Page 14 - INDONESIAN ISLAMIC CULTURE IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES

is done, everybody suddenly faces the sociological and anthropological
reality of the way the same understanding of God’s oneness and the
doctrine of Muhammad as the last Prophet can also lead to diversity. So,
when historical and sociological reviews are conducted, will they generate
curiosity? How many are the true faces of singular Islam?
II
In the history of Indonesian culture the first academic debates on Islam
concerned seemingly simple things. They revolved around the question
of when and how Islam started to penetrate public life in the archipelago.
The debates were increasingly “festive” if only because the process was
perceived as reflecting meanings that implied mixtures of events that
happened in the past. That is, the historical narrative of Indonesia, in which
an event or, more precisely, series of occurrences shaped the archipelago’s
historical current of what is referred to as “the arrival of Islam”. When
this was seen to have occurred, people said that the region entered a
“new period” of its history. Perhaps this needed no debates, but debates
happened anyway. For example, in historical discourse, what is meant by
“the arrival of Islam”? Does it mean that at some given time, adherents of
Islam arrived in this country, should it be understood in the sense that Islam
started to expand its influence, or does it mean that the development of this
universal religion had already happened?
The problem is that historical reconstruction also requires certainty about
the meaning of narrated events. A simple example is the tendency of those
interested in the historical development of Islam in Indonesia to say that
Islam has “come” to Indonesia in the first century of the Hijrah, thus, in the
7 century A.D. But what does the word “come” mean in this context? If they
th
had used written sources rather than resorting to hypothetical conjectures,
they should have said that in the mid-9 century A.D. Ibn Kurdhadhbih
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and Marwazi had talked a lot about the region. From then on, all sorts of
information became known about the region, for example, the fact that
Fansur (Barus), the region on the western coast of Sumatra produced
camphor had already been known for a long time, but they were just facts
and did not say anything about the spread of Islam. In other words, the first
information about the introduction of Islam in the archipelago was just in the
form of news. It is therefore no use to claim that since the time of Prophet
Muhammad Islam has successfully been established in this religion. 2
In the second stage, evidence was discovered of the existence of Muslims
who lived in the archipelago. When this stage had been entered, it no longer
only concerned knowledge of the Arab world, located between the Persian
Gulf and China, an age-long trade route. At this stage inscribed tombstones
2. See G.R. Tibbets, A Study of the Arabic texts containing material on South-east Asia,
Leiden & London: E.J. Brill, 1979.
4 Indonesian Islamic Culture in Historical Perspectives
were discovered telling of the presence of Muslims in the Indonesian
archipelago. Having researched the tombstone in Leran (East Java) from the
year 475 A.H. or 1082 A.D. , Guillot and Kalus concluded that it is an Islamic
tomb. But, can the existence of this tomb be used as evidence that Islam
had planted its influence in the region even before the Kingdom of Majapahit
was established in 1293? This Islamic tombstone is just a coincidence.
Having studied it in depth, Ravaisse concluded that “the Leran inscription
only proves one thing, namely there had already existed in that area a
significant number of Muslims consisting of descendants of the settlers, the
natives or mixed, more than 450 years before the time of Malik Ibrahim. It
turns out that Nusantara’s experts are now arguably agreed to determine
the Islamization of East Java in between the riots following the death of King
Erlangga around the year 1045 and the heyday of the kingdom of Daha
(Kediri) at the reign of the king Jayabaya, less than a century later.” 3
But isn’t this statement also just a historical hypothesis? It is ascertained that a
small community of Muslims existed and that they were buried in tombstones
displaying their religion? Can this fact be used as evidence that Islam
had begun to develop in Indonesia, especially in 11 century Java? In the
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Nagarakertagama, Mpu Prapanca, the poet of Majapahit, did not mention the
presence of any followers of Islam in the palace of King Hayam Wuruk. But
the tombstones of Traloyo and Trawulan (1290 Saka or 1368-69 A.D.), which
are located in the capital of Majapahit, gives the clear impression that Muslims
had been dwelling in Majapahit’s palace. The tombs of the royal family are
even located in the same cemetery. Moreover, when the development of Islam
in Java is reassessed again, it would clearly show that historical evidence
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from just two centuries later, at the beginning of the 16 century, shows that
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the spread of Islam in almost all parts of Java had indeed begun.
If this is true, the earliest spread of Islam occurred when it had already
entered its third phase. In this phase, the “era of Islamization” did not start
in a power center. It started in a village. If we listen to the story as told
in the Hikayat Raja-Raja Pasai and, in a slightly different version, in the
Sejarah Melayu, it seems that this process began when a village champion
received spiritual insight from a cleric who purportedly came from the Holy
Land. After having crossed the line of “infidelity” he also managed to set
up a supra-village power center, which later grew into an empire. While
expanding his power, the ruler enthroned himself as sultan spread Islam. At
this time also the waters of the Indonesian archipelago were increasingly
crowded with international traders.
3. Ludvik Kalus and Claude Guillot, “Nisan Leran (Jawa) berangka tahun 475 H/1082 dan
nisan-nisan terkait” in Claude Guillot & Ludvik Kalus, Inskripsi Islam tertua di Indonesia,
Jakarta: Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia, École francaise d’Extrême-Orient, Forum Jakarta-
Paris, 2008: 30.
4. M.C. Ricklefs, Mystic synthesis in Java: A History of Islamization from the Fourteenth
century to the Early Nineteenth Centuries, Norwalk: EastBridge, 2006, 13-15.
Indonesian Islamic Culture in Historical Perspectives 5