Wang Xiaofeng: An Analysis of the Origin, Spread, and Social Role of Religions in Southeast Asia
Researching the politics, economy, culture, military, and diplomacy of Southeast Asian nations makes the issue of religion unavoidable. Complex religious phenomena exist within these countries; in addition to primitive religions, there are followers of Buddhism, Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Hinduism, Judaism, Taoism, and Sikhism. Marxism is the scientific theory for understanding and analyzing the religious issues of Southeast Asia. As General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "In the history of human thought, no other theoretical system has had such a broad and profound impact on humanity as Marxism." "This theory is like a magnificent sunrise, illuminating the path for humanity to explore the laws of history and seek its own liberation." The Marxist view of religion reveals the essence of religion, the objective laws of its emergence and development, its social role, and its relationships with politics and culture. Therefore, elucidating the historical development and social role of Southeast Asian religions under the guidance of historical materialism is a research task of great theoretical and practical value. Guided by the Marxist view of religion, this article will study the origins, dissemination, social impact, and struggles surrounding religion in Southeast Asian nations.
I. The Origins of Southeast Asian Religion from the Perspective of Historical Materialism
Marx noted: "In considering such transformations, a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production... and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic—in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out." This passage establishes the methodological foundation for our understanding of the origin and development of Southeast Asian religion. To understand religious phenomena in Southeast Asian nations, one should begin with the level of social production. What is the relationship between the origin and development of religion and the level of development of productive forces? The young Engels was already aware of the dependence of people on nature under conditions of backward productive forces. Ancient Greeks, living in a beautiful and harmonious natural environment, produced a religious consciousness of harmony between man and nature: "Ancient Greece was a pantheistic country. Its entire landscape was set, or at least used to be set, in a harmonious frame... every perfect and independent part of nature demanded its own god; every river had its naiad, every woods its dryad; thus was the religion of the ancient Greeks established." In contrast, residents of most areas in early Southeast Asia were not as fortunate as the Greeks to take scenery as the basis for religious belief; instead, they had to face droughts, floods, earthquakes, wildfires, and violent storms, struggling for survival against savage beasts in a harsh environment. Nevertheless, the Marxist research approach of beginning with production conditions to study religious phenomena, as pioneered by Engels, points the way for understanding Southeast Asian religious phenomena.
Early humans in Southeast Asia used crude stone, bone, and wooden tools. Their productive activities—such as digging canals, building houses, constructing roads, and farming or hunting—were extremely inefficient, leaving them unable to effectively transform nature. Due to the low level of productive forces, early humans in Southeast Asia were forced to submit to nature. As they struggled against the natural world with collective strength and primitive tools, they gradually recognized the connection between their production activities and certain natural phenomena on the one hand, while remaining severely constrained by nature and unable to comprehend its myriad forms on the other. At that time, there was no mention of medical science or technology, and the food available to fill their bellies was limited. When floods overflowed, humans became "food for fishes" [1]; life appeared fragile before the cold face of nature. Destructive natural phenomena, such as torrential rain and thunder, were full of danger and uncertainty for humans, causing constant alarm. Marx and Engels stated in The German Ideology: "Nature at first appears to men as a completely alien, all-powerful and unassailable force, with which men's relations are purely animal and by which they are overawed like beasts; it is thus a purely animal consciousness of nature (natural religion)." Engels pointed out in Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy: "If the soul lived on after death, there was no reason at all to suppose that it should afterwards perish," and "by a similar process of personification of natural forces, the first gods arose. In the further development of religions these gods assumed a more and more extra-mundane form." Under conditions of low-level productive forces, ancient Southeast Asians produced distorted and inverted reflections of many natural phenomena, deifying them and thereby giving rise to primitive religion.
