Islam in Malaya .. How did Indonesia become the largest Muslim country without a fight?

(The people of the Batak region in central Sumatra) who had shown stubborn opposition to the introduction of Islam for many centuries, even though they were surrounded by two groups of fanatical Muslim residents (according to Arnold's description), namely the Achins in the north and the Malay people in the south, have responded in the years The last of the peaceful efforts that were made to introduce them to Islam, and they showed enthusiasm in this path.

(British orientalist Thomas Arnold in his book "The Call to Islam")

The peoples of Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia, which includes nearly 240 million people, 94% of whom are Muslims according to the Shafi'i school of thought, are considered witnesses to the miracle of the spread of Islam to these distant countries without horses, swords, spears, compulsions or subjugations. Islam was directed at wherever the first conquerors arrived from a group of fanatical orientalists and those who took their approach, a charge that Indonesia denies with Islam since it entered those countries eight or nine centuries ago and up to the present day.

The story of Indonesia and the Malay Archipelago, on top of which is present-day Malaysia, was witnessed by a group of great travelers such as Ibn Battuta and Marco Polo, these two men who realized the existence of Islam in those islands, the most important of which is Java or Sumatra, and how it spread without a sword or coercion, but it is impossible to know. Accuracy is the true history of the first introduction of Islam to Malay and Indonesia in its heart, as historians, both Muslim and non-Muslim, almost agree that the Arabs who practiced trade with those distant countries had started that trade early in the history of Islam dating back to the second century AH / eighth century AD, and that they The owners of the greatest role in lighting the torch of the call in those areas.

As the great British orientalist "Thomas Arnold" says in his book "The Call to Islam", "Arab trade at the beginning of the seventh century AD met with great popularity with China via Ceylon (Sri Lanka), so that we found Arab merchants in the mid-eighth century residing in Canton was in great crowds, and in the period between the tenth and fifteenth centuries, until the arrival of the Portuguese, the Arabs were the masters of trade with the East unchallenged, so we can claim in some acceptable assurance that they must have established their commercial colonies in some of the islands of the Malay Archipelago. As they did in other places at a very early age ”[1].

The book "The Call to Islam" by the British Orientalist "Thomas Arnold"

Thus, the Muslim Arabs and their merchants in particular had the credit for the starting point from which we can know how Islam spread in these distant countries in the far east of the globe?

How did his career develop so that his family became among the most famous enthusiasts for their new religion?

How did the story begin and what did it end?

That is what we will see in our next lines.

Historical sources provide us with important material about the civilized Arabs of the south and the Omanis and their great roles that they played from the spread of Islam in the first century AH until the advent of the Portuguese in the tenth century AH, a thousand years in which these sailors, civilized merchants, and Omanis played the absolute leadership role in the Indian Ocean, but the matter developed into migrations A wide range of Yemeni Muslim civilization to many areas in the Malay Archipelago, so that they were able to establish independent sultanates on the island of Java, such as the Siak Sultanate, Pontiac Sultanate and Aceh Sultanate [2].

And one of the most prominent things that led to the Islamization of Indonesia was the marriage of these hadith merchants, Omanis and other Muslims who began in delegations from the coasts of South India, the Millibars and other Javanese women, and the marriage of the King of Central Java in the twelfth century AD to the Muslim princess was a pivotal event. This princess stipulated that he should become Muslim first before marrying her, so he converted to Islam, and the Islam of this king ushered in a new Islamic era in which Islam spread in Central Java and small Islamic principalities emerged, then united in 1511, a few months before the Portuguese occupation of these islands [3].

Thomas Arnold tells us that Arab and Indian Muslim merchants and immigrants saw that “the most effective way to introduce the Muslim religion to these countries is to adopt the language of the people and many of the customs of the people and marry their wives, and ultimately they succeeded in inserting themselves into the group of leaders who occupy the highest position in the state, And they worked in one hand in a way that was more subtly and coordinated than what the people of the people were doing. ”[4]

The ultimate goal of this unity among the Muslim immigrants of the time was to advocate Islam and spread it among the pagan social classes.

It seems that these collective efforts, which were organized, carried their banner in the regions of the Kingdom of Aceh, north of Sumatra at that time, an Arab sheikh named Abdullah Al-Aref and his student Sheikh Burhanuddin who worked remarkably hard to spread the Islamic faith, first in the interior regions during the time of Sheikh Al-Aref, then in the regions of The coasts by his dictation Burhanuddin in the middle of the eleventh century AD / VI century AH. The famous Italian traveler Marco Polo, who spent five months on the coast of northern Sumatra in the year 1292 AD, mentions that he found the small kingdom of "Berlak" on the northeastern corner of the island Muslim;

Because Arab merchants have introduced Islam into it, due to their frequent reluctance to it in the eighth century, as he says [5].

