Interestingly while most of the modern European ethenographers and historians conclude that Islam has reached Indonesia through Gujarat, many Arab scholars claimed that Islam has reached directly from Arab…reports Asian Lite News
Many of the historians and Islamic scholars believe that Islam in Indonesia was spread by Indians, and not Arabs like in many other parts of the world. One of the main reasons supporting this belief is the existence of tombs like that of Sultan Malik al-Saleh, in Java and Sumatra, which bear striking similarities with those found in Gujarat of India. Apart from it, Snouck Hurgronje, a well known dutch scholar of Islam, also argues that several practices of Gujarati Muslims are similar to those found among Indonesian Muslims.
Several other medieval travellers believed that earliest Muslims to reach Sumatra were from Gujarat and Malabar. Also, it is claimed that tombstone used at the grave of Malik al-Saleh is from Cambay in Gujarat.
Interestingly while most of the modern European ethnographers and historians conclude that Islam has reached Indonesia through Gujarat, many Arab scholars claimed that Islam has reached directly from Arab.
According to one popular theory, it was Sufi from Rander in Surat (Gujarat), Sheikh Randeri, who travelled to Indonesia in the 13th century and brought Islam there. Ibn Batuta also noted that Islam in the region had several similarities with what he had witnessed in India. The ruler of Samudera Pasai (Sumatra), according to him, was a zealous Muslim who performed his religious duties with customs similar to those found in India.
The significant part was played by the Sufi missionaries who came substantially from Gujarat and Bengal in India. Unlike Islam in the Middle East and India, Indonesia wasn’t conquered by force. The Sufis came not only as preceptors but as dealers and politician who entered the courts of autocrats, the diggings of merchandisers, and the townlets of the country. Sufism is the wisdom of the direct knowledge of God; its doctrines and styles decide from the Quran and Islamic disclosure. Sufism freely makes use of paradigms and generalities deduced from Greek and indeed Hindu sources.
The Sufis communicate their religious ideas in a form compatible with beliefs formerly held in Indonesia. For case, pantheistic doctrines were fluently understood because of Hindu training extant in the archipelago. The resemblance between the Sufi outlook and Hinduism was great.
The Sufis stressed religious retreats and minimized the significance of praying at mosques; they emphasized a belief in saintliness verging on hagiolatry; and, of course, centered their belief on the individual mystical experience of God. On the other hand, Indonesian Islam is frequently portrayed as being naturally moderate by virtue of the part that mystical Sufism played in shaping it traditions.
Apart from Sufi missionaries, merchants from the Western coasts of India also dealt with Java and Sumatra in the mediaval times. Their influence also led to conversion of large number of merchants, rich nobility and ruling class to Islam. This was a slow process, which over the centuries expanded the Muslim population in archipelago.
There is this reason that Indonesian Islam, like the one followed in India, belives in syncreticism, tolerance and co-existence. We find a cultural synthesis while keeping an independent religious identity. People pray, fast and travel for Haj as piously as any Muslim should go and yet embrace Indonesian culture shared by Hindus and Buddhists.
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