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...

     Indonesia’s moderate Muslim President, Joko Widodo, has raised eyebrows amongst a strange assortment of civil libertarians, human rights activists, and radical Islamists, with a recent presidential decree declaring that groups which do not adhere to Indonesia’s national ideology will be banned. By doing so he has attracted accusations of being an old-style dictator, determined to suppress individual freedoms in the process.      There is a very clear subtext to this debate. In the early years of the 21st century, radical Islamist groups in Indonesia used newfound political freedoms to try to win a significant presence in the nation's parliament. However, in national elections of 1999, 2004, and 2009, such groups struggled to garner more than 10% of the popular vote. While this gave them some parliamentary representation, it was insufficient to move them forward in their stated desire to turn Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim nation, into an Islam...

STEREOTYPING the world of Islam is a fruitless task; such is its internal diversity. Sectarian conflict is tearing Muslim populations apart in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. While some Muslims pursue a vision of a forward-thinking, rationalist faith, others look backwards to what they see as a pristine age when Muhammad established the first Islamic community in Medina. For the latter group, the Hadith, or prophetic traditions, are crucial in realizing their vision, enabling Muslims who want to model their lives on that of their prophet to do so. These traditions record tens of thousands of short reports about Muhammad’s actions, attitudes, concerns, preferences and prejudices. Read literally, the Hadith reports can take Muslims in many directions: to compassion for widows and orphans, to patriarchal attitudes towards women, to disdain for religious minorities, and to military jihad for the cause of Islam. Read on at the Lapidomedia website...

I was interviewed by staff of the CIU Zwemer Institute (USA) on Islamic History and the Crusades.  The interview is available in three parts, as follows: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

   Stereotyping the world of Islam is a fruitless task; such is its internal diversity. Nowadays sectarian conflict is tearing apart Muslim populations in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. While some Muslims pursue a vision of a forward-thinking, rationalist faith, others look backwards to what they see as a pristine age when Muhammad established the first Islamic community in Medina.    For the latter group, the Hadith, or prophetic traditions, are crucial in realising their vision, enabling Muslims who want to model their lives on that of their prophet to do so. These traditions record tens of thousands of short reports about Muhammad’s actions, attitudes, concerns, preferences, and prejudices.    Read literally, the Hadith reports can take Muslims in many directions: to compassion for widows and orphans, to patriarchal attitudes towards women, to disdain for religious minorities, and to military jihad for the cause of Islam. Read on here .

For today's radio interview on Vision Radio with Neil Johnson, presenter of "Twenty20", click here .

There is a central idea driving Muslim youth radicalisation: young Muslims travelling this path are following a particular conceptual role model that praises activism for Islam, jihadi militancy and death for the sake of Allah. A number of intersecting elements underlie this core idea. The first element reinforcing such a role model is the influence of radical preachers in some mosques, as revealed in the “ Undercover Mosque ” documentaries produced in the UK some years ago. The subversive role of such preachers is exacerbated by easy access to radical Islamic websites and social media sites. These create the ingredients for a further key element: a peer group of real life and virtual radicalised youth which adds fuel to the pressures on young Muslims. Sadly, parents sometimes also provide a radicalised role model. The father of one of the much discussed 15-year-old jihadi brides from Bethnal Green was filmed participating in one protest led by the notorious radical preacher An...

The Marrakesh Declaration , ignored by the mainstream media, has been acclaimed as a new dawn by some commentators: as promising an era of tolerance and pluralistic harmony in the Muslim-majority regions, where religious minorities have suffered so much for so long. With so much bad news coming from the Muslim world, new voices of hope are bound to receive a warm welcome. Between 25–27 January, around 300 dignitaries gathered in the Moroccan city of Marrakesh under the auspices of King Mohammed VI of Morocco. This event represented the culmination of four years of planning, led by Sheikh Abdallah Bin Bayyah of Abu Dhabi, President of the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies. The conference title was ‘The Rights of Religious Minorities in Predominantly Muslim Majority Communities: Legal Framework and a Call to Action’. As the name suggests, its specific goal was to address the discrimination and persecution experienced by religious minorities living under Islamic major...

Since the civil war began in Syria in 2011, almost a quarter of a million people have been killed. Of the survivors, an estimated 12.2 million are in need of humanitarian assistance. This fact, combined with the deliberate campaigns of terror waged by the Islamic State, has triggered the massive outpouring of refugees from Syria. Such macro figures do not discriminate between Syria’s diverse population. A closer look at the country’s demography unpacks the religious diversity: 87% of Syrians are Muslim (also diverse), 10% are Christian and the remainder represent small minority groups, such as Druze and Yazidis. With hundreds of thousands of Syrians in refugee camps outside the country at this present moment, one would expect the camps to reflect the demography of Syria. This is not the case, as it is widely reported that religious minorities have been wary to enter the camps for fear of being persecuted by some of the Muslim refugees. Preferring religious minorities In this ...

Western Europe is still reeling from the terrorist attacks that struck Paris on the evening of Friday 13 November, killing 129 people and injuring over 300 more, many critically. Political leaders are discussing appropriate responses, to follow up on France’s initial airstrike against Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic State that has claimed responsibility for the attacks. Details are emerging about the eight gunman who carried out the attacks, all in their 20s or 30s. They appear to include at least five French citizens, including the Abdeslam brothers, Salah and Brahim, who lived in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek, described by Belgian authorities as a "breeding ground for jihadists". Two others were born and bred in Paris, the target of their attacks. Another of the terrorists was a Syrian national who appears to have arrived in Greece and registered as a refugee in October. An obvious question that arises from the above details is the motivation of the eight young Mu...

Is the West experiencing irreversible decline, with other nations and cultures moving to fill the resulting vacuum? This question was considered by Professor Michael Cox of the London School of Economics on 1 September at St Michael’s Uniting Church, Melbourne in the 6th Annual Lecture of La Trobe University’s Centre for Dialogue. Addressing an audience of around 200, Professor Cox began with a challenge. “The consensus is that a significant power shift is taking place,” he said, “but I am somewhat sceptical. Such an approach sees some nations rising while others decline. Isn’t there a better way to think about this?” Speaking of the 1990s, he said “the view was that the West had triumphed over the Soviet Union.” The power shift theory emerged in connection with President George W. Bush’s War on Terror. “Many argued that Bush had gone for broke and had failed.” This foreign policy setback was compounded in 2007/08 with the international financial crisis. “Faith in the American ...