Panghoeloe — Dutch/Atjehnese spelling of standard Indonesian penghulu, from Malay peng- (agent-noun prefix) + hulu “head” — is the title of the chief religious official attached to a mosque, serving as the head of the mosque’s personnel and the administrator of its funds. The office is recorded in Prof. Dr. Kernkamp’s chapter De invloed van den Islam in Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk (1946) in his account of the mosque personnel of the Indies.
Kernkamp’s account
Kernkamp introduces the panghoeloe in the course of his discussion of the staff attached to the Indonesian mosque (mesigit). His wording: “To the mosque is attached, for all sorts of purposes, a fairly numerous personnel. One distinguishes foremen at the sembahjang (imam), preachers, that is to say simply readers of an Arabic sermon (chatib), summoners to invite [the faithful] to take part in the salát (usually called bilal, after the first Arabic occupant of the office), further a sort of sextons. Some titles and offices make Europeans easily think of spiritual leaders and one speaks thus of a ‘priesthood’. Wholly wrongly, for the Islam knows precisely no mediating instance between God and the individual (with the exception of the now no longer existing Prophets and Apostles). … Well, this is the case with the chief of the personnel, the so-called panghoeloe, called by Snouck Hurgronje not incorrectly ‘Mosquee-director’ (Moskee-directeur). The name gives the character of the office well. He is an official, who divides the work among his subordinates and administers the funds of the mosque, derived from pious gifts.”
Distinction from priest
Kernkamp is at pains to insist that the panghoeloe is not a priest: Islam “knows precisely no mediating instance between God and the individual” and “there are no sacraments that priests could distribute. Even the care of souls is no privilege or duty of a particular class of persons, but comes to every Muslim for his surroundings.” The panghoeloe is, rather, an administrator — the director of the mosque’s personnel and finances. His prestige in the Indies derives not from his directorship of the mosque but from the fact that “the office of kadi — judge according to the Muslim Law, in other lands usually entrusted to specialists — is in the Indies, faute de mieux, entrusted to him”. The panghoeloe’s effective authority in the Indies is thus a consequence of the colonial situation: in the absence of a properly trained class of Islamic jurists, the office of religious judge falls to the mosque director.
Significance for Atjeh
For the Atjeh-focused reader, the panghoeloe is significant as one of the principal religious offices of the Indonesian mosque. In Atjeh specifically, the Teungku performs many of the functions that elsewhere in the Indies are performed by the panghoeloe — the leadership of the village Meunasah and the supervision of its religious life — while the mesigit (the Friday mosque) in Koeta Radja and the other Atjeh towns would have had its own panghoeloe on the Indies pattern. Kernkamp’s citation of Snouck Hurgronje’s characterisation of the panghoeloe as “Mosquee-director” is itself notable: the formulation is Snouck Hurgronje’s, and reflects the same administrative-rationalising frame that Snouck brought to the reform of Atjeh religious institutions under Van Heutsz.
Dutch terms used in this article
- Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk — What the Indies Received and Gave
- Wereldbibliotheek N.V. — World Library Ltd.
- invloed van den Islam — influence of Islam
- kadi — religious judge
- imam — prayer-leader
- chatib — preacher
- bilal — caller to prayer
- panghoeloe — mosque director
- Teungku — religious teacher (Atjeh form)
- mesigit — Friday congregational mosque
- Meunasah — village prayer-house
- sembahjang — ritual prayer
- salát — ritual prayer
- sembah — reverential gesture
- pen — open/wide (Atjeh concept)
- Atjeh — Aceh
- Acheh — Aceh
- Koeta Radja — Kutaradja
- Kutaradja — Kutaradja
- Moskee-directeur — Mosque-director (Snouck’s coinage)
- Prof. Dr. — Professor Doctor
- Dr. — Doctor
See Also
- Sembahjang
- Mesigit
- Meunasah
- Teungku
- Imam of Longbatta
- C. Snouck Hurgronje
- Joannes Benedictus van Heutsz
- Acheh
- J. Kreemer
- Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk
- W. J. A. Kernkamp
Source
Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk, onder leiding van Dr. C. W. Wormser (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek N.V., 1946), p. 86 (chapter De invloed van den Islam door Prof. Dr. W. J. A. Kernkamp).