Nature worship in Southeast Asian countries is closely linked to production. Human survival is intimately tied to the sun, moon, and stars; people worked at sunrise and rested at sunset, obeying the cycles of the sun and moon. Early humans in Southeast Asia could not change the state of these celestial bodies, yet changes in the sun, moon, and stars directly affected the survival of people whose productive forces were extremely backward. Like many countries and regions in the world, ancient Southeast Asian nations worshipped the sun, moon, and stars. According to the History of Indonesia written by Sanusi Pane, ancient Indonesians worshipped the sun, calling it "Suria," and believed that human ancestors were descendants of immortals related to the sun. On the surfaces of ancient bronze drums discovered in Vietnam, there are patterns representing solar constellations, which are considered reflections of ancient Vietnamese nature worship.
Animals in the natural world also possessed miraculous powers in the eyes of ancient people that were difficult for humans to achieve. Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, Malaysia, and Bangladesh worshipped large animals like elephants, tigers, and lions. Indigenous Vietnamese people engaged in wet-rice cultivation, so their earliest totem worship was often of smaller animals related to rice production, such as cattle, birds, snakes, and fish. During the Paleolithic period, Vietnamese people engaged in gathering activities envied the way birds could use their wings to easily pluck fruit from any high tree; during fishing, ancestors observed that some birds could skim across the water and use their beaks to quickly catch fish and shrimp. During hunting, ancestors could catch small animals and even collectively hunt large ones, but it was difficult to catch agile, petite birds. Some scholars believe: "The primitive ancestors of Vietnam developed a kind of envy and reverence for the flexibility of birds living in the same environment, thus giving rise to the natural worship of birds. Many stories related to birds also circulate in the myths and legends concerning the origins of the Vietnamese people's ancestors." It appears that Vietnamese nature worship was related to their productive activities.
Southeast Asian countries and regions have a strong tradition of ancestor worship. It has been noted that ancient Indonesians worshipped the souls of their ancestors, especially the souls of tribal founders who enjoyed high prestige during their lifetimes: "They believed the souls of their ancestors lived in a fairyland atop high mountains. When major events occurred, people would pray for the inspiration and protection of the ancestral spirits; such inspiration and prophecies were obtained through mediums. This is a manifestation of ancestor worship in primitive religion."
Ancestor worship easily evolves into the worship of gods and spirits. The Malay scholar Zainal Abidin bin Ahmad (Za'ba) held the view that ancient Malays believed in "animism" (kepercayaan animisme), which can be called a religious belief in pan-psychism. Modern Malays still retain a large number of ancient beliefs and superstitious customs, proving the animistic faith of ancient Malays. Ancient Malays believed that inanimate objects and nature were usually inhabited by souls or spirits; rice in the fields has a soul just like a child (Saba State still has the tradition of worshipping the Rice God during the Harvest Festival); evil spirits bring disease, and it is believed that Malay medicine men (bomoh) can summon mountain and water spirits to assist in healing. Although contemporary Malays predominantly follow Islam, such animistic beliefs are found everywhere among them. Mr. Skeat's monumental work Malay Magic and Sir Richard Winstedt's The Shaman, Saiva and Sufi are famous works for studying the primitive beliefs and superstitions of the Malays. Many ancient Southeast Asians believed the world was full of spirits, present at all times and places, exerting powerful control over living humans and easily coming into contact with them. "These ghosts and gods were called 'nats' in ancient Burma and 'phi' in Thailand. In Burma, it is generally believed there are 37 'nats'." These phenomena are essentially the embodiment of the view that "the first gods arose... by the personification of natural forces."
II. The Dissemination of Southeast Asian Buddhism and Islam through Human Production Activities
Engels pointed out in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific that "production and, next to production, the exchange of its products, is the basis of all social structure," and "the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men's brains, not in men's better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange." Marx and Engels have a famous saying in The German Ideology: "The relations of different nations among themselves depend upon the extent to which each has developed its productive forces, the division of labour and internal intercourse." "The further the separate spheres, which interact on each other, extend in the course of this development, the more the original isolation of separate nationalities is destroyed by the perfected mode of production and intercourse and the division of labour between nations naturally brought forth by it, the more history becomes world history." The development of productive forces expands the scope of human activity and deepens the degree of human intercourse. The dissemination of Southeast Asian religions is closely related to the productive and social activities of the people in Southeast Asian countries. The enhancement of production capacity, the improvement of vehicles and boats, and the expansion of the scope of human activity have strengthened the capacity of Southeast Asian nations to disseminate religious culture. Historically, there were specialized missionaries, but trade and commerce were the primary channels for the spread of Buddhism and Islam in Southeast Asia.
