Table of contents
- Indonesia, not the Middle East, is the world's largest Muslim-majority nation.
- From Hindu-Buddhist kings to Muslim sultans, Nusantara's rulers adapted to gain power and wealth through strategic alliances and religious shifts.
- Zheng He’s treasure fleet didn’t just sail the seas; it reshaped the religious and political landscape of Southeast Asia, making Islam the dominant force.
- Islam in Indonesia thrived by blending with local customs and offering economic and political advantages.
Indonesia, not the Middle East, is the world's largest Muslim-majority nation.
Introduction
In the western conception, the religion of Islam often begins and ends in the arid deserts of the Middle East. Despite this, in the modern era, the nation with the single highest population of Muslims in the world is not Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, or Egypt. Instead, the largest Islamic country on earth is a steamy land of tropical jungles, terraced rice fields, and blistering monsoon winds located over 7,500 miles away from the land of Islam’s birth. Deep in the maritime heart of Southeast Asia, the island nation of Indonesia is home to over 279 million people, 86% of whom are Muslim. Islam is a religion that was famously spread by the sword, yet the armies of the Caliphate that carried the faith from Spain to Pakistan never stepped foot on Indonesian soil. This begs the question, how did a tropical archipelago traditionally dominated by Hindu-Buddhist Kings become the most populous Muslim majority nation on earth?
The Historical Background
To properly contextualize how Islam reigned supreme in Indonesia, we must first provide a brief survey of the region's history prior to its arrival. The modern country of Indonesia is part of a wider politico-geographical region known as the Nusantara archipelago, a massive chain of over 17,000 islands stretched out over 5,000 kilometers of ocean. Nusantara is home to over 300 unique peoples with their own culture and language, most of whom belong to the Austronesian ethnolinguistic group. The Austronesians were prehistoric humanity’s greatest seafarers, arriving upon the tropical islands of Southeast Asia aboard sturdy catamarans and outrigger canoes over 3,500 years ago as part of a multi-millennia migration that began on Taiwan a millennia earlier and ended on the islands of Polynesia two millennia later.
Throughout the medieval era, the Austronesian peoples of Nusantara channeled the seafaring prowess of their ancestors to forge some of the most prosperous maritime merchant kingdoms in all of pre-colonial Asia. These kingdoms were largely concentrated on the islands of Sumatra and Java, which served as the gateway to the most important shipping lane in the world, the Malacca Strait. Since ancient times, the Malacca Strait has been the central nexus of the maritime silk road which connected the Celestial Empire of China to the ancient civilizations of India, Persia, Arabia, and beyond. By mastering the shipping lanes that connected innumerous extremely wealthy Empires across Asia, the rulers of Java and Sumatra became extremely wealthy themselves.
As the monsoon winds blew foreign traders onto Nusantara’s shores, so too did they blow in foreign philosophies, sciences, political principles, and religions. While the Austronesians were originally an animist people, constant contact with the civilizations of India saw them slowly adopt Hinduism and Buddhism as their two main faiths. By the 8th century AD, the rulers of Kingdoms like Mataram and Srivijaya had become fully Indianized, with their Kings portraying themselves as avatars of Hindu gods like Vishnu and Shiva and styling themselves as Devaraja, an ancient Sanskrit word meaning ‘God King.’ Grand monuments were consecrated to glorify their divinely mandated reigns, such as Borobudur, which to this day remains the largest Buddhist structure in the world, and Prambanan, the second-largest Hindu temple in Southeast Asia.
If India was the place from which the Kings of Nusantara received their spiritual legitimacy, then China was the place where they received their political legitimacy. It was an ancient custom that foreign kingdoms wishing to do commerce with China had to swear nominal fealty to the Chinese Emperor, something that Nusantara’s Hindu-Buddhist Kings played along with in order to gain access to Chinese riches. Throughout the medieval era, successful rulers in Sumatra and Java often underlined their entitlement to rule by demonstrating China’s approval. The zenith of Nusantara’s Hindu-Buddhist era was marked by the rise of the Majapahit, a massive seafaring empire which emerged out of the chaos of the Mongol invasion of Java in the 14th century and united the vast majority of the archipelago under its rule. However, as the Majapahit rose in prominence, so too did an alternative religion begin growing exponentially in popularity, challenging the divine authority of the Empire’s Hindu God-Kings. This new faith came in the form of melodious muezzin, proclaiming the call of prayer from the peaks of minarets.
