These arguments cannot be regarded as completely satisfactory. In the first place, many more Chinese than is generally believed became Muslims in Indonesia in earlier centuries. If the intolerance and exclusiveness of Islam is supported to have proved such a stumbling block for the eclectic and syncretic religious temperament of the Chinese, it seems strange that the abangan Javanese (whose religious temperament must be regarded as no less eclectic and syncretic) should have become nominal Muslims where the Chinese did not. Similarly, why is it that peranakan Chinese of Java (who were the descendant’s of alliances between Chinese men and abangan Javanese women) incorporated so much of Javanese culture into their mestizo culture but did not include even the diluted Islam of the abangan? Again, abstinence from pork seems to be an insufficient explanation for the failure of Chinese to convert to Islam. In her study of the Chinese of Sukabumi, Mely Giok-lan Tan observed that the peranakan Chinese ate very little pork, and suggested that this may have been influenced by the strictly Muslim Sundanese attitude toward this forbidden food; on the other hand, the number of Chinese converts to Islam was negligible. (By the same token, it is not unknown for nominally Muslim abangan Javanese to eat dishes containing pork in Chinese restaurants.)
Whatever the reasons may be, in the period with which we are here concerned very few of the Indonesian Chinese were Muslims. Even this cannot support the view that they have clung tenaciously to their traditional religion, since during the period after World War Ⅱ conversion to Christianity (both Catholic and Protestant) among the Chinese has spread quite rapidly. (It is remarkable that this while the country was still under Dutch rule.) In the eyes of the Muslim majority, however, and particularly the pious Muslim santri, the alienness of the Chinese (even those who converted to Christianity) was enhanced by their being infidel.