The Islamisation of Southeast Asia, Part 1

Islam came late to Southeast Asia. It was more than six centuries after the religion had first erupted from the Arabian peninsula that any Southeast Asians adopted the faith. The exact date is very difficult to establish since our best evidence is the inscriptions on tombs created in Islamic style. So far, none have been found that may be reliably date to before the end of the C13th.

Muslims had been present on the mainland for many years, as a result of interaction with Persian, Indian and Arab traders and diplomats, as well as the subsequent large-scale importation of Muslim people engineered by the Mongols. Yet the flourishing religious beliefs of island Southeast Asia, which combined elements of Buddhism, Brahmanism and traditional local beliefs, proved themselves sufficiently attractive to Indonesians, Malaysians and Philippinos that they did not feel the need for a new belief.

Nevertheless, by the end of the C13th and beginning of the C14th, Muslim tombs started to appear and we can find the first signs of Muslim states emerging. The first of these was at Pasai, on the north coast of Aceh. Others emerged at the west coast of the Malayan peninsula at Kedah and Perak, at Pattani in Southern Thailand (read more about Southern Thailand here: http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/1817... Pahang, Kelantan and Terengganu. The conversion of the Sultan of Melaka (Malacca) provided a leader for this emergent Muslim world as first among equals. Reasons for the conversion to Islam no doubt varied from individual to individual, with some perhaps undergoing some kind of spiritual enlightenment and others seeing advantages in economic terms to changing to the same religion as the many Muslim traders who had such an important role in the region. Similarly, it is not clear how many of the local people would have genuinely found it necessary to convert to the new faith of their rulers. Many, no doubt, would have carried on as before and outwardly followed the new norms whenever required by the state. This, after all, is the pattern of religious conversion followed in the majority of cases in history.

The ways in which some Islamic elements were added to existing cultural practices such as the wayang theatrical puppetry of Java support the idea that the new religion was simply combined with existing beliefs syncretically. Indeed, there has been a suggestion that the distinctive Mosque architecture of Java was a development of original cock-fight arenas. On the other hand, the establishment of religious schools (known as pondoks) certainly would have spread the ideas of the religion and deepened knowledge and appreciation of it. These schools continue to flourish throughout the region. While at some stages of the past island Southeast Asians were the richest Muslims in the world and could provide patronage to the Arab world, more recently the discovery of oil has reversed this situation and now some religious schools are funded by foreign Muslims, to the disquiet of some who fear that this is influential in spreading fundamentalist beliefs.

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