How did Indonesia and Malaysia become majority-Muslim?: Addenda
Addenda to a Redditor's excellent answers and a few other comments.
In the course of my background research for the “Dharma” series (here’s Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5), I came across a Redditor’s responses from six years ago (no longer active so the username now shows as [deleted]) who wrote extensively with references that highlights how Dharma - be it Sanatana or Buddhism - were not extant in the quite the same manner in Southeast Asia as they were in the Subcontinent and China. In these addenda to the shaped narrative that has been transcribed, the Redditor goes on to discuss additional matters regarding Southeast Asia, extending from Indonesia/Malaya-centric consideration to comparisons with the likes of Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Cambodia. My perfunctory background research found these answers to be largely true.
On the matter of the way of the sword: this might be true in the Redditor’s region of interest but the sword was never far away in the Subcontinent. Recent news about efforts to reclaim Dharmic shrines from under Islamic structures as well as the Turkic invaders’ own accounts is proof aplenty, despite the best efforts of Marxian historiographers and the class of schism-seekers who venerate them to derive their own false authority.
To be fair, the Redditor doesn’t shy away from mentioning the sword when it was used. Also included are some interesting responses from other contributors. Read on!
Note to my subscribers: this isn’t my work so I haven’t sent this through email.
Addendum: Islam and the Sword
The idea that Islam spread by the sword seems to be becoming more popular, especially on Reddit, so I want to give a Southeast Asian perspective here. In a nutshell: we shouldn't ignore the presence of warfare in the spread of Islam. But on balance, Islamization in the area was more peaceful and less disruptive than virtually any other Early Modern mass conversion process,1 including Christianity in Southeast Asia.
This was an era where religions tended to spread by conquest, most obviously seen with the Christianization of the Spanish Americas. But I honestly can't think of a single place in Southeast Asia where Islam spread as a result of external conquest. With the partial exception of Java, there was strong dynastic continuity too - kings who ruled 100 years after Islam would be from the same family as kings who ruled 100 years before Islam. On a popular level, most places saw population increase after the adoption of Islam while at the same time in the Philippines, Spanish conquest and Christianization was so devastating that the population shrank by 36%. But we shouldn't go too far the other way and say that everyone accepted Islam peacefully because the new religion was so much better than what they had before. There absolutely was resistance to Islam. Only by overcoming it, often with the sword, could Islam come this far.
Consider South Sulawesi. Here, there does not seem to have been much aristocratic support for actually converting to Islam throughout the 16th century. Christian Pelras, in his article "Religion, Tradition, and the Dynamics of Islamization in South Sulawesi," argues that there were two main reasons for this. First, royal legitimacy there was based on their descent from the tumanurung, a race of celestial white-blooded beings who are sent by the gods to rule over humanity. This is clearly incompatible with monotheism, the core tenet of Islam, and especially the Muslim belief in God not having descendants. So South Sulawesi rulers feared that if they converted to Islam, there would be no longer be any justification for their authority.
The second issue was the priesthood maintained by South Sulawesi rulers, called the bissu. The bissu are (present tense intended) an order of hermaphrodite shamans who embrace both the male and the female. For example, a bissu might wear flowers (a feminine trait) in his/her hair while carrying around a knife (a masculine trait). The bissu were also considered central to royal authority, since they guarded the sacred regalia of the kingdom and were in charge of all court ceremonies. On a more personal level, the bissu were the ruler's doctors, entertainers, servants, and closest friends. They seem to have used this considerable influence over the court to rally against foreign religions; one Portuguese complained that the greatest obstacle to converting South Sulawesi is "the tremendous debating over Christianity by this race of abominable priests," and we can imagine that there must have been similar or greater opposition to Islam.2 There was apparently considerable popular dislike of Islam too, especially regarding the prohibition against pork.
So there was great controversy when the king of Luwuq converted to Islam in 1605 and was followed six months later by Karaeng Matoaya, the de facto ruler of Gowa-Talloq.
Many bissu fled far away. European sources claim that there was an attempt at rebellion by Karaeng Matoaya's sons and that some high-ranking princes showed how highly they regarded Islam in this way:3
In the Night-time they put several Swine into the Mosque newly built, and after they had cut their Throats in the same place, they besmear'd the Walls and Doors with their Blood.
It wasn't until twenty-six months after Karaeng Matoaya's conversion that the people of Gowa-Talloq had their first public prayer.
Next, Gowa-Talloq sent envoys to all the other kings of South Sulawesi. These envoys reminded the kings of the agreements of friendship that had been signed between their kingdom and Gowa-Talloq and how it had been decided that "if anyone [...] finds a spark of goodness, the discoverer of it will be obliged to convince the others." Well, Gowa-Talloq had recently 'discovered' such a spark of goodness, and it was called Islam. So Gowa-Talloq politely recommended that all the kings in South Sulawesi convert to this new faith.
The response was, to put it mildly, negative. The king of Soppéng sent back cotton and a spinning wheel, implying that (since it's the women who spin cotton) Gowa-Talloq had emasculated itself by becoming Muslim. Another king declared that he would not accept Islam "even if the rivers flowed with blood, as long as there were pigs to eat in the forests." The king of Boné said with regards to the Islamic God: "Let me go and see it."