From Hindu-Buddhist kings to Muslim sultans, Nusantara's rulers adapted to gain power and wealth through strategic alliances and religious shifts.
Wishing to do commerce with China required swearing nominal fealty to the Chinese Emperor, something that Nusantara’s Hindu-Buddhist Kings played along with in order to gain access to Chinese riches. Throughout the medieval era, successful rulers in Sumatra and Java often underlined their entitlement to rule by demonstrating China’s approval. The zenith of Nusantara’s Hindu-Buddhist era was marked by the rise of the Majapahit, a massive seafaring empire which emerged out of the chaos of the Mongol invasion of Java in the 14th century and united the vast majority of the archipelago under its rule. However, as the Majapahit rose in prominence, so too did an alternative religion that began growing exponentially in popularity, challenging the divine authority of the Empire’s Hindu God-Kings. This new faith came in the form of melodious muezzin, proclaiming the call of prayer from the peaks of minarets.
The origins of Islam lie a world away from tropical Nusantara, in the arid sand dunes of Arabia. There, in the 7th century CE, a caravan merchant received a vision from God and changed the world forever. Within two generations, the successors of the Prophet Muhammad had stormed out of the Arabian peninsula in one of the fastest and most successful conquest sprees in world history, forging a Caliphate that spanned from Iberia in the west to the Indus in the east. As the Islamic Caliphate became the dominant power of Middle Eurasia, it controlled the ports which made up the western end of the maritime silk road. From those ports, Muslim merchants from Persia and Arabia set forth along the same routes their ancestors had for centuries, blowing eastward along monsoon winds in search of silk, porcelain, and spice. As the winds of commerce carried these entrepreneurs further than the armies of the Caliphate had ever tread, it also pollinated their faith along the trade routes they followed, with communities of foreign Muslim merchants sprouting up in coastal areas throughout southeast and east Asia, including Sumatra, Java, and even China. By the time of China’s middle Tang Dynasty in the 8th and 9th centuries AD, sizable Muslim communities had developed in the thriving port cities of the southern province of Guangzhou. As China had long exerted heavy political influence upon the Kings of Nusantara, the Chinese Muslim community would later play a big role in introducing Islam to the region.
By the 10th century AD, the economic influence that Muslim traders enjoyed on the maritime silk road had increased exponentially, to the point where local rulers began converting to their religion. The first known ruler in Nusantara to embrace the faith of Mecca was an Acehnese King in the late 13th century named Merah Silu, who ruled over an enigmatic state known as the Samudera Pasai Sultanate on the northern tip of Sumatra. Very little is known about this medieval ruler. However, his status as the first Muslim ruler in Nusantara is supported by a certain Italian adventurer named Marco Polo, who visited the northern Sumatran port city of Perlak in 1292. Among the many colorful anecdotes in his travelogue, which mention cannibals in the hills and native men with monkey tails, Polo remarks that the locals of Perlak, who used to be Hindus, had recently converted to Islam.
While the Samudera Pasai Sultanate was probably the first Muslim state in Nusantara, it was far from the last. The tipping point when Islam began to outpace Hinduism and Buddhism as the dominant religion in the archipelago occurred in the early 15th century with the founding of the Sultanate of Malacca. In the year 1389, the mighty Majapahit Empire was entering its twilight years. Its greatest King, Hayam Wuruk, had passed away after a marathon 49-year reign, and in the wake of his death, many vassal rulers in Nusantara’s outlying islands now sought to break free of their Javanese overlords. One of these rulers was Paremeswara, the Hindu Raja of Singhapura, a precursor to the modern city-state of Singapore. Upon Hayam Wuruk’s death, Parameswara repudiated his vassalage to the Majapahit throne. In response, Majapahit forces invaded Paremeswara's lands and drove him from his city. Forced into exile, Parameswara fled north to the southern tip of the Malay peninsula. There, according to traditional accounts, he converted to Islam, took on the Persian name of Sri Iskander Shah, and established the Sultanate of Malacca.
