Gujarat helped establish Islam in SE Asia

AHMEDABAD: Gujarat’s flourishing trade with Southeast Asian countries in the 15th and 16th century is well known. But a lesser known fact is that the state played a pivotal role in establishing Islam in this region. The Portuguese invasion of Southeast Asia in the 17th century resulted in the decline in number of Gujaratis and their trade. Yet, there was no shrinking of their legacy.
"One of these legacies was Islam. There were influential scholars and teachers of Islam from Gujarat who, though few in number, planted the seeds of their belief in local disciples who in turn spread the word throughout the (Malay-Indonesian ) archipelago. Gujarat was also the base of Islamic scholars from the archipelago who returned home to propagate the religion," writes Leonard Andaya, a professor of Southeast Asian History at University of Hawaii at Manoa, in the book ‘Gujarat and the Sea.’ Two renowned Islamic teachers who served in Aceh, an important port town in Sumatra — Shaikh Muhammed Jailani and his nephew Nuruddin ar-Raniri — hailed from a community of Hadramis in Gujarat . Nuruddin later became one of the leaders of Islamic reformism in the Malay-Indonesian archipelago in the 17th century. Such was Nuruddin’s influence at the court that the Dutch complained that Gujarati merchants were being favoured above all other. Moreover, several merchants, seamen and passengers on board Gujarati ships to Southeast Asia were Muslim, and hence no surprise that Gujarat played a role in the Islamisation process in southeast Asia, Andaya notes.