Faced with this sort of responses, Karaeng Matoaya decided on war. Thus began what in South Sulawesi is called the Islamic Wars. Gowa-Talloq's initial attack on Soppéng in 1608 was repulsed after a bloody three-day battle, with Karaeng Matoaya himself surviving only due to luck. But the resolve of the non-Muslim allies quickly began to crumble. By 1609 the king of Soppéng had been killed and the Ajatappareng kingdoms had fallen to Islam. Wajoq accepted Islam in 1610 after an enormous feast where all the pigs in the kingdom were eaten. The king of Boné was the last to convert, in 1611. Given the hostility that most kings had shown towards Islam, it's not unreasonable that without the Islamic Wars, Islam would never have become the religion of 89.6% of South Sulawesians that it is today.4
I talked about South Sulawesi because it's what I know most about (see my flair), but wars weren't uncommon elsewhere. The Hindu-Buddhist empire of Majapahit was conquered by the Muslim sultanate of Demak in a war that Javanese chroniclers describe with religious overtones: "the Buddhist army was strong with its magic, the Muslim army was stronger with its karamat [Islamic saintliness]." Further west, the sultans of Melaka enforced Islam on its vassals while Aceh brought "war in God's path" to the animists of the Sumatran mountains.
But if you look at the wars associated with Islamization more closely, it turns out that virtually all of them are essentially politics justified with religion. Returning to Sulawesi's Islamic Wars, by the mid-16th century, the kingdom of Gowa and its allies (e.g. Talloq) had conquered every kingdom in South Sulawesi except for Boné. But a Gowa-Boné war from 1562 to 1565 was a catastrophic defeat for Gowa. The situation grew even worse in 1582 when two vassals of Gowa, Wajoq and Soppéng, deserted their overlord and cast their lot with Boné. This Boné-Wajoq-Soppéng alliance became known as the Tellumpocco (literally 'Three Powers'), and it was designed solely to oppose Gowa. Gowa was extremely pissed off and fought a bloody but inconclusive war with the Tellumpocco from 1582 to 1590, leading to the geopolitical situation in the map shown above. Gowa and Talloq's rulers, including Karaeng Matoaya, understandably did not find this situation desirable. So the Islamic Wars were actually fought so that Gowa could conquer Boné and finally (re)gain hegemony over the entire peninsula of South Sulawesi. They would have been fought sooner or later even had Matoaya never converted to Islam. There were similar backstories for Demak vs Majapahit and other wars of Islamization elsewhere. And of course, in many places (off the top of my head, Kutai and Ternate) the adoption of Islam didn't involve military conflict in any way.
What about the people? It would be wrong to say that there weren't any atrocities. One manuscript from Selayar Island in South Sulawesi recommends that people who stubbornly refuse to become Muslim be killed and their bodies "thrown away in the forest like carcasses of dead animals." But let's not miss the forest for the trees. Even a Jesuit who would have every incentive to make Islam look as savage and violent as possible claimed (all odd spellings sic):5
[Karaeng Matoaya] would not consent to the Violence which they [some Muslim clerics] perswaded him to commit upon all his Subjects, by forcing them to be Circumcis'd as well as himself; believing he should perswade them more easily by gentle Means, and in Hopes of the Priviledges he should grant to those that follow'd his Example. Several of his Courtiers in complacency to him, were willing to be Circumcis'd with him, and a great part of the People in a few days after were contented to endure the same Pain; So that in less than a Month, the Mahometan Religion became the predominant Religion of the Country.
The Talloq Chronicle, written within four decades of the Islamic Wars, also tells us:
Conquering the Bugis of the Tellumpocco, he did not trample them and also did not take saqbu katti, did not take raqba bate. [saqbu katti and raqba bate are war indemnities] They were not taken. [...] Karaeng Matoaya said to me, "At my conquest of the Tellumpocco, not a branch did I break. A sum of three hundred katti [240 kg/530 lbs] of my own gold did I present, did I distribute."
Karaeng Matoaya's Islamic Wars - and presumably many other Islam-associated wars in Southeast Asia - were far from the jihads of popular imagination.
But when Islam did come with war, why were Muslims the victors more often that not? Anthony Reid, in the very generically titled article "The Islamization of Southeast Asia,"6 speculates that there might be two reasons for this. First, Muslim armies usually had superior weaponry thanks to their connections with the gunpowder empires of the Islamic world. There were many Turkish cannon makers in the Malay world who disseminated [the Ottoman love for monster guns] in Southeast Asia and some historians have even argued that some Malay armies were dependent on Turkish firearms.7
The second reason is the religion of Islam itself. To quote Reid, the Muslim "faith gave them both solidarity and the confidence that heaven was on their side. [...] Whenever a determined force confident of its own destiny appeared in Southeast Asia, whether Muslim or Christian, it was able to achieve victories out of all proportion to its numbers." For example, in 1686 there was a war between the Thai government and a few hundred Muslims from South Sulawesi. In the Battle of Bangkok, just 54 Muslims faced 2,080 Thai troops. The next day, 30 Muslims and 366 Thais lay dead. A month later, in the Battle of Ayutthaya, 100 Muslims were besieged by around 8,000 Thai troops as well as 60 Europeans. After around eight hours of fighting, virtually all the Muslims were dead. But 1,000 Thais and 17 Europeans had been killed with them.8
Addendum: Why did some parts of Southeast Asia not convert to Islam?