A fledgling state surrounded by larger, more established neighbors, the Sultanate of Malacca might have been snuffed out in the crib by its larger neighbors if not for the unlikely support it received from the Dragon Throne. At the turn of the 15th century, Emperor Yongle of Ming decided that the whole world needed to be reminded about how awesome China was. Traditionally, this was done by inviting dignitaries from outlying nations to the Imperial Capital where they would pay tribute to the Son of Heaven and receive lavish gifts to bring back to their homelands in return. However, Emperor Yongle decided to be more proactive, commissioning the construction of a massive fleet that could travel to foreign lands and receive tribute directly. The result was one of the most impressive feats of naval engineering in world history: a flotilla of absolutely colossal ‘treasure ships,’ aptly named for the priceless cargo of silk, porcelain, gold, and silver they carried for the foreign rulers who paid tribute to the Great Ming. The Grand Admiral of this floating city was to be the Emperor’s favorite eunuch, Zheng He, who, critically to our story, was a member of China’s Muslim community.
Between 1405 and 1433, the Great Ming treasure fleet embarked upon seven journeys across the sea, all of which passed through Java and the Malacca Strait. On his second journey in 1409, Zheng He exchanged gifts with the Sultan of Malacca. As a fellow Muslim, Zheng He must have felt a kinship.
Zheng He’s treasure fleet didn’t just sail the seas; it reshaped the religious and political landscape of Southeast Asia, making Islam the dominant force.
In the past, foreign rulers would pay tribute to the Son of Heaven and receive lavish gifts to bring back to their homelands in return. However, Emperor Yongle decided to be more proactive by commissioning the construction of a massive fleet that could travel to foreign lands and receive tribute directly. The result was one of the most impressive feats of naval engineering in world history: a flotilla of absolutely colossal ‘treasure ships’, aptly named for the priceless cargo of silk, porcelain, gold, and silver they carried for the foreign rulers who paid tribute to the Great Ming. The Grand Admiral of this floating city was to be the Emperor’s favorite eunuch, Zheng He, who, critically to our story, was a member of China’s Muslim community.
Between 1405 and 1433, the Great Ming treasure fleet embarked upon seven journeys across the sea, all of which passed through Java and the Malacca Strait. On his second journey in 1409, Zheng He exchanged gifts with the Sultan of Malacca. As a fellow Muslim, Zheng He must have felt a kinship with Paremeswara, extending his protection to the fledgling Sultanate. In 1411, Paremeswara joined Zheng He on his return journey to Beijing, where he visited the court of the Yongle Emperor and kowtowed before the Dragon Throne. Since ancient times, rulers in Nusantara had underlined their entitlement to rule by demonstrating China’s approval. Thus, by brokering the protection of the Ming Emperor through the help of a Chinese Muslim Admiral, the Muslim Sultanate of Malacca had secured its future. Indeed, in the decades that followed, as the Majapahit Empire became mired in civil wars and rebellions, the Malacca Sultanate quickly outpaced its main Hindu-Buddhist rival as the primary trading hub in the region.
Malacca was not the only place where the Grand Admiral Zheng He probably precipitated the advance of Islam. Indeed, as the Great Ming treasure ships followed the ancient maritime silk road from China to India, Persia, Arabia, and back again, it picked up merchants, courtiers, and dignitaries from across the Muslim world. On the northern coast of Java, the home island of the Majapahit state, Zheng He helped to establish multinational Islamic communities composed of Chinese, Malays, Arabs, Bengalis, and Gujaratis, diverse in language and custom yet united by their Muslim faith. Over time, these Muslim communities grew in influence, converting many of the local Javanese communities within their orbit. The increasing popularity of Islam in Java hastened the Majapahits' decline, for the Kings of Majapahit derived their right to rule by virtue of being divine avatars in the Hindu tradition, an idea rejected by the Muslim faith.
