In the article titled ‘Islamization in South East Asia: Reflections and Reconsiderations with special
References to the Role of Sufism’, the author Anthony H. Johns re-examines his previously held view
that Sufism had a pre-dominant role in the Islamization of peninsular and insular South East Asia.
Islamization in the region did not necessarily come about due to preaching of Islam on the individual
basis. The author claims that political and economic factors gave way to eventual process of association
between local people and the Muslims in the port cities. It likely arose from curiosity to interest in
perception and attachment and finally immersion into the religion.
Anthony Johns begins by reviewing the reasons for his earlier view with regard to the mystical aspect of
Islam being responsible for South East Asian Islamization. At the close of the 13th century, existence of
an Islamic port city in North Sumatra pointed to presence of a forward Islamic movement. During this
time, Ibn Arabi’s brand of tariqa with its monistic theosophy was extensively spread internationally and
served to hold together the Islamic world after the loss of Baghdad to the Mongols in 1258. The author
opines that the earliest manuscripts still in existence from North Sumatra, though dated in 16th century,
included reference to this monistic theosophy and with the notion that religious organizations at the
time was “synonymous with the profession of Islam” (Gibb and Bowens: 1957), he was led to deficiently
believe on the unceremonious relationship between Sufism and Islamization.
Islamization, Anthony Johns believes, has an assortment of meanings conditional on the blend of
leanings and predispositions within the Islamic world at a given time. This is a form of reaction to the
external and internal obstacles Muslim communities have faced since the birth of Islam. Having
discussed Ibn Arabi’s corollary ideas of Islamic Neo-Platonism that revolutionized Islamic theosophy, he
eventually focuses on the varying aspects of spirituality that forms the routine history of the Islamic
peoples. But peninsular South East Asia lacks the presence of a substantial urban tradition of literary
texts. The author makes a connection between this dearth of philological evidence and reason why the
traditional Islamic scholars, while charting the history and society of the region downplayed the
significance of Islam in local people’s life. This contributed in a ‘conflict’ between custom and Islamic law
gaining precedence as if to mean such challenges were unique to the region and not faced across the
Muslim world.
He further laments how the presence and role of Islam has been perpetually undervalued in Central Java
owing to the extant presence of cultural traditions from the pre-Islamic past. The author provides
further examples of how the philologists and scholars in search of classical tradition based their case on
the prose of pre-Islamic Hindu Buddhist epics and monuments while disregarding the thriving tradition
of Islam in part due to Central Java’s propensity to be considered as the bedrock of South East Asian
culture. He argues that this belittling of Islam’s position in the region was magnified by the prevalence of
words such as ‘hinterland’ for Middle Eastern countries and ‘periphery’ with regards to the Indonesian
archipelago which insinuates proximity and distance from Makkah as marker of a robust or lesser Islamic
faith respectively. Unfortunately, not only non-Muslims from Europe but also Muslims from the Middle
East hold an imperious view of South East Asian Muslims citing their paucity of combativeness that is so
characteristic of Middle Eastern Muslims. Such generalizations have contributed to a sense of
‘otherness’ to South East Asian Muslims simply because of their unique way of being.
The author gives plenty of details on the dynamic nature of active engagement undertaken by South
East Asian Muslims in context of the wider Islamic world to highlight their likeness to Muslims
elsewhere. Additionally, their participation in revival movements such as Wahabism, reformist ones
pioneered by al-Afghani and Mohammad Abduh and radical movements initiated by Mawdudi and
Sayyid Qutb alongside the role they played in the transmission, development and vernacularization of
Islamic disciplines calls for utmost appreciation. Also worth commending is the extent of their
knowledge of authoritative Arabic texts and