Vollenhoven’s sweeping legal conclusions rested on only two brief colonial visits.

Evidence

This was a reaction to various other scholars, such as L. W. C. van den Berg, whose scholarly project essentially declared enthusiastic support for the position that the Shariʿa, not adat, was the sustainable law of the islands. Criticizing the proponents of Shariʿa, Vollenhoven argued that adat exercised such a wide sway over the archipelago’s population that Islamic law stood in comparison as both thin on the ground and virtually irrelevant. Remarkably, all this knowledge he managed to garner from two rather brief visits to the colony. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 257

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how did two brief visits yield a thousand-island codification project and confidence enough to shape national policy? The epistemic audacity is a case study in colonial knowledge-making.