Religion & Society

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...

On 15 August Melbourne School of Theology (MST) hosted the visit of Baroness Caroline Cox from the British House of Lords. Baroness Cox has been a fearless campaigner for many years, advocating on behalf of the marginalised and the persecuted around the world as part of her work for the Humanitarian Aid and Relief Trust (HART), which has an active branch in Australia. In her presentation to a sizeable audience at MST, Baroness Cox gave attention to the drift towards secular liberalism in western societies and resulting challenges to minority groups, including Christians. She pointed out that “one of the effects of aggressive secular humanism in the UK is that many Christians now feel they suffer from discrimination and intimidation.” The same is true in Australia. Baroness Cox also referred to the co-existence of aggressive secular humanism’s assault on Christian faith and the growth of Islamist ideology.  While noting that the majority of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims, inclu...