An r/AskHistorians question just as common as "why did Indonesia convert to Islam?" is the question "why didn't [insert Asian country] convert to Islam considering that even Indonesia did?" So far, [insert Asian country] has included (pinging people still active on Reddit):
India, a lot of times
Sri Lanka. /u/yodatsracist had a nice answer for this one, but here I'll look at the question in a less generalist angle by examining Sri Lankan history in more depth.
Bali
Thailand, Myanmar, and Cambodia
I'll try to address all these regions except for India, which I don't feel comfortable addressing. In relatively little depth compared to the rest of my posts, but hey - still better than nothing.
The Theravada Buddhist World: Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand
TL;DR: These places didn't convert because most people were Buddhist.
Islam was never successfully established in Mainland Southeast Asia, the peninsula that now includes Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The usual reason given is that maritime trade was less important in the Mainland. Honestly, I'm dubious about this hypothesis. Sure, trade isn't as important in Myanmar if the country is united.
But in 1450, Myanmar looked like this (left image). In 1530, the the situation had devolved into this (right image) until Toungoo reunited the country. As you see from the maps there, from around 1300 to 1550 Myanmar was a land divided into warring kingdoms. To win the competition, Arakan and Pegu had to take advantage of foreigners. As for Thailand, it's ridiculous to claim that trade wasn't important there when the capital of Thailand was the biggest port in Southeast Asia until the mid-16th century. Meanwhile, let's remind ourselves that southern Java, with exactly one port on the entire coastline, became Muslim too. "Trade = Islam" doesn't cut it.
Instead, we need to look at culture. As I've said above, Alan Strathern, historian of Sri Lanka, argues for a "Transcendentalist Intransigence" (JSTOR article) when it comes to conversion. The TLDR is:
A ruler is less likely to convert to a new religion if:
he follows an organized religion like Christianity, Islam, and Theravada Buddhism
this organized religion is a fundamental part of the society where he lives
As I've stressed above, Indonesia and Malaysia went Muslim because most people were animists and not actually 'Hindu' or Buddhist. But by the time Indonesia was converting to Islam, Theravada Buddhism was already far, far too strong in Sri Lanka and rapidly growing in influence in Myanmar and Thailand. The religion had become a fundamental part of most of society while rulers promoted an exclusive Buddhist orthodoxy, leaving no place for Islam. In fact, the power of Theravada Buddhism was so great that in all of history from 1400 to 1800, only three Theravada kings became apostates. All three were in extreme circumstances:
Dharmapala, king of Kotte in Sri Lanka. In 1557, the Portuguese pressured the sixteen-year-old Dharmapala to convert to Catholicism. This conversion was followed by rioting and by large numbers of Kottenese immediately defecting to his Buddhist rival, King Mayadunne. Mayadunne eventually conquered Kotte with much local support.
Karaliyadde Bandara, king of Kandy in Sri Lanka. This king 'converted' to Catholicism in 1562 to gain Portuguese support against the aforementioned King Mayadunne. Evidence strongly suggests that he remained Buddhist and just pretended to be Catholic so the Portuguese would help him.
Ramadhipati I, king of Cambodia. He became king by overthrowing the government in 1642. He soon converted to Islam since Muslim merchants were his main/only supporters. In 1658 he was kicked out by angry Buddhist nobles with Vietnamese help. Modern Cambodians still consider him a horrible ruler who was bewitched by his Muslim wife.
I've stated the general factors at play, so now let's discuss each Theravada country in more depth beginning with Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan monarchs had become increasingly obsessed with Buddhist orthodoxy since at least the 9th century. This culminated in the grand reforms of King Parakramabahu I in 1165. Parakramabahu made the Mahavihara school of Buddhism the only orthodox school, made all other interpretations illegal, and forced all non-Mahavihara monks and even 'corrupt' Mahavihara monks to either stop being a monk or be trained all over again in proper Mahavihara ways. The Mahavihara were particularly favored because they took the position that Sri Lanka and its kings had a divine mandate: the protection of the Buddhist religion which had been lost in India. Naturally, Parakramabahu justified his attacks on India on the grounds that Hindus were heretics with false beliefs. Just like Islam became associated with royal authority in Indonesia, Sri Lankan kings drew their authority from Buddhism.
If kings were becoming more Buddhist, so was the average villager. By the 9th century, many villagers had monks as landlords while the great Buddhist monasteries became centers of popular arts and religious practices, including intense forms of personal devotion that developed in opposition to Hindu bhakti cults. By the 10th century, there was enough of a Buddhist consciousness that when King Udaya III refused to allow monasteries to grant asylum to criminals, the population in general rose in revolt at the king's lack of respect for Buddhism - until the monks expressed their support for Udaya, at which point the rebellion quickly died out. Several hundred years later, a Sri Lankan king converted to Catholicism in secret because he was scared that his people would murder him for apostasy. When the news leaked out there were huge riots until the king declared that the baptism was just a trick to fool those heretic Portuguese.
