Indonesia

The world's most populous Muslim-majority nation, independent from the Dutch (1945); Islam came peacefully with Muslim traders and Sufi teachers from the 13th century and flowered under the sultanates of Malacca, Aceh, Demak and Mataram, giving a Sunni-Shāfiʿī majority.

☾ The Coming of Islam

Islam by trade and Sufi teaching

Islam reached the Indonesian archipelago peacefully from the 13th century, carried by Muslim (largely Indian and Arab) traders and by Sufi teachers, and spread through the port sultanates — Samudra-Pasai, Malacca, Aceh, Demak and Mataram — rather than by conquest.

The peaceful, trade-and-Sufi character of Indonesia's Islamisation is emphasised in the standard accounts.

☾ Religious Composition

The world's largest Muslim population

Indonesia holds the largest Muslim population of any country — the overwhelming majority Sunni of the Shāfiʿī school — within a state founded on the pluralist Pancasila philosophy rather than as an Islamic state, alongside Christian, Hindu and Buddhist minorities.

Demographic shares are approximate.

▤ Scholars & Institutions

Pesantren and the great Muslim organisations

Indonesian Islam is shaped by the pesantren (traditional boarding schools) and by two of the largest Muslim organisations in the world — the traditionalist Nahdlatul Ulama and the reformist Muhammadiyah — spanning a spectrum from locally-inflected devotion to modernist reform.

At a glance