In 1475, the growing Muslim population in Northern Java coalesced into a unified state with the creation of the first Islamic state in Java, the Sultanate of Demak. The exact origins of Demak are unclear, but its founding is traditionally attributed to a man named Raden Patah, a Javanese noble with blood ties to the Majapahit royal line. As the power and prestige of the increasingly moribund Majapahit continued to erode away, the Demak Sultanate advanced, waging war on the declining Hindu-Buddhist establishment. By 1527, the Islamic Sultanate overran the enfeebled remnants of the Majapahit realm, forcing the last of its Hindu rulers to flee to Bali and putting out the final embers of an Empire that had once dominated the entirety of maritime Southeast Asia. Although the Demak Sultanate replaced the Majapahit as the master of Java, the Demak royal family regarded themselves as descendants of Majapahit, continuing to use old Majapahit symbols like the eight-pointed sun, only modifying them to remove any Hindu associations. This exemplifies that the rise of Islam in Java was not brought about by foreign invaders but by people with deep ancestral ties to the land, representing not a new world order, but the continuation of the island’s native culture with a reworked religious framework.
The Demak Sultanate reached the apex of its power during the reign of Sultan Tranggana, who presided over the military expansion of his realm, and by extension the Islamic faith, into Southern Sumatra and Borneo. After Tranggana’s death, Demak lost its supremacy, fragmenting into several smaller Sultanates such as Cirebon, Gresik-Surabaya, Kalinyamat, and Banten. Meanwhile, in Sumatra, the Islamic Sultanates of Johor, Aceh, and the aforementioned Malacca thrived. Back in Java, the Mataram Sultanate was formed in 1598, quickly becoming the dominant political power on the island. By the beginning of the 17th century, the Islamic model of statehood had become by far the most popular in maritime Southeast Asia, with local rulers and their followers converting in droves. By around 1650, the majority of the Nusantara Archipelago was Muslim. The lone holdout of Hindu-Buddhist statehood in the Nusantara archipelago was the island of Bali, which retained a Hindu majority population and, despite a modern influx of drunk Australians, still does to this day.
Now that we have completed a broad timeline of Islam’s rise to prominence in the islands of Indonesia, let us take a break from the when, and provide a more in-depth discussion of the why. What made Islam so attractive to the people of Nusantara that within a few centuries it went from a minority religion of foreign traders to the dominant religion across the entire archipelago? Naturally, the answers to this question are manyfold and there is no uniform consensus among historians, so all we can do here is provide our barebones take on this very complex topic. Perhaps the main reasons for Islam’s supremacy in Nusantara were the significant economic and political benefits to conversion. Between the 14th to 17th centuries, the Islamic world was a massive, interconnected tapestry that extended...
Islam in Indonesia thrived by blending with local customs and offering economic and political advantages.
The island of Bali, which retained a Hindu majority population, despite a modern influx of drunk Australians, still does to this day.
Why Did People Convert to Islam?
Now that we have completed a broad timeline of Islam’s rise to prominence in the islands of Indonesia, let us take a break from the when, and provide a more in-depth discussion of the why. What made Islam so attractive to the people of Nusantara that within a few centuries it went from a minority religion of foreign traders to the dominant religion across the entire archipelago? Naturally, the answers to this question are manyfold and there is no uniform consensus among historians, so all we can do here is provide our barebones take on this very complex topic. Perhaps the main reasons for Islam’s supremacy in Nusantara were the significant economic and political benefits to conversion. Between the 14th to 17th centuries, the Islamic world was a massive, interconnected tapestry that extended from the gold-rich kingdoms of West Africa to the vibrant ports of Southern China. For the rulers of Kingdoms in Java and Sumatra, whose wealth had always come from maritime trade, becoming part of the Islamic world was the best way for them to expand their commercial horizons. In this line of thinking, the influence of the Chinese Muslim community cannot be understated. Long had political legitimacy in Java and Sumatra hinged on productive political relations with China. Thus, as a number of Chinese dignitaries from the 15th onwards were Muslim, including the illustrious Grand Admiral Zheng He, Islam became an important tool by which the Kings of Nusantara cultivated their valuable relationships with the notables of the Celestial Kingdom.
