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The contribution of missionaries
to the study of Islam in the Netherlands
in the 19th century
Maryse Kruithof
The study of Islam as a lived tradition received little attention in Dutch
universities for most of the 19th century. This is curious, because at the
time the kingdom of the Netherlands ruled over a population of almost
thirty million Muslims in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). Scholars who
studied Arabic in Dutch universities focused primarily on the language
itself, while those who studied the languages, history and cultures of the
Indian archipelago, the Indologists, generally did not pay much attention
to Islam. They focused on the ‘true religions’ of the Indies, Hinduism and
Buddhism. On the occasions when Islam was the subject of research in
Dutch universities, the focus was mainly on major classical texts. No one
seemed interested in Islam as a lived tradition, which was mostly due to
the lack of suitable source material. Fieldwork was not much undertaken
as yet, and ethnology and anthropology were still in their infancy as aca-
demic disciplines. This significant gap in Dutch academic discourse only
began to be closed at the very end of the 19th century, when in 1884-5 the
influential scholar Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (1856-1936) joined the an-
nual Muslim pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca.
Most of what is known about Islam as a lived tradition in the Dutch East
Indies in the 19th century does not come from scholarly works, but from
what ‘laymen’ wrote in journals, letters or travelogues about their observa-
tions during their stays in the colony. This essay focusses on the contribu-
tion of a particular group of these ‘laymen’ to the study of Islam in the East
Indies: Christian missionaries. It demonstrates that the writings that have
come down from them were very useful sources for the academic study
of lived Islam, and that academic and non-academic works should not be
understood as opposites in this period. Although reports and articles pro-
duced by missionaries were generally not intended for critical outsiders,
they proved to be useful sources for scholars who did not have opportu-
nities to visit the Indies themselves. Since missionaries often stayed for
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prolonged periods in the field and learned the local languages thoroughly,
they could be considered ‘insiders’ by the local population in comparison
to other Europeans, and the observations they made of daily life in the
colony were particularly appreciated back home. Consequently, mission-
aries made important contributions to the formalisation of knowledge
about non-Western cultures and religions, and to the new scholarly fields
of ethnology, anthropology and comparative religion.
The study of Islam in Dutch universities
The lack of scholarly interest in the religion of Islam is partly the result
of centuries-old polemical attitudes in Christian Europe about Islam as
a false creed, a subject not worthy of academic attention. The historian
Reinhart Dozy (1820-83) did, however, publish works on Islamic his-
tory in the second part of the 19th century. He contributed to the Ency-
clopaedia of Muslim Spain between 1858 and 1861, and in the 1860s he
published his three-volume Histoire des Musulmans d’Espagne, jusqu’à
la conquête de l’Andalousie par les Almoravides. 711-1110 (‘Spanish Islam.
A history of the Moslems in Spain’).1 In Het islamisme (‘Islam’, 1863),
which was aimed at a non-academic audience, he does not show much
sympathy for Islam. He looks on it as an irrational faith and an obstacle
on the road to modernity, and repeats the age-old European idea that
Muḥammad suffered from epileptic seizures that were mistaken for pro-
phetic ‘trances’. Dozy can be considered as a classic ‘armchair’ academic,
since his research was based on texts alone.2
L.W.C. van den Berg (1845-1927), who had a background in law and
Arabic language, was the first Dutch Orientalist actually to spend time
in the Islamic world. He went to the East Indies in 1868, and became an
adviser on Oriental languages and Islamic law to the Dutch colonial gov-
ernment. He continued to publish on Islamic law, but is most famous for
his work on the Hadhrami community in the Indies, Indonesians of Arab
descent.3 This detailed study was based on extensive fieldwork, and was
the first of its kind in the world.
1 R. Dozy, Histoire des musulmans d’Espagne jusqu’à la conquête de l’Andalousie par les
Almoravides, Leiden, 1861; R. Dozy, Spanish Islam. A history of the Moslems in Spain, Lon-
don, 1913 (English trans.). See M. Poorthuis, ‘Reinhart Dozy’, in CMR 17, 509-15.
