Chapter 6 - The Islamization of Southeast Asia

Summary

In Southeast Asian historiography, it is widely accepted that the history of the region is generally divided into the Indianized Southeast Asian and the Islamized Southeast Asian periods before the advent of the colonial era. The spread of Islam to insular Southeast Asia began around the late thirteenth and the early fourteenth centuries and signified the beginning of the decline of the Hindu cultural influence in the region. This chapter traces the indigenous socio-political and cultural landscape in the Malay world prior to the penetration of the Hindu culture, as well as the origins and acculturation processes of the Hindu and Islamic cultural influences in the region.

SOCIO-POLITICAL AND CULTURAL LANDSCAPE IN INSULAR SOUTHEAST ASIA PRIOR TO THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY

Shamanism

Insular Southeast Asia is also generally known as the Malay world which, in the geographical context, includes “an area stretching from Sumatra in the west to the Spice Islands in the east, and from the island of Java in the south to the plains of Kampuchea in the Indo-Chinese Peninsula in the north” (Osman 2000, p. xxvi). In the cultural context, the Malay world refers

to the early archipelago peoples who spoke Austronesian languages related to early Malay. They had come south from the mainland either by land, down the Malay Peninsula, or by sea to Taiwan and to the Malay Archipelago, some then crossing to the Indo-China mainland and others to the Malay Peninsula, and yet others across the Indian Ocean to Madagascar. (Wang Gungwu 2003, p. 13.)

For the purpose of this study, a narrower geographical and cultural sense of the Malay world is adopted. Geographically, insular Southeast Asia or maritime Southeast Asia refers to the Malay cultural and linguistic sphere of influence, covering the archipelago of modern-day Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the southern-most part of Thailand, the Philippines, Brunei, East Timor and some areas of New Guinea. Most of the languages spoken in the region are part of the Malayo-Polynesian family, including Tagalog, widely spoken in the Philippines, Javanese spoken in Java, and of course Malay, spoken in Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and Indonesia. In this context, it covers the nucleus or core geographical and cultural boundaries of the Malay world.