The concept of decolonization continues to develop alongside a growing understanding of the negative consequences of knowledge hegemony. Generally, established knowledge is considered as absolute truth, thereby hindering new scientific discoveries. Such knowledge is often regarded as the most authoritative and valid, therefore generating unidirectional knowledge and precluding the advancement of its various forms.
During a public lecture that took place on 17 March, 2023, at Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM), Frans Wijesen remarked that in the discourse of decolonization studies, a sort of hegemonic knowledge emerges, which serves as a gauge of the truth of knowledge. Studies on Indonesian Islam tend to portray Christian Snouck Hurgronje (CSH) as an orientalist with a number of shadowy sides and detrimental effects on Indonesian Islam. As stated as well in Wijsen’s article published in Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History entitled “Christian Snouck Hurgronje”, CSH has been portrayed by many researchers as a white man engaged in a great deal of intervention and manipulation of the Islamic reality. However, because there are numerous historical truths that have not been brought to light by studies that have been evolving to date, Wijsen is attempting to transmit a new perspective that sees CSH as an ordinary human being who has multiple identities. These identities led him to engage in numerous negotiations regarding his position as a scholar and advisor to the colonial administration.
CSH and Indonesian Islam
Christian Snouck Hurgronje is a figure often considered controversial because of his work and personality. His thoughts and even his life often invite debate among Indonesian Islamic scholars. Some of them think that CSH was just a Westerner who imposed his interpretation of Islam and stereotyped and dehumanized the natives. Meanwhile for others, he was as a Westerner who had deep concern and sympathy for Islam. Due to this debate, Wijsen tries to present a third view that bridges the controversy.
CSH had a long experience studying Islam and Muslim society. He became acquainted with Islam since he studied theology at Leiden University, taking a concentration in Arabic in 1874. Six years later, at the age of 23, he successfully completed a PhD at the same university with a dissertation entitled Het Mekkaansche Feest. His writing that explored the history of ancient Mecca and the Islamic pilgrimage made him known among the Dutch government as a prominent scholar on Islam. Due to this expertise, he received a grant to go to Mecca to study Islam. Upon his return, he went to Indonesia and was appointed by the colonial government as researcher and advisor on native affairs.
Holding that position for 17 years, CSH was known as the most influential orientalist in the Dutch colonial period. His views on Islam greatly influenced Dutch policy towards Muslims. One of them related to the recommendation on the revolt in Aceh where he encouraged the participation of local Muslims in government but suggested strict separation of Islam and politics.
Wijsen in his review said that CSH did have a dual position. On the one hand, his ideas still reflect a superior Westen style of thinking (the Dutch had to drive transformation at the grassroots). On the other hand, he has high empathy for natives, especially Muslim communities, thus encouraging the implementation of ethical politics that gave space to local elites in government.
CSH’s recommendations regarding the Muslim community to the Dutch government are recorded in 39 sections. In section 11 of the recommendation—as disclosed by Wijsen, CSH recommended that the district head or regents supervised local mosques’ finances and distribution of zakat. In Section 12, the penghulu (judge of sharia court in matter of family affairs) were considered as colonial employees because they were appointed and paid by the Dutch administration, and therefore were supervised by the government most of whom were non-Muslim officials. However, because many judges were considered incompetent in deciding Muslim matters, CSH decided to test the candidates for positions in the sharia courts himself.
Wijsen said that Hurgronje did show contradictions in personality and work. Although Hurgronje called himself an educator who encouraged the emancipation of Indonesian society, his recommendations, especially those concerning Aceh and Jambi, show a ruthless policy of subjugation. This kind of dualism creates pros and cons among researchers. CSH’s complex identity as a Westerner, a researcher, an advisor, and a Muslim convert caused him to experience a double loyalty confusion, which invited further speculation from various parties including the Dutch regarding his loyalty and sincerity as a Dutch advisor.
Decolonizing the Decolonization Discourse
To mediate the pros and cons of the CSH study, Wijsen offers a third view using a decolonization perspective. For him, the numerous negative accounts of CSH do not do justice to the positive contribution he made to the development of Indonesian Islam. The decolonization of knowledge conducted by the researchers in relation to the personality and works concentrates primarily on criticism that obscures other facts about the CSH’s contribution of the administration of CSH to the transformation of Muslim society.
Wijsen made efforts to decolonize the decolonization discourse on CSH using a dialogical perspective inspired by William James and Mikhail Bakhtin. This theory explains that everyone has multiple consciousnesses and worlds, and all these voices accompany and oppose one another in dialogical ways. Each person holds two or more conflicting positions within himself and tries to harmonize and compromise.
Based on the dialogical perspective, Wijsen argues that the decolonization process is not unilateral, but mutual/reciprocal. Through the CSH case on a micro scale, Wijsen draws the issues to a larger debate on religion versus tradition. For him, the notion that Indonesian religion is a western construction is not entirely correct because the invention of tradition occurs dialogically from both sides. Despite the undeniable fact that local realities intersect with Western knowledge, Indonesia basically has a local wisdom that makes religions develop in a unique way through existing local traditions. The persistence of customary law used in Indonesia is evidence that the natives were not passive victims. Instead, there was a dialectical process between local and non-local (Western) that shaped knowledge and religious tradition.
For Wijsen, decolonization is very helpful for the pedagogy of liberation, however, decolonization should not focus only on one spectrum or be unidirectional. Decolonization should be mutual or be done to both parties due to the dialogical process between them that influences the emergence of a knowledge or tradition. For Wijsen, we no longer live in the era of dependence, but interdependence. Therefore, problems should not be seen in mere black and white but are very complex and related to one another.
Likewise, CSH displayed sides that were not singular. Using a dialogical perspective, Wijsen argued that CSH did not impose his understanding of Islam. Instead, he was trying to reconcile his Dutch identity and Islam, because there were portions of the West that he admired and those that he hated. Similarly, there were aspects of Islam that he appreciated (such as the archipelagic Islamic model that combined with local traditions) and aspects that he disliked (such as extremism). CSH was trying to harmonize his concerns and conflicts with respect to his multiple positions. He was a Muslim, no matter how hard people criticize that. He was a husband and a father in a Muslim family. His relationship with Muslim elites had greatly influenced his way of thinking about Indonesian Islam, which was not solely based on Western scholarship but also recognizes local customary values. Therefore, according to Wijsen, calling CSH an orientalist who stereotyped and dehumanized the natives does not do justice to his personality.
Wijsen’s discussion on CSH offers a fresh perspective on how a decolonization perspective can be used to analyze decolonial discourses. For him, studies on the decolonization of the West, such as those conducted on CSH’s ideas and personality still exhibits unidirectional hegemony in which the existing literatures portray CSH as mere white man attempting to control Islam. Though Wijsen does not deny the existence of power in the knowledge production process, he argues that the dialogic process between the West and the East and between CSH and the native Muslims is a reality that cannot be disregarded because the local Muslims are not passive victims.
Wijsen’s proposal to understand reality in a dialogical way invites further discussion. His points are unquestionably worthy of consideration. However, his thesis that the invention of a tradition is a mutual process requires further explanation because the degree/type of mutualism in the relationship between the two undoubtedly influences the knowledge production. As in the case of religion construction, unequal amounts of power relations between the government and local religion leads to discrimination experienced by indigenous people. Because their interaction, despite coming from two directions, does not exhibit the same quantity and quality of power.