Economic and trade exchanges between Southeast Asian countries and India and China promoted the spread of Buddhism in Southeast Asia. Buddhism in Southeast Asian countries was influenced by these two ancient civilizations. The prosperous ancient Chinese and Indian cultures exerted a profound and lasting influence on the spread of religious culture in the Southeast Asian region. It is generally believed that around the beginning of the Common Era, a large number of Indian merchants and monks entered Southeast Asia from the state of Odisha and the Andhra coast, as well as the coast of Gujarat in the west, via three routes: one reached the Bago region of Burma, another reached the central part of the Malay Peninsula, and a third reached the coast of Sumatra and the shores of the Strait of Malacca. There were two land routes: one from Bengal and Northeast India into the middle reaches of the Irrawaddy River in Burma; the other from Southern China into Northern Vietnam. Monks and priests accompanying merchants by sea and land brought Brahmanism and Buddhism to Southeast Asia. Objects discovered through archaeology and records in Chinese historical texts indicate that by at least the 2nd century CE, Brahmanism and Buddhism had already spread throughout the Southeast Asian region.
The Vietnamese scholar Van Tan, specializing in the initial spread of Buddhism in Vietnam, believes that Buddhism entered Vietnam around the 2nd century BCE: "During this period, whenever Indian merchant ships sailed to Guangzhou, they would dock in Jiaozhou to trade. According to ancient Indian customs, almost every merchant ship had monks. Old Chinese histories call them 'Hu monks' (huseng). These monks presided over sacrificial activities at sea and treated people along the way. When Indian merchant ships anchored in Jiaozhou, the monks would go ashore to treat the local people and preach." The ancient Jiaozhou mentioned here refers to parts of present-day northern and central Vietnam and China's Guangxi. Mr. Van Tan also believes: "It can be seen that Buddhism was introduced by monks who came to Jiaozhou with Indian merchant ships before the Common Era. By the end of the 2nd century, due to the activities of Mahajivaka, Kang Senghui, Zhi Jiangliang, and Mou Rong, Buddhism was systematically and widely disseminated in ancient Vietnam." By the Tang Dynasty, the imperial court and all levels of society revered Buddhism, leading to its even more widespread dissemination in Vietnam.
Economic and trade relations between Southeast Asia and Arab merchants facilitated the spread of Islam throughout the region. The academic community generally holds that Islam was introduced to Southeast Asia by Arab merchants toward the end of the thirteenth century. Southeast Asia's abundance of spices attracted Arab Muslim merchants who, traveling via the Indian state of Gujarat, came to the region to engage in the spice trade. Consequently, Islam was first transmitted to Southeast Asia by merchants passing through India. Northern Sumatra, situated at a strategic transport "bottleneck" connecting the Indian and Pacific Oceans, naturally developed into a prosperous trade center. In his travelogues, Marco Polo noted that by 1292, the Kingdom of Perlak on Sumatra had already converted to Islam. Scholars generally consider the Sultanate of Samudera-Pasai in northern Sumatra to be the earliest Islamic state in Indonesia. In 1297, the first king of the Samudera-Pasai Sultanate passed away; his tombstone is inscribed with the Islamic calendar and the Islamic name "Sultan Malik as-Salih." [2]
Malacca, located near Sumatra, served as a vital entrepôt for Southeast Asian trade, where merchant ships congregated and traders from various Eastern nations gathered. Many Muslim merchants conducted business there, and Islam gradually spread from Pasai to Malacca. Some argue that "with the spread of Islam in India and Muslim merchants gaining control of trade with Indonesia, the spread of Islam to Southeast Asia became an inevitable trend." The first King of Malacca married an Arabian princess, converted to Islam, and took the name Iskandar Shah. Subsequent generations of Malaccan monarchs all practiced Islam. By the reign of the fourth monarch, the Muslim title "Sultan" was adopted, and Islam was established as the state religion, transforming Malacca into the center for Islamic propagation in Southeast Asia. Malacca reached its zenith during the era of its fifth king, becoming one of the most powerful states in Southeast Asia and further driving the spread of Islam across the region. One scholar posits: "In the latter half of the fifteenth century, the coasts of Sumatra and Java achieved Islamization. By the sixteenth century, Islam had attained a dominant position in northern Kalimantan, the Maluku Islands, the Sulu Archipelago, and Mindanao; the Islamization of most of the Southeast Asian maritime region was basically complete by this time."
