AHC: Islamic Australia

So I was playing a board game recently called Ideology: The War of Ideas, in which you play one of five political ideologies (Capitalism, Imperialism, Communism, Fascism, and Islam). For the fun of it, I played Islam. Now the objective of Ideology is to influence a number of nations by your ideology so much that you end up controlling it, and as it so happens, I ended up controlling - of all places - Australia, which didn't win me the game (I lost miserably) but gave me an awesome idea for AH.

So your AH challenge for today is, with any POD at all, to make Australia a theocracy controlled by Islam, like Iran.:D
 
Not so sure about the theocracy part, but if the British Empire during the 19th century is much more intertwined with India, it's probable there will be a huge amount of immigration from said subcontinent to Australia and other colonies, a la Fiji. I guess it's possible that the majority of Australia's population is either descended from Muslim Bengali immigrants or Muslim through generations of cultural inter-pollination.
 
Might require ASBs creating a Peshawar Lancers-esque situation with the British empire largely relocating to India, and the Raj extending her influence along East and Southern Africa and in Australia.

Actually, Peshawar Lancers itself might have a Muslim majority Australia. I'm not sure if Stirling ever went into much details that way.
 
Wasn't the region of Indonesia heavily Islamic? Could it be possible that some some indonesians set sail south and land in Australia, setting up a colony? Maybe Brunei, Malacca, or Aceh could do it.

I suppose the question is, could they have done that?
 
Wasn't the region of Indonesia heavily Islamic? Could it be possible that some some indonesians set sail south and land in Australia, setting up a colony? Maybe Brunei, Malacca, or Aceh could do it.

I suppose the question is, could they have done that?

The unfortunate problem for Australian colonization is that the continent doesn't offer much of anything to any would-be colonizing power. The tribes there don't have anything worth trading for, there's not enough of them for slaves, and there's nothing in the way of resources or crops on the coasts would all colonizing powers would be to even make it worth taking. Even the land is largely worthless except on the Southern tips and the lower eastern seaboard. The interior isn't much better, either. Even placing naval refueling stations and expanding into port cities doesn't do much for you. So you'd need a colonial power interested in taking territory simply for the sake of placing a flag on a map, and one with enough excess population to ship a substantial number of them there, and for the OP be Muslim-majority. That's all very, very limiting. :(

EDIT: But to build on this idea, perhaps European colonization is slowed down for some reason, or changed on a fundamental level, and the Indonesian sultanates are able to get their houses in order, and due to traded American staple crops a massive population boom ensues at the same time as the Indonesians decide to start playing the colonial game as part of being 'more Western' in order to compete with the Europeans, and start to colonize Australia. After all the Indonesians certainly knew of the continent, its right there, and its not likely that anyone else will put forward a stronger claim. Voilà, Muslim Australia colonized by Indonesians.
 
The very thing of putting Islam in the same "ideology" league with Fascism, Communism, etc., sound somewhat odd, but well, that's not my business to challenge game scenarios here.
Indonesia has, today, by far the largest Muslim population in the world, in the same order of magnitude of all the Arab caountries put together. So, IF there's some reason for Indonesians to colonize Austrialia after they are Islamicized and before they fall under the Dutch sway (quite a limited window indeed) that would fit the bill. Else, the Dutch themselves colonize Australia and import a lot of Indonesian Muslim workers that become local majority. That could make Austrialia a part of larger Indonesia indeed.
 
The very thing of putting Islam in the same "ideology" league with Fascism, Communism, etc., sound somewhat odd, but well, that's not my business to challenge game scenarios here.
Indonesia has, today, by far the largest Muslim population in the world, in the same order of magnitude of all the Arab caountries put together. So, IF there's some reason for Indonesians to colonize Austrialia after they are Islamicized and before they fall under the Dutch sway (quite a limited window indeed) that would fit the bill. Else, the Dutch themselves colonize Australia and import a lot of Indonesian Muslim workers that become local majority. That could make Austrialia a part of larger Indonesia indeed.

Hear hear!
But what about the Indigenous population?
 
Pre-modern Indonesia would indeed be the way to go.
Sure, Australia isn't a very good place to colonise, there's not much of worth there- but then what about Iceland and Greenland? Not exactly prime territory either.
Make Indonesia a bit overcrowded and have some younger sons who don't stand to inherit anything there decide to go looking elsewhere to create a land for themselves.
As said the window is a bit small though, I think you'd need to slow down Europe a bit first.
 
Alternatively, maybe the Indonesians are able to convert a sizeable portion of the Aboriginals to Islam?
 
Hear hear!
But what about the Indigenous population?

I suppose they might fare slightly better tha OTL, IF they convert to Islam. The colonists will surely try to convert them. Since they may not see them as racially inferior like the Westerners tended to do, there could be a better integration of them in this society. However, there still would be conflicts, and they will still be robbed the better lands.
Indonesians are familiar with a tropical wet enviroment that, AFAIK, exists only in very small parts of Northeastern Australia. OTOH, they have contact with drier parts of the Muslim world to import gear useful to life in Australia, such as camels.
 
The unfortunate problem for Australian colonization is that the continent doesn't offer much of anything to any would-be colonizing power. The tribes there don't have anything worth trading for, there's not enough of them for slaves, and there's nothing in the way of resources or crops on the coasts would all colonizing powers would be to even make it worth taking.

Well, except for trepang...

I like this timeline.
 
why assume muslim colonization&conversion?

i say, have uber-spain/HRE/their
union crush reformation, reignite crusades, get holy land, expel muslims (a la reconquista) into their prison colony of australia (which would be named megiddo or golgotha or sth).

and then islam spreads to southeast & then east asia..

and thus stage is set for religious WWI :D
 
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