Even worse for a would-be Muslim missionary, by the 13th century at the latest there was a vague sense of Sinhalese identity partly defined by a common religion. To be Sinhalese was to be Buddhist. For these reasons, Islam could make little progress in mainstream Sri Lankan society.9
In Myanmar, the two coastal kingdoms most exposed to Islam were Arakan and Pegu. Arakan is a special case because it did have a lot of Muslim influence and because its kings cared a lot less about Buddhist orthodoxy. But Arakanese kings never converted to Islam, perhaps due to their close cultural ties with powerful Buddhist neighbors to the east. Some time between 1430 and 1600 Buddhism became rooted in rural society too, especially thanks to wandering Buddhist 'village preachers' (gamavasi) who acted a lot like Sufis in Indonesia. Islam finally gained a major permanent presence in the capital in the early 17th century. But at this point there wasn't a lot of place for Islam to spread in Arakan. Still, the relative lack of commitment to orthodoxy might have contributed to the large Muslim population in Arakan today.10
Pegu was much more like Sri Lanka, both because kings defined and enforced a religious orthodoxy and because Islam spread early on throughout society. Pegu was the kingdom of the Mon, a people who prided themselves on having been the first Theravada Buddhists in Southeast Asia.11 Indeed, the Mon seem to have considered their neighbors "ignorant, half-pagan rustics" whose understanding of Buddhism was limited because they had learnt it so late. Pegu was also locked in competition with the northern kingdom of Ava, which was trying to assert its legitimacy over its competitors by supporting religion.
Naturally, the kings of Pegu decided that patronizing Buddhism more impressively than in Ava was the best way to display their authority. It's not surprising that the two most sacred shrines in Myanmar, Shwemawdaw and Shwedagon, gained their modern prominence under the Pegu kings. In the 1470s, King Dhammazedi of Pegu kicked out thousands of 'corrupt' monks and had 15,666 monks reappointed according to the Sri Lankan orthodoxy established by Parakramabahu. Or as Dhammazedi himself made clear in an edict:
It was in this manner that Ramadhipatiraja [title of Dhammazedi] purged the Religion of its impurities throughout the whole of Ramaññadesa [name for Pegu], and created a single sect of the whole body of the Priesthood.
From the year 838, Sakkaraj [1476 AD], to the year 841, Sakkaraj [1479 AD], the priests throughout Ramaññadesa, who resided in towns and villages, as well as those who lived in the forest, continuously received the extremely pure form of the Sinhalese upasampada [monastic] ordination, that had been handed down by the spiritual successors of the Mahavihara sect...
Ramadhipatiraja, after he had purified the Religion of Buddha, expressed the hope that: "Now that this Religion of Buddha has been purged of the impure form of the upasampada ordination, of sinful priests, and of priests, who are not free from censure and reproach, and that it has become cleansed, resplendent, and pure, may it last till the end of the period of 5,000 years!"
...May the excellent Kings, who are imbued with intense faith, and who will reign after me in Hamsavatipura [another name for Pegu], always strive to purify the Religion, whenever they perceive that impurities have arisen in it!
I know a lot less about what was going on with ordinary people. We do know that by the reign of Dhammazedi, the old animist pantheon had already been reorganized into 37 gods who were all subject to Buddhism. It would appear that indigenous religion had been integrated into a Buddhist framework - a framework that is, of course, incompatible with Islam. All in all, Pegu was not a place with much room for a new foreign religion.12
I have to admit that I know little about Thailand and Cambodia. My understanding is that Theravada orthodoxy was less strictly enforced than in Myanmar, with a lot of Mahayana Buddhist and Hindu influences remaining on religion. Nevertheless, in Thailand a network of rural monasteries had emerged by around 1500. These monasteries relied on support from nearby villages and probably encouraged young villagers to temporarily enter the monkhood as novices, drawing rural animists into a wider Buddhist world. Festivals, temple artwork, and collective [merit-making] also spread Buddhist concepts across the kingdom. Similar processes were at work in Cambodia, with old Hindu temples converted into Buddhist monasteries.13
Animism and Islam could easily find a compromise. It appears that it was not so for Theravada Buddhism.
The Balinese Way
I've previously said that Islam spread in Indonesia when the older Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms were collapsing and that Bali remains Hindu because the powerful Hindu kingdom of Gèlgèl quickly emerged on the island, allowing Hinduism to continue to be associated with powerful rulers. Here I'll try to give some more details, especially on the religious side of things.
The kingdom of Gèlgèl was founded in the 1520s over the ruins of the empire of Majapahit. Its first ruler, Dalem Baturènggong, was a charismatic conqueror who forged a vast empire from Java to Sumbawa and began an era that the Balinese would forever remember as a Golden Age. But the Balinese do not consider Baturènggong's reign to have been complete until the arrival of Nirartha, the king's chief priest.