III. Religion Exploited by Colonizers as a Tool to Maintain Colonial Rule
Marx pointed out: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." During the era of colonial rule in Southeast Asian nations, religion was utilized by colonialists as a tool to uphold their administration.
In ancient Vietnam, Buddhism became a tool for the ruling class to maintain their governance, serving as a "spiritual sedative" or "sleeping pill" for the common people to endure suffering. Throughout the French colonial period, the French authorities in Vietnam were initially unwelcoming toward the unfamiliar Buddhism. However, upon discovering that an increasing number of people practiced the faith, they pivoted their strategy. They sought to use Buddhist doctrines—such as "fate can be altered through acts of compassion, the cultivation of merit, and repentance," "to endure is to let go," and the "practice of non-self"—to anesthetize the people’s will to struggle. Particularly after the Indochinese Communist Party entered the stage of history in 1930, the Vietnamese people’s struggle against colonial rule reached a new climax. While the French colonizers suppressed the people's resistance with barbarity and cruelty, they felt all the more that Buddhism could be co-opted to wear down and paralyze the people's fighting spirit. In 1931, with the support of French colonizers, the Southern Vietnam Buddhist Studies Association was established in Saigon. In 1932, a Buddhist Society was founded in Huế. In Northern Vietnam, the General Buddhist Association and various provincial branches were established in Hanoi in 1931. These Buddhist institutions founded schools, lectured on sutras, and propagated the faith. Publications such as Viên Âm in Huế, Đuốc Tuệ by the Hanoi General Buddhist Association, and Tiếng Chuông Sớm by the Thạch Bà Temple provided a platform for spreading and studying Buddhist scriptures. The French colonizers treated Buddhism as a spiritual weapon to rule the Vietnamese people, teaching the populace to be submissive and patient, and encouraging them to place their hopes in the afterlife. Many people with low political consciousness were deceived by this.
Spanish colonial expansion played a major role in promoting the overseas spread of Catholicism, which also became an auxiliary tool for Spain’s colonial expansion and maintenance of rule in the Philippines. Before Western colonizers arrived in Southeast Asia, Catholicism was not prevalent among the inhabitants; to this day, while Buddhism and Islam prevail in most Southeast Asian countries, the vast majority of residents in the Philippines are Catholic. The Philippines' initial acceptance of Catholicism was accompanied by bloody national oppression. When Magellan reached Samar in the Philippines in March 1521, he brought along several priests. These colonizers induced local chiefs and residents to receive Catholic baptism and demand allegiance to the King of Spain. In 1571, the Spanish established the first Catholic church in Manila. In 1578, Pope Gregory XIII designated the Spanish-controlled areas of the Philippines as the independent Diocese of Manila.
