Religion & Society

 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...

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...

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).

   A COURT decision in Malaysia on 29 January has challenged the application of sharia by Islamic religious authorities in this Muslim-majority country.    A panel of five judges in Malaysia’s highest legal tribunal, the Federal Court, ruled in favour of a challenge by a Malaysian Hindu, Indira Gandhi, to her ex-husband’s conversion of their three children to Islam, in 2009, without her consent.    Her ex-husband, K. Pathmanathan, left his Hindu faith that year to embrace Islam, adopting the Muslim name Muhammad Riduan Abdullah. His marriage to Mrs Gandhi broke up, and, shortly after his conversion, he changed the religious status of the three children to Muslim.    At the time, their eldest daughter was 12, their son 11, and the youngest daughter, Prasana, was barely one year old. Riduan Abdullah took Prasana from the family home, and disappeared.    A series of court battles ensued. In 2013, Mrs Gandhi brought the matter bef...

The world’s largest Muslim movement is in crisis. Tens of thousands of supporters of the vast international network led by Islamic theologian and philosopher Fetullah Gülen languish in prisons in Turkey and other countries. Gülen himself faces extradition to Turkey from the US to face charges of subversion if Washington accedes to the Turkish request. Ankara is now linking the release of American Pastor Andrew Brunson, imprisoned on trumped-up terrorism and espionage charges, with Gülen’s extradition. Read on here .

     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...

Just over ten years ago I published a report on the Secular Islam Summit held in Florida, USA, on 4-5 March 2007. The report appeared in The Church Times (Issue 7516, 30 March 2007, p.12), and was cross-posted at various internet sites, including here . A decade has elapsed but the issues raised by this Summit remain as pertinent and as urgent as was the case in 2007. A slightly edited version of my original article appears below.  Speeches from the Summit can be viewed here . ========== In a striking example of self-analysis, about 500 delegates, including both practising and nominal Muslims, attended an inaugural “Secular Islam Summit” in March [2007] in St Petersburg, Florida. The summit culminated in a declaration, which can be read here . The declaration was signed by such luminaries as Ibn Warraq, a widely published author, who writes on such taboo subjects as the text of the Qur’an and apostasy; and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who fled to Holland in the 1990s from her native...

You would expect Malaysia to be a test case for pluralism but for more than 30 years there’s a been a really substantial program of Islamisation in Malaysia pushed by its government. Read on and listen to the interview on Vision Radio Twenty20   here .

Malaysia is a country in ferment. The abduction of protestant Pastor Raymond Koh missing since 13 February after being snatched from a street in Petaling Jaya near the capital Kuala Lumpur, comes against a background of pressure against non-Muslims. The growing demand for Islamic criminal punishment codes, known as hadd or hudud (plural Arabic for 'prohibitions'), which set Pakistan on the road to ruin, is worrying . Hudud crimes warrant severe corporal punishments, including stoning for adultery, and death for apostasy.  Though limited by rules of evidence, their implementation on any statute book creates consternation, and at worst, as in Pakistan, mob rule. Yet demand for and implementation of such penalties are creeping in from conservative fringe states in Malaysia. Emerging Malaysia is described by the CIA as ‘a middle-income country [that] has transformed itself since the 1970s from a producer of raw materials into an emerging multi-sector economy’, so the ...

Indonesia provides a very good case study for the persistence and determination of Islamist ideology. When the nation gained its independence in the 1940s, a struggle took place to determine the shape and identity of independent Indonesia. Some were determined to follow the Western model of parliamentary democracy, considering it most appropriate to the multicultural and multifaith reality of the nation's population. However some among the almost 90% Muslim majority wanted an Islamic State, based on sharia law and its detailed enactments. In the event, the multicultural pluralists won the day and Indonesia was formed around a system of multiple parties, with regular elections and a presidential system. In response, Islamist groups launched a twelve-year rebellion which cost thousands of lives and imposed great strains on the political and economic fabric of the new nation. One particular bone of contention was what became known as the Jakarta Charter. This was a simple seven...

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...