The Indian Ocean - Michael Pearson [133]
the partisans of Muhammad don't sleep, rather their cacizes make themselves into seamen, and thus can go around preaching their accursed sect; and they have done so well that it seems incredible the number of gentiles that in a few years have here submitted to this evil sect, and I believe that here they have a great advantage over us.
Another Jesuit at the same time expanded on this Muslim conversion technique, describing again how they travel as 'lascars, which is the same as sailors', on Portuguese boats even, and sowed their 'evil seed' wherever the boat called, even as far as China, Siam and Java.
The main arena in our period was southeast Asia. Western Indonesia was converted before the Portuguese and Spanish arrived, mostly by new Muslims from India, especially from Gujarat and other coastal areas. It is a matter of missionary activity undertaken by people themselves relatively new converts, and again the mechanism was trade and the use of the sea as a highway for the spread of Islam. It is debatable whether Muslims who were responsible for converting large numbers of people in southeast Asia can be described precisely as 'missionaries'. Few Muslims who spread their faith in the area were religious specialists engaged in fulltime proselytisation, in the way the members of the Christian orders were. Most conversions to Islam apparently were made by people who were traders or travellers, pious no doubt but engaged in worldly activities also. Many traders were members of Sufi orders, and indeed it is a matter of degree, for while most were primarily traders, a few were religious guides for their fellow Muslims and also people interested in spreading the faith.
Once the Portuguese arrived they engaged in vigorous competition with their Muslim rivals. The situation in Siam in the middle of the sixteenth century was well described in a letter by the adventurer-turned-religious Fernão Mendes Pinto. He told his Jesuit fellows that there were various religious beliefs followed in Siam, but the Muslims were doing very well. Already in the capital there were seven mosques, with foreign cacizes, and 30,000 hearths of Muslims. Proselytisation proceeded apace. The king, however, maintained a hands-off attitude to the whole matter: 'The king lets everyone do what they want; they can be Muslim or gentile, for he says he is king of nothing more than their bodies.'
The Christian missionaries tried to work from the top. This worked well in Japan, but not so much elsewhere. In India the Jesuits hoped to convert the Mughal emperor Akbar, after which the rest of India would follow. Hence the ecstatic claims from time to time that the Great Mughal was listening to them, was favourably inclined to them, was now no longer a Muslim, and indeed on occasion that his conversion was imminent. Alas, the hopes were all ill-founded, showing no doubt a Counter-Reformation failure to understand how Akbar could find some merit in all the great religious traditions. As was ruefully noted, he remained as Muslim as he had ever been. So also at a more humble level in Goa, where they encouraged the elite to convert, offering them jobs and other favours in return. In 1548 Lakshman decided to convert. He was a great catch. The bishop performed the ceremony, the governor stood as his godfather, and, now called Luquas de Sá, he was given an important government post.
Letters home to Europe from the religious often complain of the lack of support they received from the secular authorities. Most Spanish and Portuguese governors and captains put political, and especially economic, matters before conversions. Indeed, the