Engels, discussing how the British bourgeoisie utilized religion to strengthen their rule, said that the British bourgeoisie "soon found out what could be done with this same religion to work upon the minds of his natural inferiors, and to make them submissive to the behests of the masters it had pleased God to place over them. In a word, the English bourgeoisie now had to take its share in keeping down the 'lower orders,' the great producing mass of the nation, and one of the means employed for that purpose was the influence of religion." Just as the British bourgeoisie used religion as a means of maintaining rule, the Spanish colonizers used Catholicism to rule the Filipino people. When the Spanish first arrived, they were a minority while the Filipinos were the majority. Facing such a disparity in strength, one of the most effective ruses the Spanish colonizers devised to gain a foothold and realize colonial rule was to utilize religion—which Marx described as the "opium that anesthetizes the people"—to poison and paralyze the Filipino people's will to resist, causing them to lose the confidence and courage for armed struggle against the colonizers. Little wonder some say that Spain’s colony in the Philippines was "occupied by missionaries." In reality, the Spanish entry into the Philippines was the result of the combined action of Catholicism and the military. In 1586, seven Spanish captains reported to the King of Spain that with military protection, the "clerical personnel could safely carry out the propagation of the Gospel and the reception of converts." The Spanish colonizers used guns and cannons to defend the faith of Jesus Christ while casting the Filipino people into a sea of suffering. They suppressed the resistance of local governments and residents while simultaneously cracking down on Islamic activities. When Catholicism first reached the Philippines, Islam had also just arrived in Luzon and the central regions. Catholicism sought to exploit the moment when Islam was not yet firmly established or powerful, using force to eliminate local indigenous Muslim princes and forcing residents to convert to Catholicism.
Catholicism in the Philippines implemented a governance style of the union of church and state. When discussing the characteristics of Catholic rule and the situation in Byzantium and Turkey, Marx said: "The chief characteristic of the Eastern Church (Orthodoxy) that distinguishes it from other Christian sects is precisely the unity of state and church, of secular and religious life." Regarding Christian rule in Turkey, Marx noted that "this all-encompassing, tyrannical guardianship, control, and interference of the church could penetrate all spheres of social life." Marx’s description of Catholic [3] rule in Byzantium and Turkey is highly apt for describing Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines. Upon arriving in the Philippines, Catholicism gradually shed its ornate packaging of benevolence to become a colonial coercive measure to force the lower classes into submission. The Catholic Church in the Philippines not only managed religious affairs but also enjoyed extensive political, judicial, cultural, educational, financial, and economic powers, becoming the most important component of the colonial administrative apparatus and the spiritual and political pillar of Spanish rule. The Archbishop had the power to intervene in the transfer, appointment, and dismissal of the Governor-General and high officials, and bishops were granted the right to act as Governor-General during vacancies. At the provincial, municipal, and township levels, parish priests also held the majority of power. Parish priests controlled local education and culture, and held administrative authority over everything from health and charity to local taxation, signing identification or poll tax documents, local statistics, auditing municipal budgets, supervising the food supply for prisons and prisoners, distributing royal lands, and overseeing local police and militias. In The Frankish Period, Engels exposed how "deception, magic, and the apparitions of the dead—especially saints—were used by the Church as means to swindle property. The final but most important method was the forgery of documents." Thus, church lands acquired through "donations, extortion, deception, fraud, forgery, and other criminal acts" reached immense proportions within a few centuries. In the Philippines, the Catholic Church acquired political power and, with it, economic rights. Leveraging its privileges to seize land, it unscrupulously applied the same methods of plunder used in Europe. Those groaning in misery were the oppressed non-believers within the Philippines, whose rights and freedoms were trampled upon by the colonial rulers of the unified church and state. Their rights to residence, education, and employment were not guaranteed. After the Spanish-American War, the United States expelled Spanish rule and occupied the Philippines. The U.S. vigorously supported ecclesiastical forces, and Catholicism once again became a tool of colonial rule.
IV. Religious Figures Conducting National Liberation Struggles Against Colonial Oppression
In Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, Engels criticized Feuerbach's view that "the periods of humanity are distinguished only by religious changes," and proposed the following thesis: "The great turning-points of history have been accompanied by religious changes only so far as the three world religions which have existed up to the present—Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam—are concerned. The old spontaneous tribal and national religions were not proselytizing and lost all capacity for resistance as soon as the independence of the tribe or people was lost... It is only with these world religions, which were more or less artificially created, particularly Christianity and Islam, that we find that the more general historical movements take on a religious coloring." The historical changes of Southeast Asian nations are closely related to religion. When these nations faced colonial aggression, the colonialists used religion as a tool of colonization; conversely, the Southeast Asian people, including local religious figures, used religion as a banner to unify hearts against colonial rule and conduct national liberation movements against colonialism.
