Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/221

 Teungku Kutakarang then roused himself to greater activity. He circulated, under the Arabic title Taḍkirat-ar-rākidīn (exhortation to the inactive) an enlarged and amended edition of a number of politico-religious pamphlets which were already known within a narrower circle. Therein he proclaims in the common Achehnese metre the principles we have sketched above, and seeks to rouse the people to better organization and increased energy. In this work, of which I have succeeded in obtaining three copies, the Dutch are represented as outcasts of humanity whose aim is the destruction of the countries over which they hold sway; while at the same time attention is drawn to their powerlessness in respect to Acheh.

The Achehnese, he proceeds, are well able to expel the Dutch; even the very babes are best appeased by being offered a sword as a toy. The country is rich enough in munitions of war and wants nothing but good generalship.

The Sultan he hardly mentions. He only employs the similitude of the marriage of the Sultans with the State of Acheh to give point to the remark that a bridegroom who will not lift a finger to save his bride from the stranger is unworthy of her.

The ulèëbalangs, he continues, hold no consultation with the ulamas as they ought to do; they think only of their own particular interests and by reason of the "louse questions" (so runs the Teungku's favourite metaphor) which cause disruption between them, they see not the "elephant" which threatens the whole nation.

The people of the gampōngs are also to blame, for many of them imitate the inactivity of the ulèëbalangs and withdraw from all share in that most solemn of obligations, the jihad, on the pretext that this duty rests not on the individual but on the community in general. Some entrust their money contributions to the wrong hands (here he alludes to his rivals), others let themselves be won over by the money of the infidels to keep the ground clear round their line of forts.

He prophesies woe to the Achehnese within the linie who have submitted to the Gōmpeuni, so soon as the infidel shall have been driven out. All now depends on the chab limòng, on the force of the sword.

Even the ulamas come in for a share of the blame for the slow