So exactly how did Islam spread un Indonesia? I've tried

>How can you convert an entire country just by talking about your religion?
warfare helps

>>2223341
Muslim merchants were well connected to the source of a lot of silver in the Indian ocean. So local kings in Southeast Asia would let them set up merchant colonies to tax their trade. Sometimes they would pick out one of the more important merchants and invite them to court to help manage trade and diplomatic relations with other trade hubs, which were either Muslim or also had a Muslim merchant colony. This meant you had a wordly, educated Muslim at high positions at court who could influence the king, his other officials, and the nobility. It's a bit like how Scandinavia was Christinized I think.

>>2223346
Not sure but i think that except in India Islam spread peacefully in Asia.

>>2223346
But who, when and why did warfare happened?

>>2223368
It helps that Indonesian Islam is traditionally very syncretic with "pagan" religious practices. The spread of Orthodox Islam is a modern phenomenom. All those "fundamentalists" that scare the secular elites are not reactionaries, but modernists in the context of Islam in Indonesia.

File: Menara Kudus Mosque (1549).jpg (536KB, 1600x1334px) Image search: [Google]

536KB, 1600x1334px

>>2223368
Basically this, Islam was the dominant religion of the Indian Ocean trade and conversion helped integrate port-towns into that trade. Islam then spread from these ports into the interior through both missionaries like the Nine Saints of Java and warfare like the overthrowing of Majapahit. Another reason was that Islam gave ideological support to the autonomy of these port-towns from the rule of the declining Majapahit Empire.

The weirdest thing about Indonesia isn't Islam but Hinduism.