Agens of Peace: An Exploration of Three Acehnese Women Leaders

The issue of women's active participation in social life is sometimes regarded as a secular value infiltrated into Acehnese and other Muslim societies through Western influence. Yet, the active role of Acehnese women reflects entrenched Acehnese cultural norms, as well as deeply embedded teachings of equality in Islam. Culturally Acehnese women have always been very assertive. Describing their involvement in the wars against the Dutch occupation, H. C. Zentgraaff commented in his work on Aceh: 'Acehnese women are extremely courageous { ... ]. When they have to fight, this task is carried out with full energy, fearless of death, and {they} are often superior to men." The Dutch Orientalist and colonial official Snouck Hourgronje in his classic study De Atjehers (The Acehnese) included an interesting image of women and men vendors in the marketplace - a condition that continues to this day. The image was probably taken prior to, or during his station in Aceh (1891-2). Elsewhere in the two volumes of his work Hourgronje confirms that women were active members of society, especially as teungkus (religious teachers) and as advocates of their own rights in marriage, property and child-custody. Women's involvement in the day-to-day management of communal life was natural in the context of Aceh's social reality, plausibly driven by the common sense of sharing tasks and burdens between household members, as well as, in the community with its social norms that treated women and men as equals. The testimony of these two Dutch authors characterized the position of Acehnese women across classes and social status, and underlined that their engagement in society was a continuation of the traditional Acehnese style of men-women partnership; this was demonstrated in the early period of Acehnese Islamic history, and which to a certain extent still persists to the present day.