by: Tata Muhtadin
In the year 30 AH or 651 AD, only about 20 years later than the death of the Prophet Muhammad, Caliph Uthman ibn Affan RA send a delegation to China to introduce the Islamic State that has not been long standing. In a journey which took four years, the delegates had Uthman was stopped in the archipelago. A few years later, in the year 674 AD, the Umayyad dynasty had established trading bases on the west coast of Sumatra. This is the first introduction of the Indonesian population to Islam. Since then, Muslim sailors and traders continued to arrive, century after century. They buy the produce of the land is green nan while preaching.
Gradually the natives began to embrace Islam although not on a large scale. Aceh, the westernmost region of the archipelago, is the first one to receive the religion of Islam. Even in Acehlah first Islamic kingdom in Indonesia stands, namely Pasai. News from Marco Polo said that during his sojourn in Pasai in 692 AH / 1292 AD, has many Arabs who spread Islam. Similarly, news of Ibn Battuthah, Muslim nomads of the Maghreb., Which when dropped in Aceh in 746 AH / 1345 AD writes that in Aceh have been scattered Shafi. The oldest relic of the Muslims are found in Indonesia located in Gresik, East Java. Islamic tomb complex form, which one of them is the tomb of a Muslim woman named Fatima bint Maimun. Numbers written on his tomb in 475 AH / 1082 AD, ie at the time of the Kingdom Singasari. It is estimated that the tombs are not from the natives, but the tomb of the Arab traders.
Up to the 8th century AH / 14 AD, there is no indigenous population pengislaman massive archipelago. New in the 9th century AH / 14 AD, the indigenous population converted to Islam en masse. The historians argue that the conversion to Islam Nusantara population massively in the century when it was due to the Muslims already have a meaningful political force. That is marked by the establishment of several Islamic kingdoms like the Kingdom of patterned Aceh Darussalam, Malacca, Demak, Cirebon, and Ternate. The rulers of these kingdoms mixed-blood descendants of the kings of indigenous pre-Islamic and Arab immigrants. The rapid Islamization in the 14th century and 15 AD, among others, are also caused by the decline of power and influence of the kingdoms of the Hindu / Buddhist in the archipelago such as the Majapahit, Sriwijaya and Sundanese. Thomas Arnold in The Preaching of Islam says that the arrival of Islam is not as conquerors as well as the Portuguese and Spanish. Islam came to Southeast Asia by peaceful means, not by the sword, not to seize political power. Islam entered the archipelago in a way that really show it as rahmatan lil'alamin.
With the conversion to Islam Nusantara indigenous population and the formation of Islamic governments in various regions of the archipelago, the trade with the Muslims from the center of the Islamic world is becoming increasingly tight. The Arabs who migrated to the archipelago are also more and more. The largest of them are derived from Hadramaut, Yemen. In Tarikh Hadramaut, migration is even said to be the largest in the history of the Hadramawt. But after the nations of Christian Europe came and secured the area with the greed-by areas in the archipelago, the relationship with the center of the Islamic world as if disconnected. Especially in the 17th and 18th centuries AD. The reason, apart from being preoccupied with the Muslim archipelago of resistance against colonialism, as well as various regulations created by the colonialists. Each time the invaders - mainly Dutch - subjugate the Islamic empire in the Archipelago, they would thrust treaty which forbade royal relate trade with the outside world except through them. Then disconnect the Islamic Ummah Islamic Ummah from the archipelago to the other nations that have established hundreds of years. The colonialist desire to alienate Muslims archipelago with its roots, is also seen from those policies that make blending between the indigenous Arabs.
Since the early arrival of the Europeans at the end of the 15th century AD to the fertile islands of this prosperous, was already seen their greed for control. Moreover, they found the fact that the islanders have embraced Islam, the religion of their enemies, so that the spirit of the Crusades was always carried around every time they beat a region. In the fight against Islam they work together with indigenous kingdoms are still adhered to the Hindu / Buddhist. One example, to decide the shipping lanes of the Muslims, then having seized Malacca in 1511, the Portuguese formed a partnership with the Kingdom of Sunda Pajajaran to build a base in the Sunda Kelapa. But this Portuguese mean total failure after the joint forces of Islam from the north coast of Java along hand in hand to demolish them in 1527 AD. Of the historic battle was led by an Arab-blooded son of Aceh Gujarat, namely Al-Pasai Overdust Khan, better known by his title, Fathahillah. Before becoming an important person in the three Muslim kingdoms of Java, namely Demak, Cirebon and Banten, Fathahillah had studied in Mecca. Even to defend Mecca from the advancing Ottoman Turks.
Arrival of the colonialists on the one hand has aroused the spirit of jihad of the Muslims archipelago, but on the other hand makes uneven deepening of Islamic theology. Just a pesantren (Islamic schools) are steeped in Islam, and even then usually limited to the Shafi. While most of the Muslim Ummah, there was mixing faith with pre-Islamic tradition. Prijajis close to the Dutch in fact already infected with the European lifestyle. Conditions like this are still happening at least until now. Apart from this, the scholars of the archipelago are the ones who adamantly opposed the occupation. Although many of them come from the congregation, but it is often among the congregation rose against the invaders. And although in the end of each such resistance was crushed by sneaky tactics, but history has recorded millions of martyrs who died in the archipelago various battles against the Dutch. Since the resistance of Islamic kingdoms in the 16th and 17th centuries such as Malacca (Malaysia), Sulu (Philippines), Pasai, Bali, Sunda Kelapa, Makassar, Ternate, until the resistance of the clergy in the 18th century such as the War Cirebon (Good raryin), the Java War (Diponegoro), Padri War (Imam Bonjol), and the Aceh War (Teuku Umar).