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...

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...

T HE blasphemy trial of the Governor of Jakarta, Indonesia, began on Tuesday of last week (News, 16 December). Prosecutors launched the event by accusing Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama of intentionally misinterpreting a Qur’anic verse during a speech on a working visit to Indonesia’s Thousand Islands region on 27 September.    The Governor, better known by his nickname “Ahok”, replied to the charges in tears, saying “I did not intend to misinterpret Surah Al Maidah 5:51 nor commit blasphemy nor insult Islamic scholars. I referred to certain politicians who had misused Surah Al Maidah 5:51 to avoid fair competition prior to upcoming regional elections.”    While world media outlets focus on this unfolding blasphemy trial in today’s Indonesia, the subtext to this event has deep roots in past history. W hen Indonesia attained its independence in the 1940s, the new nation was preoccupied with defining its identity. Indonesia is diverse in terms of its ethnic, ...

For my interview of 7 December with Neil Johnson on the "Twenty20" program on Vision Radio , click here . If you cannot access it, or would like a copy in MP3 format, please email me.