Islam in Southeast Asia
[7] Southeast Asia is the global region with the highest number of Muslims in the world, surpassing the Middle East and North Africa.
[9][10] Southeast Asian identity varies by regions that include Brunei, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
In 2017, a group of Japanese archaeologists, while working on a tenth-century CE shipwreck in Quang Ngai, Champa of which is now Vietnam, discovered ceramic shards with inscriptions in Indic script, which refer to a place near what is now Hormuz, Iran.
Inscriptions on some fragments end with a pentagram or a hexagram, which led Islamic historian Do Truong Giang to interpret it as the Seal of Solomon.
"[13] An excerpt recorded in the Song Huiyao Jigao notes the practice of dhabīḥah among the Chams: [In Champa] There are also mountain cattles, but they cannot be used for ploughing.
The religion was then further spread by Sufi orders and finally consolidated by the expansion of the territories of converted rulers and their communities.
[18] The spread of Islam generally followed the trade routes east through the primarily Buddhist region, and a half century later the first dynasty arise in the Malacca in the form of the Sultanate of Malacca, and at the far end of the Archipelago, it was formed by the conversion of one Parameswara Dewa Shah into a Muslim and the adoption of the name Muhammad Iskandar Shah after his marriage to a daughter of the ruler of Pasai.
[18] The first written sources of Islam in Southeast Asia in 916 AD came from a merchant describing his experience in 1851 on the Island of Sumatra.
[10] Islam was popular in Southeast Asia because it, unlike previous belief systems, could be used to validate a ruler's power through the divine.
[5] The introduction of Islam throughout Southeast Asia and the Indonesian archipelago was an uneven, gradual and relatively pacific process that was heavily influenced by trade and interactions with merchants and sufi missionaries.
[20][21] In the 12th century, the Indian Chola navy crossed the ocean and attacked the Srivijaya kingdom of Sangrama Vijayatunga Varman in Kadaram (Kedah).
In the early 15th century, Parameswara, the first Sultan of Malacca, married the princess of Pasai, and their son converted to Islam.
Indeed, the faith introduced by some of the religious merchants was Sufism, a mystical version of Islam that is rejected by more conservative Muslims.
The Sufi missionaries played a significant role in spreading the faith by syncretising Islamic ideas with existing local beliefs and religious notions.
[20] While mostly done for economic and territorial expansion, conquests could have led to eventual conversions after the establishment of a Islamized kingdom, which often deployed missionaries and created religious infrastructure to aid in converting the newly acquired populations.
[23] Muslims in Southeast Asia come from a variety of ethnic groups and backgrounds and speak a number of different languages, including Thai, Burmese, Malay, Marano, Tausug, Bahasa Indonesia, Javanese, and Chinese.
In Indonesia, there is the Nahdlatul Ulama, which preaches closely to the Shafi`i school of legal accretion, and the Muhammadiyah, whose outlook is a blend of modernist ideals with Islamic thoughts.
[31] In Southeast Asia, Islam influences other aspects daily of life, and there is a close relationship among religion, nation, and ethnicity.
Likewise, medicine in Southeast Asia draws on a number of traditions, often combining animism, tibbun (which contains pre-Islamic elements), and hikmah (which is based upon a lineage of Muslim scholars and influenced modern biomedical practice).
These movements, in general, aim to create a strong Islamic identity among the Muslims and are understood as a response to changes in society and values.
[30] As a result, Islam began to assume a larger role in public life, underlined by the increased donning of headscarves among Muslim women, for one example.
Economic growth resulted in modest affluence which has translated into more religious investments like the Hajj and Islamic literature.
For example, Southeast Asian scholars who traveled to the Middle East during the early 1900s brought back ideas from the Modernist movement.
[28] In today's modern age, Muslims interact with global technology, consumerism, and ideas in a variety of ways while practicing their faith.
[34] Through travel to Arab countries — for the Hajj-pilgrimage or religious study — Muslims in Southeast Asia have also undertaken the translation of Islamic texts into local languages.
