History of Indonesian Islam: Did Indonesian Islam Really Come From India?

 

History of Indonesian Islam: Did Indonesian Islam Really Come From India?

Islam was not originally the majority religion in Indonesia. Islam was not the original religion of the ancestors of the people of the archipelago at that time. Islam here can be said to be an immigrant religion, not an indigenous religion. Islam came to Indonesia thanks to the preachers who spread Islam in the archipelago. The question then is where did the preachers come from?

Azyumardi Azra in the Ulama Network: Middle East & Archipelago in the XVII & XVII centuries put forward several theories to answer the questions above. The first theory mentions the first propagator of Islam in Indonesia from India. This view is mostly expressed by Dutch scholars.

Pijnappel called Azra as the first scholar to put forward this theory. He said Islam Nusantara came from the Gujarat and Malabar regions. According to him, Indonesian Islam was brought by Arabs of the Shafi'i school who had lived in India for a long time, then came to Indonesia to spread Islam.

This opinion is supported by Snouck Hurgronje and Moquette. In Snouck's view, when Islam was the largest in India, most of the Muslim profession there was as a trader. They then came to Indonesia to spread Islam. After the arrival of the Indians, only the Arabs came to the archipelago.

Moquette offered another piece of evidence. He found similarities to the tombstones in Samudera Pasai, one of the Islamic kingdoms of the archipelago, and the tombstones at the Maulana Malik Ibrahim Gresik grave with tombstones in Cambay, India.

Naquib Al-Attas said, it is true that there are similarities in tombstones in several regions of the archipelago. The tombstone was taken from India, because the distance is closer than Arabia or other Middle-Eastern regions. Al-Attas reinforces the view that Islam Nusantara came from Arabia, not India.

Among the evidence presented are the first preachers to come to Indonesia, whose names are identical with Arabic, Arabic-Persian, or Middle-Eastern names in general, not Indian names. This means that the Middle-Eastern element is stronger than the Indian element.

There are also those who claim that Islam Nusantara originated from Bengal, as stated by Fatimi. But Fatimi's opinion is refuted by evidence of differences in the religious character of the people of the Archipelago and Bengal. For example, Nusantara Muslims mostly follow the Shafi'i Madhhab, while Bengal Muslims mostly practice the Hanafi Madhhab.