In the Roman Empire 1,600 years ago, Christians engaged in long-term underground secret activities and were considered subversives, suffering suppression by Roman emperors: "Subversives were prohibited from holding assemblies; their meeting places were closed or even destroyed; Christian symbols—the cross and so on—were strictly forbidden, just as red handkerchiefs were forbidden in Saxony. Christians were not allowed to hold public office, nor even to serve as first-class privates." In Southeast Asian countries, Christians did not appear as the persecuted, but rather in the posture of new rulers, oppressing the people and persecuting those who practiced other faiths. Following the Western invasion, many high-level indigenous rulers were relegated to the status of lower officials; indigenous national religions were belittled, antagonized, and suppressed, and the political and economic privileges of the clergy were revoked. Schools established by colonizers caused the original indigenous clergy to lose their monopoly over culture and education. Consequently, it was only natural that colonial rule met with forceful resistance from the oppressed people, including religious circles. The leaders of peasant uprisings against colonial rule were often indigenous clerics. This was because, as Marx noted of the impoverished peasantry, "they cannot represent themselves, they must be represented," and they yearned for a savior. The indigenous clergy, being likewise oppressed relative to the colonizers yet enjoying high prestige in the vast countryside, used religion as a banner to call for peasant uprisings against colonial rule. Some uprising leaders claimed to be "saviors" through whom justice would descend upon the world; others claimed to be divinely appointed messengers of the "savior," tasked with overthrowing colonial rule, expelling the whites, and equalizing land rights.
Members of the Vietnamese Buddhist community gallantly resisted French colonial rule. When the French invaded Vietnam in the 19th century, they coerced the weak and incompetent Hue government of Vietnam into signing the Treaty of Saigon [4] on June 5, 1862. This treaty ceded the provinces of Bien Hoa, Gia Dinh, and Dinh Tuong, as well as Poulo Condore island, to France, and permitted Christian missionaries to proselytize freely within Vietnamese territory. In 1867, France seized the three provinces of Chau Doc (known in Vietnam as An Giang Province), Ha Tien, and Vinh Long. Through three Franco-Vietnamese wars, employing both military offensives and political deception, France finally annexed all of Vietnam, turning it into a colony. However, Vietnamese Buddhists, joined by other strata of the population who refused to submit to colonial slavery, united to launch a joint anti-French struggle. From 1890 to 1891, a "Monk Army" organized by Buddhists was active in Vietnam, supporting the anti-French struggle led by Phan Bội Châu’s [5] associate, Trần Cao Vân. In May 1916, while being pursued by French forces, Trần Cao Vân sought refuge in a monastery south of Hue. This "Monk Army" caused the French colonials a great deal of trouble, and it cost them immense energy and financial resources to suppress it. The Southern uprising against the French in November 1940, supported and guided by the Indochinese Communist Party, saw the participation of many Buddhist figures and believers. In the article "Buddhism in Vietnamese History," the Vietnamese scholar Van Tan mentions that during the period of French colonial rule in Vietnam, "the monk Ai Ma Thong of the Tai Shang Temple (Gia Dinh) was arrested and killed by French colonials in Hoc Mon for participating in the uprising. The monk Dong of the San Bao Temple (Rach Gia) turned his temple into a factory for revolutionary cadres to manufacture explosives and bullets; he himself was exiled to Poulo Condore and died there. Thich Thien An of San Bao Temple was also shot and killed." After the Japanese invasion of Vietnam in 1940, Vietnamese religious figures launched an anti-Japanese struggle. According to Van Tan, after the Japanese invasion, "Buddhists and monks at the Yen Tu Mountain temple all participated in the anti-Japanese uprising. After the August Revolution of 1945, a certain unit of the Dong Trieu forces was composed entirely of monks and nuns. This unit followed Comrade Nguyen Binh (later a Lieutenant General) south to resist the French. The monks and nuns fought valiantly, making immense contributions on the southern battlefield." It is evident that Vietnamese Buddhist figures made significant contributions and sacrifices for the cause of Vietnamese national liberation.