According to Balinese chronicles, Nirartha arrived some time before 1537 and quickly launched major religious reforms. He established the caste system, dividing the population into the noble trivangsa caste (7% of the population) and the lowly sudra caste. Nirartha also enforced Shaivism, a branch of Hinduism seeing the god Shiva as the most important. Buddhism and non-Shaivite Hinduism were slowly phased out or incorporated into Shaivism, while many non-Shaivite priests were demoted to the sudra caste. New rituals like a stress on holy water were introduced to go along with these transformations. Nirartha's importance is illustrated by the sheer number of temples he (supposedly) built all across Bali and by the fact that all high-caste Balinese priests claim to be his descendants. To top it all off, he was a master poet who sang of not only beauty, but also the origins of beauty: Shiva in "His highest immaterial state."
Religious poetry, temple-building, state-sponsored societal reform - these are the exact same things we see with the adoption of Islam on other islands. Bali hasn't really 'retained' its Hinduism. Just like in the rest of Indonesia, new religious currents sidelined medieval beliefs. It's just that thanks to people like Baturènggong and Nirartha, the Balinese could reform their religion from the inside instead of adopting a new faith from the outside.14
yodatsracist on Sri Lanka:
It's hard to prove precisely why something didn't happen, but we can look at the processes that made Malaysia and Indonesia and other similar states Muslim majority, and see where the points of departure between those areas and Sri Lanka are. I'll preface this by saying that I certainly know more about the Middle East than South Asia, and I certainly know more about South Asia than Southeast Asia. My impression is that, because of fragmentary evidence, there's not a clear consensus among historians on the exact process of how Indonesia became Muslim (though there is a consensus on the time period), in that we have a general sense of what was happening at the top (who ruled which territories) but less of a clear sense of what's happening at the bottom and middle, with the broader public. To get a better sense of those process, I'm going to rely on other Muslim majority where we have clearer historical evidence.
As you note, the point of departure between the two is not the mere presence of Muslim traders. However, traders and even more formal missionaries alone generally only convert so many people from the bottom up. Rodney Stark estimates that, when Constantine came to power, about 10% of the Roman Empire was Christian (see The Rise of Christianity). Once Christians were in power, this percentage grew rapidly. Richard M. Eaton argues that in South Asia, Islam grew in most places with a strong Hindu presence to at most about 10% Muslim (in many places, this was even with Muslim rulers). Often, though, the communities of Muslim traders had an even smaller impact on society at large. Eaton writes:
Along the Konkan and Malabar coasts, accordingly, we find the earliest Muslim mercantile communities [in South Asia], which have thrived over a thousand years. In the early tenth century the Arab traveler Mas'udi noted that an Arab trading community along the Konkan coast, which had been granted autonomy and protection by the local rajah, had intermarried considerably with the local population. The children of such marriages, brought up formally with the father's religion, yet carrying over many cultural traits of the non-Muslim mother, contributed to an expanding community which was richly described by Ibn Battuta in the early fourteenth century. But by virtue of this community's close commercial contacts with Arabia, reflected in religious terms by its adherence to the Shafi'i legal tradition, the foreign aspect of the community was always present and made social integration with the Hindu community difficult. In the last analysis, then, while it is true that Muslim merchants founded important mercantile enclaves and by intermarriage expanded the Muslim population, they do not appear to have been important in provoking religious change among the local population. ("Approaches to the Study of Conversion to Islam in South Asia", pg. 115-6)
The places where Islam exploded in South Asia, the Muslim majority areas areas of Pakistan and Bangladesh (besides the Pashtun- and Baloch-majority areas of Pakistan which converted earlier), were areas that had previously been marginal agricultural land--a frontier of sorts--that Muslim rulers settled and brought into the South Asian State system. These new areas were brought into the Empire not as Hindu areas, as you can imagine, but Muslim areas. Even then, though, the process took centuries. It's hard to trace it exactly, but Sufi saint's tombs and Muslim judges (qadis) Eaton argues were really what turned these areas Muslim once they were brought into the state system. Islam was, in a sense, civilization. He argues that this is not "conversion by the sword", but "conversion by the plow". For a summary of his argument, I strongly recommend reading his chapter "Approaches to the Study of Conversion to Islam in South Asia". You see in Indonesia and Malaysia the same accretion of Muslim communities around local saints' tombs and, after Muslim rule is established, people almost certainly converted around court cases and legal rulings (at least, we see this frequently in South Asia and the Middle East, from the first conquests all the way up to the 19th century Ottoman Empire).
This is a very slow process, however, one that only took place over centuries in lands under Muslim rule. Most historians agree that, for Indonesia, the turning point was not when the first traders arrived, not when they converted the first indigenous Muslims, but when the (Muslim) Sultanate of Demak finally defeated the (Hindu) Majapahit Empire. A similar thing happened with the (Muslim) Sultanate of Malacca in modern Malaysia. These early Sultanates had Muslim rulers, but that shouldn't be understood as meaning that they always had all, or mostly, Muslim subjects.
Again, I don't know of any work that systematically looks at the popular conversion under the Demak and Malaccan Sultanates, but we can guess what happened from similar moments in Middle Eastern and South Asian history. Eaton has several measures of the Islamization of the public in Punjab and the Bengal Frontier (a difficult task before censuses and surveys). Among one group in Punjab, the Sials (a Jat group), he finds that, "In the early fifteenth century, 10 percent of Sial males had Muslim names; in the seventeenth century, 56 percent; for the mideighteenth century, 75 percent, and for the early nineteenth century, 100 percent."
