation — is recorded in the spy reports on Polim’s movements in the XXII Moekims after the defection. The term is also implicit in the Achehnese shouts heard during the 4 April 1896 night attack on Lamkoenjit, where the enemy used the term Kompeni (Company), i.e. the Dutch as a near-synonym.

Significance of the Kafi Label in 1896

The kafi label is the conceptual foundation of the religious framing of the Aceh War. Without it, the conflict would have been a colonial war among factions; with it, the war was sabil Allah — a Muslim duty of resistance against the unbeliever. The label’s malleability (it could be turned against Umar himself) shows both its discursive power and its vulnerability to intra-Muslim contestation. The Dutch strategic response — attempting to detach individual hoeloebalang from the religious framing, treating the war as a question of allegiance rather than of faith — was a sustained attempt to neutralise the kafi label’s force. The survival of the term in post-war Acehnese memory testifies to its enduring ideological weight.

The passage

Explaining the religious character the resistance had taken, Van Kol said: “Het is fanatisme dat hen drijft: maar wij hebben dat fanatisme opgewekt; in den langen strijd tegen de meest gehate van alle „Kafirs” (en dat zijn wij door ons verleden en ons heden), hebben wij van een manmoedig verzet tegen vreemde indringers een heiligen strijd gemaakt, een volks-oorlog, waarvoor zij verwachten dat Allah hen in den Hemel beloonen zal.” — It is fanaticism that drives them: but we have awakened that fanaticism; in the long struggle against the most hated of all „Kafirs” (and that we are, by our past and our present), we have made of a manly resistance against foreign intruders a holy struggle, a people’s war, for which they expect that Allah will reward them in Heaven.

The parenthesis — “en dat zijn wij door ons verleden en ons heden” — is Van Kol’s own concession: that the Dutch had earned the character of the most hated of all unbelievers by their past and their present conduct alike, and not merely by their religion.

Significance in the debate

The term marks the point at which Van Kol’s political argument became a religious one. His thesis was that the war had been transformed by Dutch action from a territorial defence into a prang sabil, and that the transformation was irreversible: the fighters who died as jahid’s did so in a struggle whose religious definition the Dutch had themselves supplied. From this followed the argument set out at Atjeh onneembaar — that killing Acehnese did not diminish the fighting strength of the resistance but rather increased it, since every man who fell laid on his kinsmen the duty of blood revenge.

Sources

16th‑century Malay translation of the Burda of al‑Busiri, DLP‑54, “Een 16de eeuwse Maleise vertaling van de Burda van al‑Busiri”, pp. 59‑65, 20260707_232246_DLP-54-Een_16de_eeuwse_Maleise_vertaling_van_de_Burda_van_al_Bu_s_i_ri_OCR.txt.

ATJEH ‘96, door A. Kruisheer, Kapitein der Infanterie O.I.L., met 2 kaarten en 4 portretten (Weltevreden: N.V. Boekhandel Visser & Co, 1913). Instituut Kern, Leiden. OCR-filename: 20260715_163243_DLP-89-Atjeh_96_Met_2_kaarten_en4_DOORA_KRUISHEER_Kapiteinder_Infanterie_nemoretriever-ocr-v1_OCR.txt, pp. 45, 82.

Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer: Debatten bij de behandeling der begrooting van Nederlandsch-Indië voor 1898, uitgave van de Sociaaldemokratische Arbeiderspartij in Nederland (Amsterdam: J. A. Fortuijn, 1897). Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, Br P95-178, p. 12.

Acknowledgement of sources. This article combines material from the publications cited above; the material newly added derives from Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer (Amsterdam: J. A. Fortuijn, 1897) and Een strijd in Atjeh (Rotterdam: N.V. Drukkerij Korteweg for the Vereeniging „SIMAVI”, 1934). Dutch passages are quoted in the original with an English rendering. Atjèh and the War with Japan, by Dr. A. J. Piekaar, translated from the Dutch original Atjèh en de oorlog met Japan (1949) (‘s-Gravenhage/Bandung: N.V. Uitgeverij W. van Hoeve; English edition), Glossary, Chapter I § 1, Chapter III § 3, Chapter VI.

tags	concept, religious, islamic, achehnese, military, aceh-war, islam, religion, terminology
aliases	Kafir, non‑believer, Kafi, Kafr, Kafirs, Kafirun, unbeliever, kaphe, Kaphé, kafé, infidel

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