2 J. Brugman, ‘Dozy, a scholarly life according to plan’, in W. Otterspeer (ed.), Leiden
oriental connections 1850-1940, Leiden, 1989, pp. 62-81.
3 L.W.C. van den Berg, Le Hadhramout et les colonies arabes dans l’archipel Indien, Bat-
avia, 1886. See also K. Steenbrink, ‘L.W.C. van den Berg’, in CMR 16, 573-80.
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Van den Berg was opposed many times during his career by Snouck
Hurgronje. For example, Snouck published a merciless 162-page review
in the Indische Gids of Van den Berg’s book on the Shāfiʿī school of law
(1874). Like Van den Berg, Snouck went to the East, first to Jedda and
Mecca in 1884-5 to compile a report for the Dutch colonial government
on Indonesian pilgrims in Arabia. During his stay, he collected data for his
two-volume Het Mekkanische feest, which was published in 1888 and 1889.
After spending six months in the field, he returned to the Netherlands to
teach Islamic studies at Leiden University. He was not, however, content
to spend his career behind a desk in Leiden, and instead aimed at a re-
search or advisory position in the Indies. In 1889, he was appointed as an
adviser on colonial affairs to the Dutch government after he had identified
the risk to the colony from Islamic fanaticism, jihād and pan-Islamism.
He returned from the East Indies in 1906, and successfully continued his
academic career in Leiden. Under his influence, the focus in the study
of Islam shifted from classical Arabic texts to the study of contemporary
Islam in the East Indies.4 Today, Snouck Hurgronje is remembered as the
Netherlands’ most influential, though also most controversial, Islamicist.
In the absence of anything more recent, Dutch scholars in the 19th
century turned to Oud en nieuw Oost-Indiën (‘Old and new East Indies’)
by François Valentijn, which had been published in 1726.5 They did not
initially pay much attention to current works that were being produced
in the form of reports by ‘lay authors’ such as colonial officials, traders,
linguists, biologists, VOC chaplains and missionaries, who wrote down
their observations in letters, diaries or travelogues out of personal inter-
est. Scholars did not consider the works of such ‘amateur ethnographers’
of much value because they were not written with a scholarly purpose and
often lacked a clear aim, argumentation or critical insights. Furthermore,
the majority of these authors had not lived long enough in one place to de-
velop sufficient understanding of the local language and culture. However,
owing to the lack of more suitable material, academics gradually began
to make use of this body of sources to learn more about everyday life in
the Indies. In particular, the writings of missionaries proved to be very
useful, because most of them had lived in the same area for long periods
of time and their proficiency in local languages generally exceeded that
4 A. Vrolijk and R. van Leeuwen, Voortreffelijk en waardig. 400 jaar Arabische studies in
Nederland, Leiden, 2013, p. 100. See also F. Wijsen and K. Steenbrink, ‘Christiaan Snouck
Hurgronje’, in CMR 17, 540-58.
5 Vrolijk and Van Leeuwen, Voortreffelijk en waardig, p. 98. See K. Steenbrink, ‘Fran-
çois Valentijn’, in CMR 12, 575-82.
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of other Europeans because they were dedicated to mastering languages
in order to communicate easily with the local population and to translate
the Bible. The amount of material produced by missionaries is massive,
since they were asked by their organisations to keep diaries, write annual
reports and regularly produce pieces for mission journals in order to keep
the sponsoring public in the Netherlands aware of the mission’s prog-
ress. Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap
(‘Announcements of the Dutch Missionary Society’; MNZG) was issued
by Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap (NZG), the largest Dutch mission
organisation between 1857 and 1919. A significant part of it was devoted
to the study of the languages, cultures and religions of the areas in which
the NZG was active. Dutch scholars such as P.J. Veth (1814-95) and Snouck
Hurgronje regularly read this journal and used it for their own studies.
