THE MALAY (OR SOUTHEAST ASIAN) SPHERE
How would one describe the Malay or Southeast Asian sphere?
Farthest removed from the lands of Islam’s origins, the Malay sphere comprises principally the nations of Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as the Muslim communities of the southern Philippines. In addition to being arguably more homogeneous ethnically than any of the other spheres, the manner of Islamization was also in general remarkably irenic. Islam began to arrive in the thirteenth century when Sufi missionaries went to Sumatra (the largest of Indonesia’s several thousand islands) with merchants from India. Two centuries on, Islam arrived at neighboring Java, and about a century after that, Muslim rulers set up shop at Malacca (on the Malay peninsula) and at the Sumatran city of Acheh. Subsequent phases of Islamization, as well as a desire to expunge local practices of “folk” traditions, began with the growing importance of pilgrimage. Here a major influence was that some pilgrims stayed in Mecca and Medina to study formally and brought home more “traditional” interpretations of Islam’s sacred sources. The Shafi’i school became the only significantly influential law school, and the spiritual tone of southeast Asian Islam was marked by major Sufi influence.
How did Islam enter the lands of Southeast Asia?
Sparse documentation makes it difficult to determine exactly when Islam took root in the Malay sphere, but there are indirect indicators. Hindu rulers of Sumatra had Muslim advisors as early as 1282, and ten years later, Marco Polo reported Muslim communities in North Sumatra. Celebrated Moroccan world traveler Ibn Battuta encountered established Muslim scholars there in 1345–1346. The presence of Islam on the Malay mainland around that time can be deduced because a deposed former ruler of Srivijaya named Iskandar went to Malacca and converted to Islam there. That city apparently became a base for the growth of Islam throughout the area, and by the late fifteenth century, Islam spread to interior territories. Moving to the east, the Moluccas became Muslim in 1498, and Islam had reached the Philippines by the early sixteenth century.
At what point did Muslims encounter European powers in Southeast Asia?
Around that same time, the age of colonialism arrived as the Portuguese asserted significant power in the Indian Ocean. In 1509 they took Goa, in India, and in 1511 conquered Malacca. Counterintuitively perhaps, Portuguese control in the region actually helped Islam spread, as Muslim scholars fled Malacca for Sumatra when the city fell to the Portuguese. Acheh emerged as a strong rival to Malacca, and Muslim sultanates, such as that of Johore (1512–1812), soon emerged on the Malay peninsula as well. Meanwhile, parts of the central Indonesian island of Java developed into a third center of Muslim power in the area. In search of pepper, the Dutch arrived in the southeastern region with naval firepower and took Batavia in 1619, Ceylon in 1640, and Malacca in 1641. The Dutch ousted both the Portuguese and regional Muslims, establishing themselves as the undisputed power through the seventeenth century. European control did not stifle Islam but instead facilitated its emergence as the main religion of the region.
Malaysian Muslims celebrate the birthday of the Prophet at Putrajaya Putra Mosque.
Is it true that the “Islamization” of Southeast Asia occurred largely without conflict?
Much of the character of early Malay sphere Islam was influenced by major Sufi teachers, who were among the first scholars to translate Arabic sources and tradition into Malay. Their missionary approach was generally very adaptive and flexible. Hamza Fansuri (d. 1600) founded a branch of the Qadariya order, wrote commentaries in Malay, and taught the philosophy of Ibn al-Arabi. Abd as-Samad of Palembang (on Sumatra, 1779–1789) translated the works of the great eleventh-century theologian and Sufi al-Ghazali into Malay, thus introducing a reformist strain of Islam into the area. Still, the practice of Islam did not rule out celebration of indigenous non-Islamic observances. An eighteenth-century teacher named Tuanku Nan Tua led a religious revival attempting to eradicate local religious and social practices that did not conform to Islam; but his attempt at reform sparked a civil war. Nan Tua advocated pacifist reform while others in the movement were more militant, and the reform movement split.
Although many accepted Sharia and the reforms peacefully (especially the merchant communities), the local chieftains did not. When religious leaders asked the Dutch to intervene, the Dutch suppressed the reformers and took control. Malay Muslim leaders mounted an unsuccessful reprisal against Dutch rule. Meanwhile, a Javanese state had sought to combine Hindu and Muslim concepts of rule, but Islam was in fact just a facade for residual Hindu belief. The result was a Javanese society Islamic in name only, since for the villagers of Java, Islam remained chiefly a way to control spiritual forces in a cultural blend of Hindu, Muslim, and animist beliefs. A recently independent Indonesia is experiencing a wide range of new and ongoing attempts to “purify” Islam of such “un-Islamic” accretions.
How did colonialism and European imperialism play out in early modern times in relation to Southeast Asian Islam?
By the end of the eighteenth century, the Dutch commercial empire in Europe was undermined seriously by British competition, the French revolution, and the Napoleonic wars. But in the nineteenth century the Dutch revived as a territorial land-based empire in Southeast Asia. In 1871 and 1874, they annexed Acheh and abolished the sultanate. By 1911 they had complete control of the region and for the first time a single empire ruled over the entire “Indies,” thus laying the foundation for Indonesia. The British were meanwhile extending their empire to Malaya (present-day Malaysia), which around 1819 witnessed an influx of Chinese and Indians in the area. From 1877 to 1889 the British consolidated their direct control in that part of mainland Southeast Asia. Muslim populations in the islands (especially Indonesia) grew apace, and the world’s most populous Islamic nation gained its independence in the mid-twentieth century.
Islam was once prominent in Spain. How did it become so important there?
Muslim armies crossed the straits of Gibraltar from North Africa in 711, and an important Arab-Islamic presence established itself in Spain within fifty years or so. After the fall of the Umayyad dynasty in Damascus, the incoming Abbasids sought to put an end to their Umayyad rivals by assassinating all of the family’s princes. However, one managed to escape to Spain, where he established the Umayyad Emirate of Cordoba. Later it would grow to challenge Baghdad’s authority as the Cordoba caliphate.
What was the overall religious and cultural situation in early Islamic Spain?
Spain’s population had become “Latinized” over the preceding seven centuries or more. Jews who had lived in the Iberian peninsula since Roman times experienced considerable persecution under their Christian rulers and were among the first to taste the benefits of the Arab Muslim conquest: they were given their religious freedom, while the Christian population was allowed to retain its Roman institutional heritage as a basis for local order. For several centuries Cordoba would be a marvel of cultural splendor and inter-religious harmony. On the whole, Cordoba was an outstanding example of how Jews, Christians, and Muslims could