Look at this chart:
As Eaton says, "The table, for example, certainly suggests that although Muslim rule in Bengal dates from the thirteenth century, Muslim society cannot be said to have emerged there until two centuries later." We have less clear records from Indonesia and Malaysia, but a similar process certainly happened there.
In fact, you see absolutely the same thing even in the Middle East after the initial conquests--Muslim rule, and then a slow conversion. Take a look, for example, at some of the charts from Richard Bulliet's Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period. I won't explain his entire methodology, but he is again trying to estimate popular conversion to Islam through the use of specifically Muslim names. It's imperfect, but the consensus is that these are probably the best estimates we're going to be able to get, and that they model a close enough approximation to be useful. I really wish I had included a different set of charts in that imager album because those are more or less a random selection of the dozen or so charts in the book, not necessarily the most useful ones. If you have access to a university library, Bulliet's book is likely available as an e-resource (it's part of a widely subscribed to digital collect). Again, you see similar process play out in some (but not all) parts of the Ottoman Empire--slow conversion processes reduce previously large religious groups, when out of power, to a minority.
Incidentally, this is not an exclusively Muslim phenomenon. Christians are generally less tolerant of native non-Christian, non-Jewish subjects ("pagans") so their temples were often torn down immediately and people were converted, at least in name (and later, in places like Spain and Portugal and to a lesser degree in the Balkans, you see Muslims and even in cases Jews simply expelled). Slowly, the conversion in name becomes a more meaningful conversion. In late Medieval North Europe, you see the newly founded mendicant orders (the Dominicans and the Franciscans) do this in the cities. You see traces of this in the epics of this slow Christianization process in the Epics of Northern Europe. And in places where Christians didn't rule (China, North Africa, Persia, etc.), you generally see that Christianity wither down to a minority, or even nothing at all. The one exception to this is, in the modern period, Christianity has started to thrive in formerly non-Chrisitian contexts where it helps groups culturally "resist" the majority (places like Nigeria, Indonesia, and arguably Korea under Japanese occupation).
But the long and the short of it is, Sri Lankan society never underwent a mass conversion to Islam because that takes centuries of Muslim rule, and Sri Lanka has been ruled by Theravedan Buddhists for centuries, and has the longest continuous history of Buddhism of state. There were Muslim traders for several centuries, and their descents make up some part of the "Sri Lankan Moors", though much is apparently controversial--it seems like the original Arabian Muslim traders largely integrated into the Tamil Muslim community on the island (the other large group of Sri Lankan Muslims are the descents of Indonesian and Malaysian indentured servants brought over during Dutch rule). The Arab traders likely would have been more influential if the Portuguese hadn't become a major influence on the island in the 16th century, during which point the Portuguese persecuted the Muslim traders there just as they were persecuting Muslims and their descendents at home. Still, without Muslim rule, the Muslim traders would have been like the traders on the Konkan and Malabar coasts that Eaton discusses: an ancient, but small and socially distinct minority.
So if this must be reduced to a single sentence, Malaysia and Indonesia became Muslim because Muslim rule kicked off a centuries long conversion process, whereas Sri Lanka never experienced Muslim rule so therefore Muslim traders were never more than a small minority on the island (at least until European powers started bringing in indentured labor, when they became a larger minority).
zuludonkey on Bali:
Original Question Asked: How did such a small Island maintain it's Hindu identity when the rest of the archipelago converted to Islam?
Your final question actually contains an inaccuracy. The rest of the archipelago did not covert to Islam. While the majority of the Indonesian population is Muslim, those adherents are densely situated in Java (with about 100 million residents) and coastal areas of Sumatra, Kalimantan, and Sulawesi. If we are looking at the percentage of land whose majority religion is non-Muslim, this actually encompasses a majority of the archipelago. What I mean by that is that large swathes of inner Sumatra, Kalimantan, Papua, and Sulawesi, while sparsely populated, are actually the homes of mostly Protestant and/or Catholic peoples. Nusa Tenggara Timor and the Malukus are largely Christian (though transmigration policies have put many Javanese Muslims in these areas). To try to put it more bluntly, most of the geographic area of Indonesia is home to non-Muslims. I know this sounds odd, but it is an important concept for answering your question.
The original kingdoms in Java, Bali, and Lombok were highly influenced by Indian subcontinental thought and culture. In fact, Sanskrit is still used as the high-culture linguistic reference in the government and legal realms (much like the U.S. use of Latin on our legal documents, currency, state seals, etc.). To this day, even in a Muslim dominated Java, there is a strong Sanskrit influence, with many words in Bahasa Indonesia (the official language) coming directly from Sanskrit. Most Indonesian mythology is directly borrowed from Indian or Hindu mythology with some slightly different characters, place names, and some minor stories. The Ramayana and Mahabarata are highly revered literary works in both Javanese (again mostly Muslim) and Balinese culture. If you go to Surakarta, Central Java (a known hot-bed for Islamic radicals), the Hindu cultural influences are still predominant and almost surpass the influence of Islam in the cultural realm, despite having a very pious Islamic society. There are concerts, plays, puppet shows, parades, that reflect the rich Hindu influences on Javanese culture. Most Indonesians, however, do not see these as "Hindu" influences, but rather pure Javanese. They are partly correct in that Javanese culture is indeed very distinct, but the impact of Hindu mythology, mannerisms, customs in the formation of this culture is very evident. I am painting the picture of Javanese culture being very closely linked to Hindu influences so you understand how Javanese customs affected those of Bali.