With that said, it would be disingenuous to say that the peoples of Nusantara converted to Islam solely for reasons of economic profit. The fact is, people in the pre-modern world believed that spiritual powers were real. Thus, in order for Muslims to convince Hindus and Buddhists to convert to their religion, they couldn’t just offer a 10% discount on frankincense; they had to prove the spiritual power of their faith. Unsurprisingly, Indonesian folklore about their ancestors’ conversion to Islam does not feature the droll bartering of merchants, but instead tells grand stories involving magic and miracles. These stories are too innumerous to recount individually, but Jean Gelman Taylor, author of Indonesia: Peoples and Histories, provides a summary of how they usually go: “A common character in Islamic conversion stories from around the archipelago is the stranger or missionary from overseas. The stranger often arrives on a ship laden with cargo; he is always a man; he has superior powers which he demonstrates by such acts of magic as flying, moving mountains, and unexplainable cures for illness. The stranger is not an ascetic. He marries the daughter of the local king. By giving the foreign Muslim local in-laws, the native woman enables him to join Indonesian society, to belong.”
Although we can assume that stories about flying Muslims who can move mountains are probably apocryphal, the part of these myths where the Muslim assimilates into Indonesian society is much closer to the truth of real history. Great efforts were made to make Islam relatable and spiritually satisfying to the Javanese, Sumatrans, and Borneans who were used to a Hindu and Buddhist style of worship. These efforts were likely spearheaded by the Sufi Orders. Sufism was a branch of Islam that, unlike more mainstream branches of the religion, emphasized detachment from worldly affairs and focused on esoteric ritualism. As Islamic states like the Delhi Sultanate and later the Mughal Empire established control over Northern India in the late middle ages, Sufi Orders took the forefront of acquiring converts from the Hindu locals in those regions. From there, the Sufis plied out along the Monsoon trade winds, arriving in Nusantara as early as the 13th century. Sufi Orders spread a form of Islam that resonated with the Indianized peoples of Nusantara. The Sufis utilized song and dance in their religious expression, which must have seemed familiar to the Javanese and their sacred topeng dances. Moreover, Sufis placed great emphasis on meditation and detachment from worldly affairs, which aligned well with Buddhist thought. While orthodox forms of Islam strictly forbade the worship of imagery, the Sufis had a roster of saints who they venerated in a manner not dissimilar to how Hindus worshipped idols in their temples. Throughout the archipelago, the Sufis endeavored to make Islam compatible with native customs, and in so doing, won the endearment of the locals and acquired converts to their faith. The Sufis are just one example of the fact that when Islamic civilization came to Nusantara, it did not replace what had come before. Instead, the introduction of Islam was a lengthy process of gradual adoption and adaptation to local circumstances.
Conclusion - Islam in Modern Indonesia
The twilight of Islamic statehood in the Nusantara Archipelago was heralded by the arrival of the Dutch East India Company. When Indonesia emerged with its independence from Dutch rule in 1949, it did so not as an Islamic Sultanate, but as a secular republic, albeit one with a Muslim majority population. Indeed, unlike the Catholic Spanish and Portuguese, the Protestant Dutch were not all too concerned with converting their colonial Indonesian subjects to Christianity. Thus, while former Spanish and Portuguese colonies like the Philippines and East Timor are overwhelmingly Catholic today, Indonesia came out of its colonial era with its pre-colonial religions largely intact. In the year 1960, while working in Java, the American Anthropologist Clifford Geertz identified three archetypes of Javanese Muslims. The first two were the santris and priyayis, who belonged to the urban upper classes and practiced a more conservative, orthodox form of Islam. The third were the abangans, who were mainly found in the rural countryside and practiced a more syncretic form of Islam that incorporated many indigenous, pre-Islamic traditions. Although Geertz’s subdivision of Javanese society has been the subject of criticism by later anthropologists and the Javanese themselves, it is fascinating to consider his descriptions of Indonesian Muslims who, even in the 20th century, still preserved the ancient customs of their pre-Islamic ancestors. In our modern age, this form of syncretic Indonesian Islam has come under threat from orthodox Islamic movements that seek to quote-unquote ‘purify’ un-Islamic elements from the faith. Nevertheless, the ways in which the Muslims of modern Indonesia express their religion are still as diverse as the Indonesian peoples themselves. Although the faith of the Prophet Muhammed arrived upon the sunny, monsoon-battered shores of Nusantara as a foreign stranger, it was slowly embraced by its new hosts, layered upon the ancient traditions that arrived before it, and made an indelible part of the tapestry that makes the modern country of Indonesia as uniquely vibrant as it is today.
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