Similarly to Vietnam, Malaysian Muslim religious figures actively threw themselves into the struggle against a series of colonial aggressions. In 1511, Portuguese colonials invaded and occupied Malacca (formerly translated as Manlajia). In 1641, as Dutch hegemony waned, the Portuguese were replaced by the Dutch in Malacca. After the British occupied Penang in 1786, they took control of Singapore in 1819. During the Second World War, Malaya was further ravaged by Japanese imperialism. Malayan Muslims and non-Muslims, who had long suffered under colonialist depredation, fought in unity and maintained a resolute resistance against different colonizers in different periods. In 1948, the Federation of Malaya was established. In 1957, Malaya gained independence within the Commonwealth. The history of the founding of Malaysia is marked by the heroic deeds of religious figures participating in the resistance against colonial rule.
Counting from the 16th century when the Spanish launched their invasion of the Philippines, the struggle of Philippine Muslims against colonialism lasted for several centuries. In 1596, the Spanish invaded Mindanao. The Muslims used Islam as a spiritual weapon in their tenacious struggle against the Spanish colonials. To preserve Islamic beliefs, customs, and their traditional way of life, they fought the colonizers, and Muslim armed forces repeatedly attacked the Spanish. While carrying out military expeditions against the Sulu and Mindanao regions, the Spanish colonials actively supported the activities of the Catholic Church in an attempt to convert the local inhabitants to Catholicism, but they met with stubborn resistance and achieved little success. The guns and Bibles of the Spanish colonials could not force the Muslims to abandon Islam; instead, they incited hatred between Muslims and Christians, causing religious and national contradictions to become intertwined. Spain envisioned large-scale migration to the southern Philippines to give Christians an absolute numerical advantage, but this plan could not be implemented soon after the outbreak of the Spanish-American War. In their struggle against Spanish colonizers, Muslims once hallucinated that they would obtain help from the United States. However, after the United States replaced Spain as the new colonizer, it continued to pursue Spain's colonial policies, subjecting the Philippine people to political, economic, and cultural oppression and exploitation, which re-ignited Muslim hatred toward American colonizers. Philippine Muslims engaged in armed confrontation, and many were brutally killed. For instance, in two anti-American uprisings that broke out in Jolo in 1900 and 1913, approximately 1,500 Muslims were killed. Some scholars have pointed out: "During more than three hundred years of colonial rule, the Spanish and American colonial authorities continuously moved migrants to the south, making the Christian population greatly exceed the Muslim population. However, this not only failed to make the Muslims abandon their struggle but instead intensified their contradictions with the Christians." Professor Liang Yingming also points out the economic roots of the continuous struggle between Catholicism and Christianity—namely, that Muslims do not recognize private ownership of land and oppose the government’s distribution of their communal land to migrants for cultivation. They also believe that taxation violates the teachings of the Quran. Consequently, land disputes often become the direct cause of armed conflict. Schools teaching Western languages were regarded as part of the Christian assimilation policy and were resisted by Muslims. Catholicism pursued economic interests in the Philippines through trickery and force, conforming to the characteristics of European religion described by Marx: "The English Puritans and the Dutch Protestants are both inseparable from the pursuit of money."