The Majapahit empire, which existed from 1293 to 1500, was the largest empire in Southeast Asia and was Hindu. Islam was spreading throughout the Malay archipelago at the time, but the Majapahit empire centered on Java and Bali. The Majapahits had a tremendous influence on Balinese culture. When the Majapahit empire was supplanted by Muslim kingdoms, those who did not convert to Islam and retained the Hindu religion took refuge in Bali and there is also a small Hindu population around the Mount Bromo area of East Java (a relatively isolated area). This Muslim conversion process was very unique in the former Majapahit realms and the effects can be seen today. Many Javanese "Muslims" (especially in rural areas) practice a syncretistic version of Islam called Kejawen, which combines cultural traditions (shrines, belief in spirits, etc.) with it, much of which are also seen in Balinese Hinduism. Calling yourself Muslim or Hindu or Christian or Catholic was in large part determined by whoever your ruler was. Local Sultans would switch between different religions, depending on who the trading partner du jour was. So, when a ruler became Muslim, he would direct his people to also become so, without much thought to what the theology was. It was more of a political tool, and the local traditions and animism stuck, with the occasional prayers from the "official" religion thrown in occasionally. This was especially in the Malukus, whose rulers were constantly switching between Protestant, Catholic, and Islam, if they were trading with the Dutch, Portuguese, or Arabs (see "The World of Maluku" by Andaya). In Bali and mountainous East Java, isolated from the larger kingdoms, the pressure to convert was just not there, especially because the cultural links with the Javanese formed a stronger bond than the perceived superficial state religion.
Let's jump forward to the modern state of Indonesia, which is a secular state (not Islamist). The Indonesian constitution guarantees freedom of worship to all citizens... as long as it is one of the following officially sponsored religions: Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, or Confucianism (there is also a campaign to recognize Kejawen as a religion, but that is a different story). This means that the state does (and has) actively intervene if there is inter-religious violence or persecution of minority official religions. This has created an environment in which Muslims cannot force Hindus to convert, nor can they get away with trying to kill them for being non-believers. Most Indonesians have a fondness for their pluralistic society and celebrate their differences (any museum in Indonesia will undoubtedly have a breakdown of all the ethnic and religious diversity throughout the country). They especially celebrate their history, which is too heavily influenced by Hinduism to ignore. In fact, the government as spent a lot of money restoring old Hindu and Buddhist temples throughout Java and turned them into national monuments (the most famous of which are Prambangan and Borobudor).
Another more crude reason for Balinese Hinduism's existence is because Indonesia draws a lot of revenue from tourism in that island. The traditions, colors, dances, music, clothing, rituals, etc. are just too alluring to foreign and domestic tourists
In summary, Hinduism had a major influence in the development of the culture of the largest ethnic group in Indonesia, the Javanese and could not simply be shoved aside even after Islam became the majority religion. Minorty religious groups (official ones) are protected by the secular constitution and thus cannot be forcibly converted or killed off. Non-Islamic traditions (mostly influenced by Hinduism), even amongst Muslims, are still celebrated and practiced.
I learned most of this information while taking classes at the University of Gajah Mada in Jogjakarta. However, good primers on these topics are: "A History of Modern Indonesia" by Adrian Vickers and two works by M.C. Ricklefs "Mystic Synthesis in Java: a history of Islamization from the fourteenth to the early nineteenth centuries" and "A History of Modern Indonesia, ca. 1300 to the present." I hope this helps answer your question!
yodatsracist’s response:
While the majority of the Indonesian population is Muslim, those adherents are densely situated in Java (with about 100 million residents) and coastal areas of Sumatra, Kalimantan, and Sulawesi. If we are looking at the percentage of land whose majority religion is non-Muslim, this actually encompasses a majority of the archipelago.
Here's a map of this:
The map is imperfect (for one, it implies there are only three or so mixed areas), but it's useful for showing what zuludonkey is talking about. I'm not sure it's the literal majority of archipelago, but minority religions are on much more land than statistics like "87.18% Muslim" would lead you to assume.
onetruepapist on Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia:
Islam's spread to SE Asia happened in several steps, and unfortunately for us there is still a lot of unknowns. Islam seems to have arrived at the latest in the late 1200s. Several artifacts and reports can be cited: stone inscriptions in Gresik dating back to around 1082 ; Marco Polo's report from the 13th century; Ibn Battutah who traveled there from north Africa; Chinese reports. These all focus on the coastal communities, those who were involved in the Indian Ocean - South China Sea trade. When the Portuguese explorer-historian João de Barros came to the region, he stated that the east Indies "all belong to the pagans, with the exception of Malacca, a part of Sumatra, some harbours in Java and some Molucca islands, which belong to the Moores. The pest, which spread from Malacca by the road of commerce."
