ZAPIN AS RITUALIZED DHIKR: SILENT REMEMBRANCE OF GOD THROUGH MUSIC AND DANCE

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Mohd Anis Md Nor

Abstract


Almost all of the 240 million Muslims in Southeast Asia belong to the Sunni sect following the Shafii school of Muslim jurisprudence. They have practised Islam from the teachings of Muslim traders and preachers since the 12th century, which was further developed by Sufi mystics from the 13th century laying prominence on Islam's humanistic orientation, with emphasis on love and compassion. Accounting for about 42 percent of the total Southeast Asian population and 25 percent of the total world Muslim population (estimated at 1.6 billion), the three countries (Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei) with Muslim-majority populations, and minority Muslims in Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, Burma, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam; have tolerated the meeting between monotheistic Islam, pantheistic tradition of Islamic mysticism and pre-Islamic traditions into a syncretized forbearance of Southeast Asian Islam (Yusof 2015). Islam not only spread through the expansion of trade among West Asia, India and Southeast Asia, but it also spread through Sufi missionaries who played a significant role in affirming the teaching is spreading the faith through the practices of the tariqah. Islam had a firm footing in maritime Southeast Asia by the time the Portuguese arrived in the 16th century.

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