Critical Thoughts Retro

The low-level economist (not a historian, mind you!) does not seem to know when to quit. So he decided to harp on a slight faux pas that I committed, namely of Demak attacking the Majapahit empire. In that sense, yes, I made a historical error there in attributing that attack as to being on Srivijaya and I stand corrected.

That does not, however, change the fact that Perlak and Pasai were Islamic sultanates that were contemporaries of Srivijaya. As I mentioned before, the topic was discussed in a monograph by S.Q. Fatimi, Islam Comes To Malaysia (edited by Shirle Gordon, MSRI, 1963)which discusses in detail the tombstones of the previous Sultans of Pasai found in Acheh, bearing similarities with the tombstones in Gujerat, India. The point here is to show that Islam has made a far-reaching and significant contribution to the civilisation of the Nusantara, more so than the Hindu-Buddhist kingdom of Srivijaya did. The low-level economist may not have any respect for copyright licence (I call cutting and pasting of my post into his blog without my explicit permission as blatant plagiarism and disrespect of copyright), but he should have read the real gist of the matter instead of harping on a slight historical mistake.

It should also be mentioned that there was no real difference between Srivijaya and Majapahit, and Majapahit was indeed the successor to the Srivijaya empire. If any could lay claim to the title of being the successor to Srivijaya, it would be Majapahit and not Malacca. I suppose when dealing with intricate historical matters like this, one should be relying on real, hardcover scholarly works and not on editable encyclopedias like Wikipedia for their research.

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A majority of Malaysian historians have accepted the fact that the Malaccan Sultanate (14th to 16th century CE) is pretty much the sine qua non the starting point of where Malaysian history begins, since the rise of Malacca was the Golden Age of the Nusantara region in not only socio-political terms, but also in terms of education, art, sciences and philosophy. Malacca was not the first place to receive Islam in the region (see S.Q. Fatimi, Islam Comes To Malaysia) but nonetheless it has been equated with modern-day Malaysia, particularly because we still have descendants of the Malacca Sultanate in the modern-day monarchy of Perak. Since Malacca was the first place where the Muslim Malays actually formed a viable and self-sustaining government, it is often referred to as the starting point for modern Malaysian history.

However some Islam liberals, like this low-class American university economist, try to question this unique status of Malacca. The reason is because they seem to think that the previous Majapahit and Srivijaya empires were a more viable starting point of reference to determine the religious culture of the Malaysian Muslims. Here we shall look at their arguments and refute it point by point, insha’allah.

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