Nederland en de Islam (Snouck Hurgronje, 1911) — The Netherlands and Islam — is the published form of a series of lectures that Snouck Hurgronje, advisor to the Ministry of Colonies, had given to future colonial civil servants. The book appeared in 1911 and became the focus of the 1911 Indische begrotingsdebat in the Tweede Kamer. It is the canonical liberal formulation of the associatiepolitiek — the policy of cultural and political association between the Netherlands and its Muslim subjects — that underlay the ethical-policy state.
The central argument
Snouck argued that the Dutch state — religiously neutral — could not, and should not, attempt to convert its Muslim subjects to Christianity. The state should confine itself to “een actie, die bedoelt de inlanders op veel steviger wijze dan tot dusver het geval is, bij ons staatsverband en bij onze nationaliteit in te lijven” — an action intended to incorporate the natives far more firmly than hitherto into our state-association and our nationality. The argument is preserved by Vermeulen with the citation: “C. Snouck Hurgronje, Nederland en de Islam (1911), blz. 85 v.”.
On the relation of state and religion
The fullest expression of Snouck’s view of the relation of state and religion is preserved in the Vermeulen retrospective:
“De godsdienst, hoe gewichtig ook voor ons volks- en staatsleven, is zelfs in het kleine Nederland de band niet die ons samenbindt. Onze eenheid wortelt in algemene cultuurgedachten, tot welker vorming het christendom ongetwijfeld veel heeft bijgedragen, maar onder welker heerschappij niet slechts christenen van de meest uiteenlopende confessies, maar ook joden en vrijdenkers, met gelijke aanspraken op eerbiediging van hetgeen aan elke dier categorieën in het bijzonder eigen is, zich thuis gevoelen. Hieruit vloeit vanzelf voort dat noch van onze staat, noch van ons volk een propaganda kan uitgaan, die zich voorstelt mohammedaanse inlanders over te halen tot een religie, die onder ons een, zij het nog zo grote, kring van belijders telt. Een poging om de grondslagen te ondermijnen van het islamstelsel, dat het leven der inlanders deels beheerst en gaarne geheel zou willen beheersen, kan alleen van een religieuze gemeenschap, een kerk of vereniging voor zending, uitgaan; de staat kan daarbij slechts toezien, dat niemand in zijn vrijheid van beweging belemmerd worde.”
— Religion, however important for our national and political life, is not even in the little Netherlands the bond that binds us together. Our unity is rooted in general cultural ideas, in the formation of which Christianity has undoubtedly contributed much, but under the sway of which not only Christians of the most diverse confessions, but also Jews and freethinkers, with equal claims to respect for what is peculiar to each of these categories, feel at home. From this it follows automatically that neither from our state nor from our people can a propaganda proceed that proposes to convert Mohammedan natives to a religion that, among us, numbers a circle of adherents, however large. An attempt to undermine the foundations of the Islamic system, which partly governs the life of the natives and would gladly govern it wholly, can proceed only from a religious community, a church or society for missions; the state can only see to it that no one is hindered in his freedom of movement.
On the associatiepolitiek
Snouck hoped that the assimilation of western ideas by the natives — which would inevitably bring with it a striving for greater autonomy — would not lead to a rupture of the bond with the Netherlands. He hoped, on the contrary, that with a proper associatiepolitiek from the Dutch side, the Indonesians would of their own free will remain as equals within the realm. The “geestelijke annexatie” — spiritual annexation — that the Indonesians themselves increasingly pressed for was, in Snouck’s view, to be welcomed rather than resisted: “Men geeft er zich onder ons lang niet genoeg rekenschap van, hoe sterk die aandrang inderdaad wel is” — one does not sufficiently realise among us how strong that pressure in fact is.
The Kuyperian critique
In the 1911 begrotingsdebat Kuyper (a.r.) mounted a principled argument against the Snouck position. The neutral education Snouck advocated was, in Kuyper’s reading, equivalent to “modernistic” education; Kuyper’s rule for the Indies was: “de bizondere school regel, de gouvernementschool aanvulling” — the confessional school the rule, the government school a supplement. De Waal Malefijt — minister of Colonies — replied that he adhered to the position of his predecessors: no direct support for the zending, but strong support where the missions operated on social terrain.
Significance for Atjeh
The Nederland en de Islam ([[1911)|Nederland en de Islam]] lectures bear directly on Atjeh because the post-pacificatie administration of the sultanate was, in part, a question of education and zending. The Snouck-Kuyper-Malefijt exchange set the framework within which the question — whether the Atjehnese population should be educated in government-neutral or in Christian-confessional schools — would be decided. Snouck’s earlier view of Islam as a counter-authority to be respected — set out in his 1893-1894 De Atjehers — had been the basis of the Idenburg-Van Heutsz argument that the Atjehnese resistance was religiously motivated and could be broken only by a demonstration of Dutch “onwrikbare overmacht” — unshakeable superiority.
See Also
- C. Snouck Hurgronje
- Abraham Kuyper
- J. H. de Waal Malefijt
- A. W. F. Idenburg
- J. B. van Heutsz
- 1911 Indische begrotingsdebat
- Ethische Politiek
- Pacificatie van Atjeh
- Van Daalen’s Gajo-Alas-Batak expedition (1904)
- Zending (in Nederlandsch-Indië)
- 1893
- 1894
- 1911
Source
Schets eener parlementaire geschiedenis van Nederland van 1849 tot 1901, by Mr W. J. van Welderen baron Rengers, 4th rev. ed., Vol. IV: Oost-Indië 1891-1918 by Dr W. H. Vermeulen (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1955), pp. 281-282, 319, 353.
C. Snouck Hurgronje, Nederland en de Islam (1911), pp. 85 v., 100.
F. M. van Asbeck, Indonesië in Azië, in Tijdschrift Indonesië, 1947/8, p. 17.