Book Review Islam Dalam Sejarah Dan Kebudayaan Melayu

This book was written as a response toward historians who obsess on trivial facts. In the learning of a history of a nation, we need to separate between what events that change the course of a nation. There were a lot of facts in learning history. If we take account all of it, then it will be hard to learn about the history itself and we can’t determine which event or changes that help shape this nation.

This book talks about the arrival of Islam in the Malay Archipelago. Islam that spread from Arab peninsula had change the center of the world. At that time, two biggest empires which is Roman Empire at Constantinople and Sassanid Dynasty at Persia was at war with each other and contesting territory. Roman Empire also at that time had been in declined because of the incursion made by the Germans. But although they are the conqueror, they eventually adopted Roman culture and the religion of Christianity. This is one of the evidence that culture is more important than strong military and technology. 

Even though Hindu-Buddha had arrived at Malay Archipelago before Islam, only Islam remained embedded in the Malay culture. Hindu religion was only embraced at surface level by the locals. They are not interested with the philosophy of the religion. They only interested with art that offered from India. The art and literature was used by the upper class in the palace as amusement. Meanwhile, a great intellectual works such as Nagara Kertagama by Prapanca has only one copy in Javanese Keraton. Not only that, the Hindu-Buddha religion was not practiced by the common people. 

Several western scholars such as Van Leur and Snouck Hugronje had said that Islam is not influential in the Malay society. Their parameter is that only in the time of Hindu-Buddha the Malays had built a great architecture such as Borobudur. But the writers argued that we can see the influence of Islam in the language and the way of thinking of the Malays. This influence is much more embedded in Malay psyche. Meanwhile all the buildings was actually abandoned by the Malays for hundred years and only excavated later by the British.

My studies will be focusing on changes especially on political changes. From this book, we can see that changes can only be done through mind and hearts, and not surface level. Changes also will take years to be rooted on the society. It also must be accepted by all strata of society, not only the upper class in palaces. The religion of Islam is the only religion that continued to be practiced by Malay society across Archipelago, from the north in Pattani until southern Islands of Indonesia. Even though the colonialism by Dutch and British had changes the political structure, but society still holds on to Islam, and Christianity could not break into the Malay society.