Islam in mission training curriculums
The NZG advocated thorough education for its missionaries. Their curric-
ulum paid special attention to Islam because the mission board believed
it was more difficult to convert these ‘civilised gentiles’ than ‘pagans’. As
early as 1808, the NZG started to teach its students ‘the axioms of Islam,
and the way to counter these’, even though the organisation was not
yet active in any Islamic region.6 In 1821, the board created a curricu-
lum to make their students ‘thoroughly familiar with the spirit of Islam’.7
Courses were taught on subjects such as Arabic, the Qur’an, the life of
Muḥammad and the history of Islam, although suitable textbooks did
not yet exist and the teachers themselves did not have a thorough knowl-
edge of either Islam or Arabic. Jan Scharp (1756-1828), a teacher at the
NZG mission school, made an attempt to write a handbook, Muhammed-
anismus, in the 1820s. He addressed a wide variety of topics, such as the
biography of Muḥammad, the Qur’an, ethics, rituals, sacred persons and
places, and Sufism. His manuscript, which is 240 pages long, has never
been published, but it was known to be part of the curriculum probably
until the 1850s, when the NZG finally gained access to an area where
Muslims lived.8 Scharp’s book is apologetic in nature, asserting among
6 I.H. Enklaar, ‘De islam in de zendingsopleiding’, in I.H. Enklaar, Kom over en help
ons! Twaalf opstellen over de Nederlandse zending in de negentiende eeuw, The Hague, 1981,
p. 38.
7 Enklaar, ‘De islam in de zendingsopleiding’, p. 38.
8 Enklaar, ‘De islam in de zendingsopleiding’, p. 49.
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other things that all Muslims hate Christians, that the Qur’an is full of
contradictions and untruths, and that Muḥammad suffered from delu-
sions. It does, however, encourage missionaries to be friendly towards
Muslims and to argue against Islamic doctrines with rational rather than
emotion-based arguments. Scharp discusses various points of conten-
tion, such as Jesus’s divine nature, his resurrection and the Trinity, and
he provides arguments against Islamic views on these issues.9
George Niemann (1823-1905) taught Oriental languages and Islam at
the mission school in the 1840s. Like many others, he was dissatisfied with
the available literature on Islam and decided to write a handbook himself,
though he was the first to admit that he was not an expert, having only
some basic knowledge of Arabic. His Inleiding tot de kennis van den islam
(‘Introduction to knowledge of Islam’) was published in 1861 and was used
as a text book for years, giving a fair idea of what aspiring missionaries
were likely to know about Islam before they left for the Indies. Niemann
discusses the origins of Islam, the biography of Muḥammad, the Qur’an
and the spread of Islam, including in South East Asia. The work is much
less polemical than Scharp’s, and continually encourages readers to place
Muḥammad’s words and actions in context, instead of judging him for not
espousing modern Western values. While he does not believe Muḥammad
was a true prophet, he does not consider him a fraud who deliberately de-
ceived people, and argues that it is quite possible Muḥammad was ‘under
the influence of self-deception’ and truly believed he was receiving divine
revelations.10 Niemann does agree with Scharp that the Qur’an is a ‘mo-
notonous’, ‘long-winded’ and ‘incomplete’ work.11
Niemann devoted his epilogue to Islam in the Dutch East Indies. He
relied on the works by Valentijn, Raffles, Roorda and his own teacher
Veth, among others, and of course on the reports of the NZG missionar-
ies working in Java, such as Samuel Harthoorn.12 His general conclusion
was that the people of the Indies were not ‘real Muslims’, a widely shared
opinion at the time. As he saw it, identifying as a Muslim did not mean
much to them, and abstaining from pork was thought enough to be con-
sidered Muslim. In particular, people living in the mountainous areas of
9 Enklaar, ‘De islam in de zendingsopleiding’, p. 43.
10 G.K. Niemann, Inleiding tot de kennis van den islam, ook met betrekking tot den
Indischen archipel, Rotterdam, 1861, p. 124.
11 Niemann, Inleiding tot de kennis van den islam, p. 47.
12 J. van den Boogert, ‘Rethinking Javanese Islam. Towards new descriptions of Java-
nese traditions’, Leiden, 2015 (PhD Diss. Universiteit Leiden) p. 104. On Raffles, see M.T.H.
Tan, ‘Stamford Raffles’, in CMR 16, 523-9.
