The sword behind the crescent: Revisiting Indonesia’s "peaceful" conversion to Islam

It is a cherished trope in certain academic and popular narratives that Indonesia’s conversion to Islam was a tranquil affair—an organic drift of belief rather than a storm of conquest. This, however, is a historical fiction. The truth is far more complex and, at times, violently unsettling. A closer reading of the region’s 19th-century history—particularly the rise of the Padri movement in Sumatra—lays bare the deep fault lines between myth and memory.

Before Islam became the dominant creed, the Indonesian archipelago was home to rich Hindu-Buddhist traditions, especially rooted in Shaivism and Mahayana Buddhism. These traditions were not marginal; they defined the cultural and spiritual landscape of the islands for centuries. Resistance to Islamic conversion endured with remarkable tenacity until the late 18th century, particularly among the Adat—communities that upheld traditional customs, often anchored in syncretic Hindu-Buddhist worldviews.

The early 19th century marked a dramatic turn. A group of devout Muslim clerics from Sumatra, having journeyed to Arabia to perform the Hajj, found themselves caught in the fervor of Wahhabi revivalism. The Wahhabi raids of 1802 and 1803, with their puritanical zeal and militant ambition, left an indelible impression. Inspired by this ideological fire, the returning pilgrims brought back more than tales of Mecca—they returned with a blueprint for religious purification and political transformation.

Thus was born the Padri movement: a militant effort to cleanse the Indonesian landscape of what its leaders viewed as heresy—polytheism, indigenous custom, and even the consumption of liquor and tobacco. It was not just a religious campaign but an aggressive socio-political insurgency. The Padris, animated by a Wahhabi spirit, took up arms not only against Dutch colonists but against their own cultural kin.

A chilling contemporary Muslim account of the Padri excesses speaks volumes. As quoted by Charles Allen in God’s Terrorists, a scholar of the period observed:

“They looted and robbed the wealth of the people and insulted the orang kaya (important people). They killed the ulama and the orang yang credik (Brahmin priests). They captured married women, wedded them to their men, and made their women captives concubines. Still they called their actions ‘actions made to perfect religion.’”

The local resistance to the Padri onslaught came from the Adat and the Minangkabau royal family. They fought to preserve the syncretic cultural fabric of the region, where Hindu, Buddhist, and animist practices coexisted with Sufi-inflected Islam. For nearly two decades, the war dragged on with neither side able to claim final victory.

Desperate, the Adat made a fateful decision: in 1821, they sought the support of the Dutch colonial authorities. The Dutch, eager to entrench their imperial interests, obliged. With European firepower and military discipline, the tide turned. By 1837, the Padri leader Tuanku Imam Bonjol—ironically now hailed as a national hero in Indonesia—was defeated and exiled.

Yet the triumph of the Adat proved Pyrrhic. By aligning with a foreign colonial power, they lost moral legitimacy in the eyes of the native population. The Dutch, predictably, did not merely help but occupied; and the Adat were seen as collaborators in a new order of economic exploitation and political humiliation. Meanwhile, though defeated militarily, the Padri retained influence in the social and religious domains. Through slow, persistent coercion—both psychological and material—they continued to Islamize the remaining Hindu and Buddhist communities.

By the end of the 19th century, the work was largely complete. The archipelago, once a mosaic of ancient Indic civilizations, had become one of the largest Muslim-majority regions in the world.

What lessons, then, lie in this history for the Hindus of India? First, that civilizations are not lost in a single battle—they are lost in the compromises that follow, in the slow erosion of cultural self-respect, and in the willingness to ally with external powers against internal threats. Second, that religious conquest is not always waged by the sword alone, but also through the institutions of social pressure, political patronage, and the redefinition of identity.

To remember Indonesia only as a story of peaceful conversion is to forget the Adat warriors who bled to preserve their ancestral traditions. It is to forget that beneath the calm surface of faith often lies the churn of history, sharp with the blades of resistance and repression.