Religion & Society

 I recently saw “The Eternals”, one of the latest Hollywood blockbusters in the cinema. The movie is part of the “Marvel Universe” series, with that title itself suggesting something supernatural. Expecting an entertaining challenge to my faith, I was not disappointed, though I came away somewhat disturbed. The basic plot has elements that resonate with Christian viewers. It features a god-figure, Arishem, sovereign creator of good and evil. Arishem has created the Eternals as his agents to combat the Deviants, forces for evil. But the Eternals are deceived by Arishem, not realising that they are implementing his ultimate plan to destroy the earth as part of a re-creation process. Read on here ...

 The Islamic Sultanate of Brunei is the wealthiest nation per capita in Southeast Asia and one of the wealthiest nations in the world. Its rich oil reserves, expected to run out in less than 20 years, have enabled it to become highly industrialised and developed. Yet in spite of those trappings of modernity, it remains an absolute monarchy under Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah. Since gaining independence from the United Kingdom on 1 January 1984, it is slowly becoming one of the least-enlightened former British colonies, principally in terms of one feature: its increasing embrace of Sharia law. On 1 May 2014, Sharia law was enacted, to be implemented in stages in following years (Brunei:The Sharia Surprise, en, June 2014). Initially, offences were punishable by fines or imprisonment, but in April 2019 the complete Sharia criminal code came into effect, to the consternation of liberally-minded Bruneian Muslims. However, Sharia law encompasses much more then criminal codes. It is in the area...

Muhammad Rizieq Shihab, hardline leader of Indonesia’s notorious Islamic Defenders Front, is no friend of Christians and Christianity. So when he returned on November 10 to the world’s most populous Muslim nation after a three year self-imposed exile in Saudi Arabia, there was a sense of foreboding among Indonesia’s 30 million Christians of what was to come. Rizieq was nurtured on a diet of religious extremism with a Wahhabi flavour. He attended mainstream Indonesian schools before studying at the Islamic and Arabic College of Indonesia (LIPIA), an overseas campus of the Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. This prepared him for further studies at King Saud University (1990-92), topped off by a year of study at the International Islamic University in Malaysia. In August 1998, Rizieq established the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI). This organisation quickly embarked on its hardline ideological program of violent rioting and attacking opponents. Rizieq’s notor...

An inaccurate reference to ‘Biblical corruption’ has sparked a storm of protest in Malaysia’s Parliament. The dispute erupted after comments by Muslim MP Nik Muhammad Zawawi Nik Salleh during a debate about increasing fines for drink-driving offenders. Nik Zawawi asserted that religions other than Islam forbade their followers from drinking alcohol. A Christian Member of Parliament, Datuk Ngeh Koo Ham, corrected him, adding that Christians are allowed to consume alcohol, but not to the point of intoxication and debauchery. Nik Zawawi replied curtly that Datuk Ngeh should check his facts as the original Bible, before it was changed, forbade any consumption of alcohol, adding that he had read about Christianity in documents written by Christians. Christian apologists who engage with Muslim critics of the Bible and Christianity are very familiar with the common claim by Muslim polemicists that today’s Bible has been changed. According to this claim, Jesus received an original Gospel which...

     As with the United Kingdom, the Black Lives Matter protests which have swept across the United States have overflowed to Australian society. The tangle of BLM issues with the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered bitter debate and some social dislocation.      The weekend of June 6–7 was a particular focal point. Black Lives Matter protest organisers announced plans for significant gatherings in Australia’s major cities to draw attention to the deaths in custody of Aboriginal Australians arrested for various reasons. There have been at least 432 indigenous deaths in custody since a royal commission examined the issue in 1991. This has been a simmering matter for decades, erupting into protest action at various point in time, and almost predictably piggybacking onto the worldwide BLM activism presently underway.      When the plans for the early June protests were announced, most state and federal governing authorities banned the...

It’s not every week that the Prime Minister of a Western nation stands before a church congregation and leads spontaneous community prayer. But on September 30, new Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison did just that. While visiting Planetshakers, a large Pentecostal church in Melbourne, Mr Morrison ascended the worship platform and led prayers for the victims of the Indonesian earthquake and tsunami and also for Australian farmers locked in the grip of drought-induced financial crisis. Refugee debates Scott Morrison replaced Malcolm Turnbull as Prime Minister in late August after Mr Turnbull lost the confidence of his governing Liberal Party. Mr Morrison has served a number of roles in recent Australian governments, but was especially prominent in enforcing the “Stop the Boats” policy under former Prime Minister Tony Abbott. This policy involved the detention on the Pacific Islands of Nauru and Manus Island of thousands of newly-arriving asylum seekers who had sought refuge i...

I n the wake of World War II, as the world emerged from devastating conflict and entered the post-colonial era, some commentators predicted that rising prosperity would herald a new, post-religion age. The secularizing tendencies that were carving huge slices off religious allegiance in the West would be replicated across the world, according to this view. Such commentators also anticipated that religion, in its surviving form, would be rationalist, liberal and concerned with the here-and-now rather than the Hereafter. Read on here . This article first appeared in Renewing Minds: A Journal of Christian Thought , Jackson: Union University, Issue 2 (2012).

In Australia, supporters of same sex marriage (SSM) continue to celebrate the result of the postal survey taken during the months of September and October. Around 62% of Australian voters answered YES to the simple question: “Should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry?” Press coverage of this result has generally taken the line that the Australian people have overwhelmingly supported SSM. Masking the details Of course, such macro statistics mask myriad details. To speak of “the Australian people” as a monolithic block on such a contentious topic is misleading. Almost 5,000,000 Australians voted against SSM. The country is clearly divided on the basis of voting statistics alone. However, this issue has revealed deep divisions of other kinds that have been under-reported in the media, itself largely pro-SSM during the campaign. One of the most interesting, and perhaps most concerning, aspects of division revealed by this vote relates to Australia’s multicultural...

In Australia, conversations about Islamophobia are expanding as the Muslim minority community grows. As in the UK, the term “Islamophobia” is often used as a device to silence critics of Islam. In the following interview, I was asked a series of questions about Islamophobia by a university student newspaper that is researching the topic for the interest of its readers. 1. What is Islamophobia? Islamophobia is usually understood to refer to a fear of Islam and Muslims that is irrational. 2. Where and when did it originate? The term “Islamophobia” has its origins in a report entitled “Islamophobia: A Challenge for us all”, that was produced by the Runnymede Trust and published in the UK in late 1997. The report was commissioned by the British government and was officially launched in the British Parliament. As for the origins of Islamophobia itself, rather than simply the origins of the term, such fear of Islam dates back many centuries, probably originally to the years fol...

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