V. Concluding Remarks and Outlook
Religious issues are prevalent throughout Southeast Asian countries and will continue to exist and spread over a broad scope. Marx said: "Religion is only the illusory sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself." With the passage of time and the development of social production, old and new migrants from many countries have come to Southeast Asia, forming a multicultural society of multiple ethnicities and religions. The Malaysian constitution stipulates that Islam is the federal state religion but allows other religions to conduct peaceful religious activities. Islam is taught as a subject in every grade in schools, and corresponding facilities are provided for other religions. In Malaysian public education, religious courses often occupy nearly half of teaching time; students are segregated by religious belief to attend these courses, and the number of Islamic religious schools has grown exponentially. The progress of modern productive forces and high technology is not yet sufficient to eliminate the religious culture already integrated into Southeast Asian culture; Southeast Asian religious culture will not exit the stage in a short time. Religious culture that has merged into the mainstream and folk cultures of Southeast Asia will continue to exist for a considerable period. Due to the background of multiple ethnicities, multi-level productive forces, and multiculturalism, Southeast Asia brings together various religions, forming a religiously pluralistic culture that will continue to exhibit a state of diversification. Southeast Asian people of different ethnicities, beliefs, and languages, wearing different clothing, find their spiritual sustenance in different religions.
Southeast Asian religions will continue to influence politics. Marx believed that forms of social consciousness—such as politics, law, philosophy, and religion—are not only determined by the economic base but also interact among their own various forms. For a long time, religion in Southeast Asia has had considerable influence on politics. The religionization of politics and the politicization of religion are characteristics of many Southeast Asian countries. Besides believing in religion, Malaysians also emphasize the importance of religion in their national ideology. The Malaysian constitution stipulates that rulers or Sultans are the leaders of their respective states and simultaneously the leaders of Islam in those states. The Supreme Ruler (Yang di-Pertuan Agong) is selected from the hereditary rulers of the states who hold the status of Islamic leaders. Therefore, the Supreme Head of State of Malaysia must necessarily believe in Islam. "Although the Supreme Head of State of Malaysia is not a national religious leader, he can possess the authority to execute Islamic religious affairs at the federal level with the authorization of the state rulers, and he serves as the Islamic leader for the two states in West Malaysia that have no hereditary rulers." It can be expected that religion will persistently maintain this influence in Southeast Asia, continuing to affect the domestic and foreign policy trends of contemporary Southeast Asian countries, party competition and election prospects, the choice of political systems, and the evolution of the cultural ecosystem. The Marxist view of religion provides a guide for contemporary people to understand the religious phenomena of Southeast Asian countries, offering the basic stance, viewpoint, and method for analyzing these phenomena. Applying the scientific method of Marxism is conducive to revealing the origins and development of religion in Southeast Asian countries and achieving a scientific understanding of Southeast Asian religious phenomena.
We must pay attention to "religious risks" in the future that may trigger complex political, economic, and social risks in Southeast Asia. In Malaysia, there is a divide between Islamists and secularists. Islamism continues to push for and shape a unique Malaysian political environment, exacerbating divisions in political Islam and ethnic polarization. Since almost all Malays are Muslims, Islamic groups fuse their religious demands with Malay nationalism. Ethnic and religious identities are increasingly merging: most (though not all) Malays adopt Islamist views, while minority groups are more secular. All major religions have strengthened their religious organizations, including through the political mobilization of believers; more and more children are segregated from peers of different faiths through religious schools or homeschooling. These shifts have deepened social divides, and the expansion of the state Islamic bureaucracy since the 1980s has further intensified sectarian divisions and widened the rift between Islamism and secularism. Religious identity appears to be replacing ethnicity as the core element of identification. The federal Islamic religious department has an annual budget of approximately $300 million and thousands of staff members responsible for monitoring social behavior and regulating the economy. State management of Islam infringes upon the rights of non-Muslims and many Muslims, particularly Muslim minority sects targeted by the ruling authorities. The religious bureaucracy has created a constituency with a vested interest in religious affairs—especially among the state clergy who dominate with conservative interpretations of faith—using the almost complete symbiosis between Malay and Muslim identity as a point of articulation. This allows religious nationalism to become a cipher for nationalism, one that is less inclusive of ethnic minorities than traditional Malay nationalism, thereby exacerbating the sharp divide between Islamists and secularists. In short, we need to attend to the origins and development of Southeast Asian religion and conduct professional, in-depth research on the subject.
(Author biography: Wang Xiaofeng is a doctoral student at the School of Social Sciences, Tsinghua University) Online Editor: Tong Xin Source: Science and Atheism, Issue 3, 2024