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the interior were hardly influenced by Islam at all. Even though there were
mosques, priests and other ‘Muhammedan institutions’ everywhere, the
people still held on to all sorts of superstitious ideas and traditions that
went directly against Islam.13
J.C. Neurdenburg (1815-95) became director of the NZG educational
programme in 1864. He made various changes to the curriculum, which he
considered substandard, and put greater emphasis on pedagogical skills so
that missionaries would be better equipped to get involved in education.
This was in line with his belief that the people of the Dutch East Indies
must be raised to a higher level of development before they could truly
understand the Christian message.14 He also drastically revised the pro-
gramme’s course on ethnology. From the 1870s on, the work of the Leiden
ethnologist G.A. Wilken, who was Neurdenburg’s son-in-law, was used. In
the course on Islam, George Niemann’s book was replaced by Johannes
Haurie’s Der Islam (1882), the tone of which was closer to that of Scharp’s
book, and thus a lot more negative. After the turn of the century, the ed-
ucational programme was completely redesigned because the NZG, the
Utrechtse Zendingsvereniging (UZV) and the Sangi en Talaud Comité (STC)
merged their training programmes into the De Nederlandse Zendingsschool
(NZS), founded in 1905 in the NZG headquarters in Rotterdam. The admis-
sion requirements were raised and the quality of the programme was con-
siderably improved.
In 1917, the NZS moved to Oegstgeest to make it easier for the students
to follow courses at Leiden University. This resulted in the professionali-
sation of the study of Indonesian languages, cultures and religions, in-
cluding Islam. For example, Snouck Hurgronje taught Arabic and Islam
to NZS students for over 25 years.15 Consequently, collaboration between
academics and missionaries became more common in the 20th century,
and the boundaries between these categories faded when, after the turn of
the century, academically trained theologians were deployed to the mis-
sion fields.
13 Niemann, Inleiding tot de kennis van den islam, p. 413.
14 C. de Jong, ‘Van Nederlandsch Zendeling Genootschap tot Hendrik Kraemer Insti-
tuut. Twee eeuwen Nederlandse zendingsopleiding’, in G. Schutte, J. Vree and G. de Graaf
(eds), Jaarboek voor de geschiedenis van het Nederlands protestantisme na 1800, Zoeter-
meer, 2012, 57-76.
15 De Jong, ‘Van Nederlandsch Zendeling Genootschap tot Hendrik Kraemer Instituut’.
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Missionaries on Islam in Java
The majority of missionary reports and letters consist of observations
of daily life around the mission stations. Most missionaries were settled
in little villages, away from other Europeans, who resided mainly in
the urbanised coastal areas. And since they usually stayed in the same
district for years, they became familiar with the local community and
sometimes formed close friendships. This resulted in sources of unique
value. The topics they discussed in their writings vary from local histories
and legends to descriptions of everyday objects. They also studied local
religious traditions in detail, because they were convinced a missionary
must be well aware of ‘false beliefs’ in order to disprove them. These
writings provide valuable information about Indonesian society, and
particularly in Java, where most Dutch missionaries were stationed after
access was granted around 1850. They allowed Orientalists and Indolo-
gists at Dutch universities to catch a glimpse of how Islam was practised
in Javanese society. The sources show, however, that the missionaries
had great difficulty distinguishing between normative Islam and the
reality of lived Islam. The Islam they encountered in the field was often
different from what they had learned about in their textbooks. This rein-
forced the widely shared idea that the Javanese should not actually be
called Muslims. In other words, the missionaries had preconceived ideas
about what Islam was and how a Muslim should live, and then decided
whether or not local tradition fitted into this picture.
Missionaries frequently witnessed customs that had their roots in
religious traditions other than Islam, such as animism, Buddhism and
Hinduism, leading them to conclude that the Javanese adhered to syncre-
tistic forms of belief. They applied the term in a negative sense, with the
connotation of an illogical fusion of conflicting ideas, which they thought
demonstrated that the Javanese were backward and irrational and had to
be civilised before they could become ‘true Christians’. This notion fitted
well with the colonial discourse, in which people of the colonies were de-
picted as underdeveloped. By emphasising the irrationality of Indonesian
people, culture and religion, both Dutch colonial rule and Christian mis-
sion were legitimised, and the work of the missionaries, not only in the
church but also in schools and medical clinics, was deemed necessary to
civilise the people of Java.
