Spread of Islam In Indonesia Was A Hybrid Process
By Saad Hasan
26 August
2020
Unlike
other parts of the world, Islam spread in Southeast Asia without a major
conquest.
It came on
ships and boats. It travelled with spices and silk. Swords remained in the
scabbards, there was hardly any bloodshed. The benefit of aligning with rising
Muslim powers was obvious, but sufis played an important role too.
Indonesia
became the world’s largest Muslim country over a period spanning centuries, yet
experts are still undecided on how it actually came about.
Looking
back at the Islamic roots of the vast archipelago, which straddles the Indian
and Pacific oceans, it has attained significance despite the ongoing debate
about whether Indonesians are moving away from their so-called pluralistic
version of Islam.
What is
interesting about how the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad spread in Southeast
Asia, says historian Dr Carool Kersten, is that it did not involve a conquest,
and that it happened gradually and surprisingly very late.
“First
evidences of the local people converting to Islam in present-day Indonesia does
not date further than the 13th century. That’s when we find ground archelogical
evidence namely tombstones of sultans with Arab names, which demonstrate that
local leaders have embraced Islam,” he tells TRT World.
Muslim
forces began venturing out of the Arab lands in the 8th century - they were in
control of Spain by the 720s and the famed young military commander, Muhammad
Bin Qasim, had just invaded Sindh and Multan, in what is now Pakistan, a few
years earlier.
In
Indonesia, Islam spread peacefully unlike in the Middle East, North Africa and
South Asia, where it came under its sway as a result of Arab conquests, says
Dr. Kersten, who teaches at Kings College London and authored A history of
Islam in Indonesia.
A 13th
century tombstone of a local ruler, Sultan Malik al Salih, found in Sumatra, is
often cited as a historical marker for when Islam started to make inroads in
the region.
A picture of Sultan Malik al Saleh's headstone. ()
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Salih, who
controlled a principality in the northernmost Indonesian island of Sumatra, had
converted to Islam.
“The fact
that he adopted an Arab title and called himself a Sultan rather than a Raja,
which is a Sanskrit word for a ruler, is the first compelling evidence that
someone from the Southeast Asia decided to embrace Islam and his population
followed suit,” says Dr. Kersten.
What has
really baffled historians and archaeologists is his tombstone, which is
designed with the motifs and patterns of what you can find in the Indian state
of Gujarat.
What
Changed In The 13th Century?
Gujarat is
known for risk-taking traders and businessmen who would not have hesitated in
travelling to far-off regions to find a livelihood. Among them were many
Muslims.
Trade
routes have been instrumental to the spread of Islam. For instance, there’s a large
community of Hadrami Arabs from Yemen in Indonesia.
Muslims
from China have also left an imprint. The 15th century Muslim Chinese admiral,
Cheng Ho, is often credited for helping spread Islam in the Indonesian island
of Java.
“It’s
always been very tempting to assume that it were the traders who brought Islam.
But you need to be careful here. Trade routes were maybe used as conduits but
traders are businessmen, they are not propagators or missionaries of religion,”
says Dr. Kersten.
An
alternative theory suggests that people belonging to the Sufi orders might have
travelled the same routes and helped spread Islam in the region. The Islam
Traditional — practised in the region — is closer to the mystic Barelvi sect
prevalent in Pakistan and India.
Indonesians
and Malays enjoyed trade links with the Arabs and Persians even before the
advent of Islam. The answer to why it gained a foothold in Southeast Asia
relatively late, might be found in the economics of the region.
An overwhelming majority of Indonesia's population of 267 million people
is Muslim. (AP)
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Surrounded
by water, Indonesia, which comprises thousands of islands, did not have the
best land for cultivation and its inhabitants relied mainly on sea trade. They
felt threatened by Hindu empires in Burma, Cambodia, and Thailand who had
prospered on the back of their vast river plains that were suitable for growing
rice.
“The people
in Indonesia no longer wanted to pay tribute to Hindu and Buddhist rulers from
the mainland. And so they looked for political allies in the Middle East and
Africa,” says Dr. Kersten.
