“Een ledig monument onzer dwaasheid” — Dutch for “an empty monument of our folly” — is the verdict pronounced by Snouck Hurgronje on the Dutch-built replacement Meuseugit Raja of Koeta Radja, the great mosque constructed by the colonial government in Byzantine style at a cost of more than f 200,000 (over 200,000 guilders) to replace the original Atjeh great mosque destroyed in the burning of 1873. The verdict is quoted by Prof. Dr. Kernkamp in his chapter De invloed van den Islam in Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk (1946).
Kernkamp’s account
Kernkamp introduces the verdict in the course of his discussion of the Indonesian mosque. His wording: “The only more or less pompous mosque, in Koeta Radja, built in Byzantine style, was built by us and offered to the Atjehsche population to replace the Meuseugit Raja, which was shot to fire in 1873. The gesture was grand enough, for it then already cost more than 2 tons. The success was not proportionate. The Atjehers considered the religious exercises in this God’s house built by kåfirs (unbelievers) as worthless. Snouck Hurgronje spoke of ‘an empty monument of our folly’.”
The verdict’s meaning
The verdict captures, in a single phrase, Snouck Hurgronje’s assessment of the colonial government’s attempt to undo the religious damage done by the burning of the original Meuseugit Raja in 1873. The Dutch-built replacement mosque — a “pompous” building in Byzantine style, costing more than 200,000 guilders — was, in Snouck Hurgronje’s view, an “empty monument”: empty in the literal sense, because the Atjehners refused to use it for religious exercises on the grounds that “religious exercises in this God’s house built by kåfirs (unbelievers)” were “worthless”; and a “monument of our folly” in the figurative sense, because the colonial government had imagined that the building of a replacement mosque by the infidel Dutch could undo the religious damage done by the original burning. The verdict is one of the most-cited assessments of the limits of Dutch colonial religious policy in Atjeh.
Significance
For the Atjeh-focused reader, the verdict is significant as the principal surviving assessment — by the colonial government’s own chief Islam adviser — of the limits of Dutch colonial religious policy in Atjeh. Snouck Hurgronje’s verdict that the Dutch-built replacement Meuseugit Raja was “an empty monument of our folly” places the same colonial government that had burned the original mosque in 1873 in the position of having spent more than 200,000 guilders on a building that the Atjehners refused to use. The verdict is also significant as a measure of Snouck Hurgronje’s own position: although he was the chief Islam adviser to the colonial government during the Atjeh war and the principal architect of the *korte verklaring* policy of Van Heutsz, he was capable of pronouncing the building of the replacement Meuseugit Raja a “folly” — that is, of distinguishing his own assessment of the limits of colonial religious policy from the policy actually pursued.
Dutch terms used in this article
- Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk — What the Indies Received and Gave
- Wereldbibliotheek N.V. — World Library Ltd.
- korte verklaring — Short Declaration
- invloed van den Islam — influence of Islam
- Meuseugit Raja — great mosque of Koeta Radja
- Meuseugit Raya — great mosque of Koeta Radja
- pen — open/wide (Atjeh concept)
- kåfirs — unbelievers
- kåfir — unbeliever
- Atjeh — Aceh
- Atjehers — Acehnese
- Atjehner — Acehnese
- Atjehsch — Acehnese (adjective)
- Acheh — Aceh
- Koeta Radja — Kutaradja
- Kutaradja — Kutaradja
- ledig monument onzer dwaasheid — empty monument of our folly
- Prof. Dr. — Professor Doctor
- Dr. — Doctor
See Also
- Burning of Meuseugit Raja (1873)
- Rebuilding of the Meuseugit Raya
- Meuseugit Raya
- Kutaradja
- C. Snouck Hurgronje
- Joannes Benedictus van Heutsz
- W. J. A. Kernkamp
- Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk
- 1873
Source
Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk, onder leiding van Dr. C. W. Wormser (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek N.V., 1946), p. 85 (chapter De invloed van den Islam door Prof. Dr. W. J. A. Kernkamp).