islamic-jihad-legacy-of-forced-conversion-imperialism-slavery

Propagation of Islam: By Force or Peacefully?Small-scale violent Jihad against the infidels in Southeast Asia had started as soon as Muslimsattained some power in Samudra in the early fourteenth century as recorded by Ibn Battutah. After thefounding of the Malacca Sultanate, Jihad intensified for achieving the greater glory. The Sultanate became thecenter for waging large-scale Jihad expeditions against neighboring kingdoms for expanding the domain ofIslam. His Muslim army—now inspired by the Islamic zeal of fighting in the cause of Allah for gainingmartyrdom or becoming Ghazi—dramatically changed the fortune of the precariously weakened MalaccaSultan. From a point of near doom, Parameswara, now Sultan Iskandar Shah, and his descendants, soongained ascendancy in political power over the neighboring kingdoms. The Sultanate expanded; at its height, itencompassed much of today’s Malaysian Peninsula, Singapore and the greater regions of Eastern Sumatra andBorneo. Later on, Borneo seceded from Malacca to become an independent Sultanate. For long, Malaccaremained the center of Southeast Asian Islam, comprising Malaysia, Aceh, Riau, Palembang and Sulawesi.In the course of the fifteenth century, the Sultanate of Malacca waged Jihad against neighboringstates and destroyed the powerful Majapahit Kingdom and also weakened Siam. When Muslim warriorsoverran Java in 1526, the Majapahit Kingdom ceased to exist. The Sultanate continued its rivalry with thesurviving Thai Kingdom, capturing territory from the south. In the course of late fifteenth and early sixteenthcenturies, Muslim invaders were poised to storm into the Thai capital of Ayuthaya. For some time, it seemedthat the Muslim holy warriors would overrun Siam.But the coincidental arrival of the mercantile Portuguese fleets along the naval route to the MalaccaStrait at this critical juncture, which led to an internecine conflict between the Portuguese and the MalaccaSultan, served as a welcome relief for beleaguered Siam. In 1509, the Portuguese fleet, led by Admiral Lopezde Sequira, reached the Malacca Strait. The reigning Sultan Mahmud Shah, prompted by a Muslim-Portuguese conflict in India, attacked the Portuguese fleet and forced them to flee. In 1511, anotherPortuguese fleet from Cochin (India), commanded by Viceroy Alfonso d’Albuquerque, came to Malacca andconflict ensued again. After forty days of fighting, Malacca fell to the Portuguese on August 24. SultanMahmud Shah fled Malacca. Over the next years and decades, internecine conflicts continued between thePortuguese and Muslim forces.This distraction and eventual dismantling of the Malacca Sultanate by the Portuguese saved Siamfrom collapsing to Muslim rule. In the seventeenth century, Siamese rulers made alliance with the seafaringPortuguese and Dutch powers, which succeeded in countering the threat of Muslim attack. In the eighteenthcentury, Siam counterattacked in order to recover the lost territory. It overran and annexed the decliningMuslim Sultanate of Pattani.The spread of Islam in the Philippines: The Muslim region of the Philippines, comprising the Mindanao andSulu Islands, is another example where Islam, claim Muslims and many scholars, was spread peacefully bytraders. Which Muslim army went to the Philippines to spread Islam by the sword, ask Muslims? It wasMuslim traders and Sufis coming from India and the Malay Peninsula spread Islam there, they claim, throughpeaceful missionary activity.Islam was allegedly brought to the Sulu Archipelago of the Southern Philippines by Arab traderMakhdum Karim in 1380. He settled there and constructed a mosque—the oldest mosque in the region. Butconversion of the largely Animist Filipinos to Islam on a large scale did not occur until the Malacca Sultanategained political ascendancy in the Malay Peninsula and Indonesian Archipelago. In the 1450s, Shari’fulHashem Syed Abu Bakr, a Malaysia’s Johore-born Arab warrior, sailed with a force northward from Borneoto the Sulu Islands and founded the Sultanate of Sulu in 1457. With the force of Islamic political power, theconversion of the Animist population to Islam began in real earnest. By the end of the fifteenth century,forward Jihad from Sulu, patronized by the Borneo Sultanate, had brought most of Visayas (CentralPhilippines), half of Luzon (Northern Philippines) and the islands of Mindanao in the south under Muslimcontrol. Continued incursions by Muslim Jihadis intensified the spread of Islam among the terrified Animist102