These writings demonstrate that missionaries had difficulty in as-
sessing local religious traditions. They agreed that ‘real Islam’ did not
exist in Java, but to describe the local tradition as animistic, Buddhist or
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Hinduist was neither accurate nor adequate. The NZG missionary Samuel
Harthoorn (1830-81) coined the term ‘Javanism’ to describe Javanese folk
religion, a concept that illustrates how the Islamic identity of Javanese
people was progressively minimised. An expression that often occurs in
missionary sources, that Islam in Java was nothing more than a thin veil
covering pagan religion, was adopted by Dutch scholars who had never
visited Java themselves. For example, the ethnologist P.J. Veth, who used
articles from the MNZG for his research, also minimised the Islamic char-
acter of Javanese society in his book Java.16
It was Dutch missionaries who were the first Westerners to notice a
split in the Muslim community in the second half of the 19th century.17 An
increasing number of modern, activist Muslims had begun to challenge
the ‘Islamicness’ of those Javanese Muslims who they thought were only
‘nominal’ in their faith. They distanced themselves from these ‘heretics’
by calling themselves wong putihan (‘white people’), and they called the
supposedly nominal Muslims wong abangan (‘brown people’). For the ma-
jority, being Javanese meant living according to Javanese adat, the custom-
ary traditions of their forefathers, but now suddenly this lifestyle became
known as abangan, though many were probably not even aware of the
existence of this label until the end of the century. Furthermore, putihan
Muslims were not necessarily seen as ‘more pious’ or ‘better’ Muslims by
the majority of Javanese society, but were initially perceived as elitists who
had partially removed themselves from the Javanese social and cultural
environment. The abangan aimed to oppose Arab influence and the at-
tempted purification of Javanese Islam by emphasising local religious be-
liefs and practices.
The NZG missionary Wessel Hoezoo (1826-96) was the first Westerner
to describe the distinction between these two branches of Javanese Islam,
when in a letter to the board of the NZG in 1856 he called the abangan
‘secular’ because they did not live according to sharīʿa law.18 In 1857 and
1858, he and his colleague Ten Zeldam-Ganswijk explained that, although
the abangan did not abide by Islamic law, they certainly considered
16 P.J. Veth, Java, geografisch, etnologisch, historisch, Haarlem, 1875-84.
17 M.C. Ricklefs, Polarising Javanese society. Islamic and other visions (c.1830-1930),
Leiden, 2007. On missionary attitudes, see M. Kruithof, ‘Representations of Islam in the
works of Dutch Protestant missionaries, 1850-1900’, in CMR 17, 525-39.
18 W. Hoezoo, Brief aan het NZG bestuur (16 February 1855) Archief Raad voor de
Zending – 1102-1: 210, Utrechts Archief.
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themselves Muslim,19 and Harthoorn warned that the putihan were grow-
ing and gaining increasing influence in Java.20 Apart from these individual
comments, however, nothing was written about this development in more
detail. This changed with the work of Carel Poensen (1836-1919), another
NZG missionary who in 1869 was the first to identify a schism between the
putihan and the abangan: ‘The Javanese distinguish themselves into the
Bangsa Putihan and the Bangsa Abangan, although they are all Muslims.’21
In the 1880s, Poensen wrote about these two branches in detail, in his book
Brieven over den Islam uit de binnenland van Java (‘Letters about Islam
from the interior of Java’). In this he vividly described Java as a dynamic
society in which Islam was gaining ground and the lines between different
social groups were hardening. He reported that the numbers of pesantren
(Islamic boarding schools) and Meccan pilgrims were increasing fast, that
pilgrims were spreading ‘more true ideas about the spirit and essence
of Islam to the people’, and that now the Javanese were better Muslims
than in previous generations.22 However, Poensen felt that the increasing
influence of these puritan Muslims in the country was a dangerous de-
velopment, since their message was anti-colonial, and he considered the
abangan ‘more innocent’ and easier to approach for missionaries.23 After
all, he argued, they had little understanding of Islamic dogmas and sharīʿa,
and it was thus easier to debate with them.
