ABSTRACT
Insular Southeast Asia was far more exposed than the mainland to influences from distant countries like India, Arabia, Persia, China, and, in more recent times, Europe. International commerce brought in its wake cultural contacts including, of course, religion. Unlike mainland Southeast Asia, people in the insular region followed a variety of religions: Buddhism and Hinduism held sway during the first millennium in Malaya and Indonesia, giving way after the thirteenth century to Islam, which spread rapidly in the archipelago in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The sixteenth century opened doors to Christianity, which became the dominant religion of the Philippines. Only the people of picturesque Bali adhered to Hinduism despite such large-scale conversions around them. If Theravada Buddhism is the dominant religion of mainland Southeast Asia, Islam is that of the insular region, with Indonesia the largest Muslim nation on earth.
