Heaven’s Way According to Allah’s Law: Religious Syncretism in a Sino-Malay Cultural Zone during the Colonial Era

The late nineteenth century and early twentieth century marked a revival of Confucianism in China and colonial Southeast Asia. This paper discusses how Confucianism or Confucian-inspired ideas travelled to the Dutch and British colonial port cities, and looks at how the Sino-Malay speaking community in the area received and interpreted Confucian concepts. By studying the translations and commentaries of the first significant Malay translation of the Confucian Canon Great Learning and Doctrine of the Mean this paper shows that the understanding of Confucianism among the Sino-Malay speaking community differed from the interpretation that prevailed in China at the time. My paper looks at the characteristics of this text and argues that this understanding of Confucianism as presented in the translation resulted from long term exposure to indigenous, Sinitic, Western, and Arabic traditions in the Sino-Malay cultural zone.