A tight
hierarchical governing structure, where a ruler had the last word on important
matters, might have helped speed up the conversion of the local population
without too many skirmishes, experts say.
“Unlike the
Mughals in much of India who appointed nizams, Amirs and maharajas to do the
ruling for them, a king in Southeast Asia was the centre of power and wielded
significant influence,” Nawab Osman, a Singapore-based Southeast Asia
researcher, tells TRT World.
Besides
taking up the role of a religious leader with the practice of building mosques
next to their palaces, these new Muslim rulers also began to look towards the
Ottomans for an alliance, he says.
After
Constantinople’s conquest in the mid-15th century, Muslims controlled the
international maritime routes and a lot of Indonesian rajas saw it as a mark of
prestige and opportunity to be part of such a network should they have
converted to Islam.
As Islam
became a prominent religion in parts of Southeast Asia, the local imams would
recite the Friday prayers not just in the name of the local king but also the
Ottoman caliph, says Osman.
Orientalist
Misconceptions
Puppetry
also helped spread Islam in Indonesia, where 90 percent of the population is
now Muslim.
Like in
South Asia, society has traditionally used puppet theatre and effigies to tell
heroic tales of the Hindu scriptures such as the Ramayana.
“Puppet
shows are a big part of Indonesian culture. So what the Muslim scholars did was
they changed the characters of Ramayana to Muslim figures — showing the
companions of the Prophet and so on. That was a very effective way for people
to convert to Islam.”
Giant puppets called "ondel-ondel" are an important part of Indonesia's
culture. (AP Archive)
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But in the
Indonesian history written primarily under Dutch colonial rule, which lasted
between the 1800s and mid-1900s, such cultural appropriation of symbols was
given a different meaning.
“So if you
look at the orientalist writings from that period, it would seem that Muslims
don’t practise Islam and continue to adhere to certain elements of Hindu
belief. That’s quite untrue. Muslims would never do certain things such as
worshiping a deity,” says Osman.
And Indonesian
Muslims were not just passive receivers of the Islamic teachings. They actively
participated in its attainment.
“Spread of
Islam in Indonesia was a hybrid process. There was no one moment of conversion
- it was a much more fluid system where locals did not give up all their
practices and beliefs in one go,” says Dr. Kersten.
Once Islam
was established, Indonesian Muslims travelled to Muslim learning centres around
the world. The scholars were well versed in Arabic, Persian and vigorously
sought Islamic knowledge, he says.
“Islam
shouldn’t be seen as something varnished on the Southasian culture. These
people were an integral part of the Muslim world.”
Reverse
Islamisation
In recent
years, Indonesia’s religious groups have come under the spotlight amid concerns
that hardliners have started to dominate political discourse.
Jakarta’s
2017 gubernatorial race, in which a Christian of Chinese descent was defeated
after a backlash from religious groups, is often cited as an example of rising
intolerance.
Osman sees
a problem when the current debate is framed around the question of whether
‘Islamists’ are on the rise - a narrative which, he says, was sparked after a
strong showing of Islamic groups in the 1999 national elections.
Former
Indonesian dictator Suharto, who ruled the country for 31 years between 1967
and 1998, enforced curbs on Muslim political groups and tried to reduce the
role of religion in affairs of the state.
That does
not mean that groups such as Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah have
acquired millions of followers only after Suharto’s removal. Even in the
previous openly contested election of 1955, Islamic groups had garnered some
40-45 percent of votes, says Osman.
These days
even the moderate groups, such as NU, feel they are under threat from what they
see as a creeping Arabisation of the Indonesian strain of religion — dubbed as
Islam Nusantara.
“Muhammadiyah
and Nahdlatul Ulama both have been arguing that moderate Islam is under threat
from the Salafis, Hizb ut Tehrir and the Muslim Brotherhood types.
“But I
think what has happened over the years is that there’s been a rupturing within
the ranks of the traditionalist muslim groups and some of their own members
have started taking a harder Islamic position.
Original
Headline: How Islam came to dominate Indonesia
Source: The TRT World