The publisher of Poensen’s book asked P.J. Veth to write a preface. Veth
was familiar with Poensen’s work in the MNZG and considered these
letters an interesting source on daily life in Java. Nevertheless, his pref-
ace was not overly positive. He described the letters as incoherent and
at times inaccurate, and concluded that Poensen had explained a good
number of things poorly. Snouck Hurgronje then wrote a review of the
book in the Indische Gids and agreed with Veth’s arguments, though he felt
that his preface was ‘too critical and unpleasant’.24 Snouck argued against
the notion that Islam was only superficially rooted in Java, admitting that
19 M.C. Ricklefs, ‘The birth of the abangan’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volken-
kunde 162 (2006) 35-55.
20 S.E. Harthoorn, ‘De zending op Java en meer bepaald die van Malang, uit het jaar-
verslag 1857’, in MNZG 4 (1860) 105-38, 212-53.
21 C. Poensen, ‘Iets over Javaansche naamgeving en eigennamen’, MNZG 14 (1870) 304-
17, p. 312. See M. Kruithof, ‘Carel Poensen’, in CMR 16, 551-4.
22 C. Poensen, Brieven over den islam uit de binnenlanden van Java, Leiden, 1886, p. 4.
23 Ricklefs, Polarising Javanese society, pp. 35-55.
24 C. Snouck Hurgronje, ‘Carel Poensen, Brieven over den Islam uit de binnenlanden
van Java’, Indische Gids 8 (1886) 1092-1102.
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syncretistic forms were present but arguing that Christianity in Europe
was also mixed in with all kinds of pre-Christian elements. Moreover, he
disputed the way in which Poensen compared Javanese Islam with Islam
in the Middle East, where superstitions and folk traditions were just as
common as elsewhere, and thought it was foolish to suggest that Arabs
practised ‘pure Islam’.25 He considered Poensen’s judgement clouded be-
cause he probably only had close contact with less devout Muslims, since
a truly devout Muslim would avoid all contact with unbelievers. Despite
these points of criticism, Snouck concluded his review on a positive note:
‘To be fair, I must immediately add that his work surpasses the countless
works written by lay authors about these subjects and that he never pre-
tends to present analyses of these subjects in general.’26 He warmly rec-
ommended the book to a general audience, but agreed with Veth that it
would have been more interesting for scholars had Poensen only shared
his experiences. Poensen was upset about the review and wrote angrily
to the director of the NZG that Snouck lacked all experience to criticise
his work. After all, at the time Snouck had not yet visited the Indies.27
Despite the criticisms levelled against it, Poensen’s letters were consid-
ered a valuable contribution to the academic study of Islam in the Dutch
East Indies, and he is still regarded as one of the first ethnographers of
Javanese village life.
Conclusion
Dutch missionaries made a significant contribution to the study of Islam
in the Dutch East Indies, although it must be admitted that their work
was often coloured by the then dominant colonial discourse of racial and
religious superiority. The Javanese population was often portrayed in a
derogatory manner, and it was judged that Java’s hybrid religious tradi-
tion was the result of irrationality and incomprehension. Nevertheless,
the missionaries focussed on lived Islam, something academics had not
yet begun to study. And while the academics sometimes criticised the
quality of the missionaries’ ethnological papers, they nevertheless made
use of them as sources for their own research.
25 Snouck Hurgronje, ‘Brieven over den islam’, p. 1095.
26 Snouck Hurgronje, ‘Brieven over den islam’, p. 1100.
27 Archives Utrecht, Archief Raad voor de Zending – 1102-1: 935, C. Poensen, Letter to
J.C. Neurdenburg, 9 May 1885.
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The missionaries’ most valuable contribution to the study of Islam in
Java was to identify and write about the schism that was taking place be-
tween the putihan and abangan. In particular, Carel Poensen’s detailed
descriptions of abangan practices were not only valued by esteemed
scholars in his own time, but are still among the most valuable sources on
19th-century Javanese Islam. Missionary writings on these two diverging
branches repeatedly emphasised, however, that both contained syncretis-
tic elements, reaffirming the dominant idea that the people of Java should
not be called Muslims, a notion that would be repeated many times well
into the 20th century in both missionary and scholarly works.
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