Some historical news indicates that the king of Marasilo "Samdara" in Java also converted to Islam at the hands of a mission of preachers sent by one of the nobles of Mecca in the twelfth century AD headed by a man named Sheikh Ismail, which is the same that contributed to the spread of Islam in new areas of the south. India and other areas of the Strait of Malacca in Southeast Asia. This king took a new title after Islam, which is “the righteous king,” and he married the daughter of the king of the nearby kingdom of “Berlak”, and had two sons from her, the eldest of which was King “al-Zahir” [6].

The most famous Moroccan traveler, Ibn Battuta, visited these regions within the year 743 AH / 1345 CE, and saw the king al-Zahir, son of al-Malik al-Salih, Sultan of Jawa. Ibn Battuta said: “He is one of the virtues of the kings and their generosity. Jihad and conquest, and he is humble and comes to Friday prayers walking on his feet, and the people of his Shafi’i country love jihad, and they go out voluntarily with him, and they are victorious over those who follow them among the infidels, and the infidels give them the tribute for peace ”[7].

This description from Ibn Battuta means that the people of the country themselves after the first generation of them entered Islam voluntarily and convinced by the Muslim preachers, whether they were merchants or scholars, Arabs or Indians and "Pakistanis", because the second generation of them undertook the task of spreading Islam in Indonesia And neighboring Malaysia, and their being of the adherents of the Shafi'i school of thought confirms that the first call came from the Shafi'i civilization as well as from the sons of the Millibars or the Malabar in southern India. And present-day Malaysia.

And through Ibn Battuta also we see that the relations between Sumatra, in which Islam was expanding thanks to the preaching in the first stage and thanks to the conquests of the new Muslims from the people of the country, led by the good king and his son Al-Malik Al-Zahir, we see that its relations with neighboring Islamic countries were deepening and expanding, especially with the kings Muslim Mughals in India and Arabs in Yemen, Oman and Arabia.

Ibn Battuta

Thanks to the efforts of the kings of Sumatra and the consolidation of the foundations of Islam on its coasts, Islam has begun to make its way to the interior regions, according to Thomas Arnold, and the call of Sheikh Ismail sent by the Sheriff of Mecca at the head of a mission to spread Islam in these regions has borne abundant fruits, as a Chinese traveler who visited these countries spoke The island in the year 1413 AD on the inner town of Lambri, and he said that the number of families in which a thousand families lived, all of them Muslims, and on a great aspect of generosity, and the kings of this region all believed in Islam, and Islam began to deepen in the central and eastern regions of Sumatra [8] .

Arnold notes that the wave of Islam’s spread did not abate with the occupation of the Dutch in the sixteenth century. He says: “Islam began to spread by peaceful means, especially through the enthusiastic efforts made by the subordinate employees of the people who were brought up by the new system, who were all residents of Malay Muslims, as well as about The path of influence of merchants who circled around the country, and followed their example in spreading the call to the group (Haji) and other well-known religious scholars.

And he says: "(The people of the Batak region) who had shown stubborn opposition to the introduction of Islam for many centuries, even though they were surrounded by two groups of fanatical Muslim residents (according to Arnold's description), namely the Achins in the north and the Malay people in the south, have responded in the years. The last of the peaceful efforts that were made to introduce them to Islam, and they showed enthusiasm in this path "[9].

And from the Java and Malay regions, Islam began to expand in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to neighboring regions of Southeast Asia, such as Cambodia and Thailand, and with the beginning of modern times, the people of these regions were keen to send their children to study at Al-Azhar in Egypt, the most famous of whom was Sheikh Zahir Jalaluddin Al-Azhari, who was one of the most prominent advocates of Islam in Sumatra and Malaysia, in which he died in 1956 AD, and he is one of the sons of Sheikh Muhammad Abdo School, Sheikh Mukhtar Lotfi and Sheikh Elias Yaqoub, who both learned at Al-Azhar, and founded the magazine "Marwan Azhar" meaning the call of Al-Azhar in the Indonesian language in Egypt. 10].

This is a very brief story of the spread of Islam in the Malay Archipelago and in its heart the present-day Indonesia and Malaysia, and it is a story that did not give a serious detailed history similar to what we have seen in the regions of the heart of the Islamic world, and if the preachers and merchants played in it greater roles compared to the conquerors in other regions, these scholars and merchants who were withheld History, their names, their personalities, their dates and their efforts perhaps, but their traces still remain until now in the Islam of Indonesia, which is the largest Muslim country in terms of population today, with a quarter of a billion people, and that is an amazing story in all its details, no doubt!

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Sources

[1] Arnold: The Call to Islam, pp. 401, 402.

[2] The Yemeni Hadrami Migration to Indonesia, p. 89.

[3] Images from the East in Indonesia, p. 108.

[4] The Call to Islam, p. 403.

[5] The spread of Islam in Indonesia, p. 72.

[6] Ibid.

[7] The Journey of Ibn Battuta 4/114.

[8] Thomas Arnold: Previous p. 407.

[9] Ibid, p. 408.

[10] The Spread of Islam in Indonesia, p. 72.