Religion & Society

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 .

  As Australian churches entered the New Year, the attention of the church media was devoted to several pressing issues of debate, both domestic and international. The “same-sex marriage” debate The push in Australia for the somewhat euphemistically named “same-sex marriage” has been increasing in momentum in recent times. Opposition is coming from various quarters, including the different Australian churches, in partnership with other faith communities. During 2015, religious leaders from diverse religious traditions in Australia wrote a public letter to the then Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, calling on him to stand against attempts in Federal Parliament to redefine the meaning of marriage. The letter included the following statements: “As leaders of Australia’s major religions we write to express the grave concerns that we, and those who share our various faiths, share regarding Bills that have or will be introduced into the Federal Parliament to change the definition o...

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 ...

NEWS ITEM: Indonesia’s Constitutional Court recently rejected a request for a judicial review of Article 2 of the 1974 Marriage Law, which effectively forbids interfaith marriage. I lived in Indonesia for several years during the 1980s, and have travelled back regularly to the country since that time. The period of the 1980s was characterised by comparatively relaxed relations between the faiths. Overt expressions of faith were not so pronounced as they are today. At the time few Muslim women in professional or academic positions wore Muslim head-covering. Conversions between the faiths, especially from Islam to Christianity and vice versa, were in evidence and did not attract much comment. Moreover, I witnessed a number of interfaith marriages among colleagues and in the broader community. At the time, interfaith marriage seemed to be almost a non-issue. Today the religious scene in Indonesia is very different. In offices, and in the street, the jilbab headcovering for Muslim ...

In 2006 the Australian conservative coalition government introduced the federally-funded National School Chaplaincy Program (NSCP). Then Prime Minister John Howard commented at the time: “Students need the guidance of chaplains, rather than just counsellors… To call a chaplain a counsellor is to bow to political correctness. Chaplain has a particular connotation, people understand it, they know exactly what I'm talking about.” [ABC News 29 October, 2006] Interestingly, in August 2010, the newly appointed centre-left Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard pledged a further A$222m toward extending the NSCP to at least 1000 more Australian schools. Currently, the majority of the 633 state schools in the state of Queensland receive federal funding for school chaplaincy. Many schools in other states also receive funding under the NSCP. The Writ A writ was issued out of the High Court of Australia on Tuesday December 20, 2010. A website in support of the Plaintiff, Mr Ronald Williams...

“I cannot do everything but I must not do nothing,” said Baroness Caroline Cox of Queensbury, concluding two seminars during her recent visit to Melbourne. She was here as part of a national tour connected with the work of the Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust (HART), of which she is international CEO. At a reception held for her at Parliament House on 7 October, Baroness Cox emphasised the need to “speak for those who can’t speak for themselves.” She explained that her HART teams “especially aim to reach those under oppression and persecution who are not accessible to large aid organisations that depend on government approvals to do their work.” She cited the case of the devastating Burma cyclone disaster of 2008, when the Burmese military junta prevented aid organisations from reaching many of the victims. In her presentations, the Baroness spoke at length about the situation in Burma, where 30,000 Karen and 10,000 Shan refugees were driven from their homes into the jungle by the junta i...