Muslim traders from the Arabian cradle of Islam brought their faith to Indonesia. But Islam was not always treading on virgin territory - and the Indonesian Islam of today reflects that historical and demographic reality.
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The earliest Indonesians were animists. They practised ancestor and spirit worship. Then, for about 1,500 years after Christ, the Hindu and Buddhist faiths spread from the Indian sub-continent to the western part of Indonesia.
Some pockets of Indonesia remain predominantly Hindu - most notably Bali. But the Hindu kingdoms never reached the eastern islands.
But the Islam of Indonesia was also influenced by Sufi holy men - devout Muslim mystics renowned for the beauty of their music and poetry, and for internalising the focus of their spiritual odyssey rather than seeking to impose their faith on the external political realities around them.
That influence, too, was a force for moderation.
In time, Islam spread throughout the archipelago and up into the southern Philippines. For the most part, it was a peaceful conversion - unlike the Arab and Turkish conversions made at the point of a sword.
Its final form in any place depended on the inherited tradition. Where Islam overlay Hinduism, or the ancient belief systems that pre-dated it, as in the west of the archipelago, it differed from the form that emerged further east, which had been untouched by Hinduism.
But the same geography that helped foster moderation and tolerance now has more sinister connotations. An archipelago of thousands of islands is ideal territory for guerrilla groups: hunting them is like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.
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