Sjahadah — Dutch/Atjehnese spelling of Arabic shahāda (شهادة), “testimony”, the Islamic declaration of faith — is the formula lā ilāha illā-llāh, Muḥammadun rasūl-ullāh (“there is no god but God, Muhammad is the messenger of God”) that, in Islamic tradition, marks the entry of a person into the Muslim community. The term is recorded in Prof. Dr. Kernkamp’s chapter De invloed van den Islam in Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk (1946) in two contexts: as the social-equality formula that undermined the coastal-interior dynamic of northern Sumatra (in F. A. Wagner’s parallel chapter), and as the formula whispered into the ear of the newborn Atjeh child.
Kernkamp’s account: the newborn
Kernkamp introduces the sjahadah in his discussion of Islamic life-cycle rites: “To the new-born child is at once whispered a religious formula, for boys and girls different, in which the confession of faith occurs. The child may not run the risk of dying without first having been introduced to that truth, but one ties the divine truth in a very peculiar way to a far from pure-Muslim train of thought.” The whispering of the sjahadah into the newborn’s ear — a rite known in Islamic tradition as the taʾdhīn — is, in Atjeh, performed immediately after birth, before the formal naming on the seventh day, before the ʿaqīqah sacrifice, and before any of the other life-cycle rites of infancy.
Wagner’s account: the social-equality formula
In his chapter Kunst, F. A. Wagner gives the sjahadah a different significance: as the social-equality formula of the Muslim Umma that, in his account, gave the coastal Muslim peoples of Sumatra (the Atjehers, Boeginezen, Makassaren, Mandarezen) their strategic advantage over the still-animist interior. Wagner’s wording: “On Sumatra, Celebes and later also Borneo it was the coastal peoples — Atjehers, Boeginezen, Makassaren, Mandarezen and a few others — who converted to the new doctrine. They were the ones who kept the tribes that inhabited the interior cut off from the coast and prevented Islam from also penetrating into those regions. For if the adoption of Islam by the conquered peoples were to follow, the dominant position of the coastal peoples would be lost; the required social equality would certainly have had a great influence.” The “required social equality” is, in Wagner’s reading, the equality of all who have pronounced the sjahadah — an equality that, if extended to the interior peoples, would have undone the coastal Muslims’ political dominance.
Significance for Atjeh
For the Atjeh-focused reader, the sjahadah is significant in two distinct registers. As a life-cycle rite, it marks the entry of the Atjehnese newborn into the Muslim community — performed at birth, before any other rite, in the conviction that the child “may not run the risk of dying without first having been introduced to that truth”. As a social-equality formula, it underwrote the coastal Muslims’ dominance over the still-animist interior of northern Sumatra — a dominance that lasted, in the case of the Atjehers, from the thirteenth-century Islamisation of Samudra until the late-nineteenth-century Dutch colonial conquest of the interior Gajo and Alas lands.
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
- Meunasah — village prayer-house
- pen — open/wide (Atjeh concept)
- sjahadah — declaration of faith
- sjahada — declaration of faith
- Atjeh — Aceh
- Atjehers — Acehnese
- Acheh — Aceh
- Borneo — Borneo
- Celebes — Celebes
- Sumatra — Sumatra
- Gajoland — Gayo country
- Gajo — Gayo
- Alaslanden — Alas lands
- Alasland — Alas land
- Alas — Alas
- Samudra — Samudra
- Minangkabau — Minangkabau
- Boeginezen — Bugis
- Makassaren — Makassarese
- Mandarezen — Mandarese
- zen — Zen
- cut — title of honour (Atjeh)
- Prof. Dr. — Professor Doctor
- Dr. — Doctor
See Also
- Sembahjang
- Mesigit
- Meunasah
- Islamization of Gajo and Alaslanden (1300-1600)
- Conversion of Minangkabau via Atjeh (c. 1550)
- F. A. Wagner
- Acheh
- C. Snouck Hurgronje
- 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. 99 (chapter De invloed van den Islam door Prof. Dr. W. J. A. Kernkamp) and p. 163 (chapter Kunst door F. A. Wagner).