The above then explains why Malaysia and Indonesia are today predominantly Muslim, with the interior areas converting at a later date -- something for which the why and how are still being actively studied today.
When we ask about Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia, then it is useful to ask about that geographical area. Champa and Cambodia did come under strong Islamic influence, although in Cambodia this did not last. Today, most Muslims in Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia are of Cham or Malay descent.
Champa was a very maritime-oriented polity, and its conversion to Islam was very much due to trading relationships. The fall and demise of Champa meant the influence of Islam in that region also declined as the power base shifted to non-Muslim powers.
So how did Islam continue to be dominant in Indonesia and Malaysia? The answer is the second wave of conversion in the 17th century, which is due to increased contact with Arabia proper as the first pilgrims of the Haj started to make their journey from the archipelago to Arabia in larger numbers than before. At the same time, the old Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms of the region declined. Thus, a new syncretic form of Islam formed in the archipelago.
Want to know more? This is a very active area of study, and I recommend:
Raden Abdulkadir Widjojoatmodjo, Islam in the Netherlands East Indies, The Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Nov., 1942), pp. 48-57
Geoffrey C. Gunn, History Without Borders: The Making of an Asian World Region, 1500-1800, HKU Press 2011.
Vincent J. H. Houben, Southeast Asia and Islam, Source: The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 588, Islam: Enduring Myths and Changing Realities (Jul., 2003), pp. 149-170
AFAIK, the Christianization of Kongo is the only really comparable situation.
For role of the bissu in court society, see Gender Diversity in Indonesia: Sexuality, Islam, and Queer Selves by Sharyn G. Davis, esp. p. 76-85. For bissu in general also see p. 173-206. Pelras argues that bissu opposition to Islam would have been even greater than for Christianity because Catholicism has a clergy comparable to the bissu hierarchy while Islam does not. Indeed, Catholic priests appear to have been mistaken as bissu by locals; one of the reasons Franciscan missionaries in the 1580s gave for leaving Sulawesi was that "they were assumed to be homosexuals and thus became the object of unwelcome attention." The bissu frequently had a sexual relationship (both oral and anal) with their king.
See Pelras's article, as well as Nicolas Gervaise's 1688 An historical description of the kingdom of Macasar in the East-Indies, p. 128. Gervaise's amazing book may be read here thanks to Australia.
For the Islamic Wars generally, see Leonard Andaya's The Heritage of Arung Palakka: A History of South Sulawesi in the Seventeenth Century, p.33-34, and the "Islamization" section of "A Great Seventeenth Century Indonesian Family: Matoaya and Pattingalloang of Makassar." They're both translations of For the envoys' request at conversion and the reaction of the Arumponé, see J. Noorduyn's "Makasar and the islamization of Bima," p.316. They're both based on J. Noorduyn's work, which has not been translated from Dutch. The quote about the lord who refused to convert until the pigs disappeared comes from Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce by Anthony Reid, Volume I, p.35.
Gervaise, Description, p.129
This is the first chapter in his anthology Charting the Course of Early Modern Southeast Asia, which is where I read it.
Southeast Asian Warfare, 1400-1800 by Michael Charney, p.46-48. Also see this old article by D. K. Bassett
These almost unbelievable numbers are from "17세기 후반 태국의 무슬림 사회와 마카사르인 폭동에 관한 연구" ("A Study of the Muslim Society and the Makassar Revolt in the Late Seventeenth-Century [sic] Thailand") by Cho Hungguk, a Korean historian of Thailand. The Thai army during the Battle of Ayutthaya is estimated by different primary sources to be as little as 3,000 or to be as large as 20,000.
But to be fair, the vast majority of Thai armies at the time were peasants (conscripted royal serfs) with little military training. Untrained armies have a tendency to panic and run when people around them start dying, making it easier for trained soldiers to kill them. We know the 100 Muslims were led by a "prince," so all 100 were in all likelihood elite warriors. The 100 might also have been all running amok which I imagine is absolutely terrifying.
"Sri Lanka in the Long Early Modern Period: Its Place in a Comparative Theory of Second Millennium Eurasian History" by Alan Strathern, p.815-869
Where Jambudipa and Islamdom Converged: Religious Change and the Emergence of Buddhist Communalism in Early Modern Arakan, PhD thesis by Michael Charney
'Kingdom of Pegu' is a misnomer. At this point everyone just calls it Pegu because that's what everyone calls it, but it's like calling the UK 'kingdom of London.' The Peguans themselves referred to their own kingdom as Ramañña-desa, meaning 'Mon-land.'
Lieberman, Strange Parallels vol. I, p.129-139; A History of Myanmar since Ancient Times: Traditions and Transformations by Aung-Thwin and Aung-Thwin, p.117-128; The Kalyani Inscriptions by King Dhammazedi (translated by Taw Sein Ko in 1892)
Strange Parallels vol. I, p.258-274
See Vickers, Bali: A Paradise Created, section "The World Ruler and His Priest" in chapter "Balinese Images from the Golden Age to Conquest"