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...

An inaccurate reference to ‘Biblical corruption’ has sparked a storm of protest in Malaysia’s Parliament. The dispute erupted after comments by Muslim MP Nik Muhammad Zawawi Nik Salleh during a debate about increasing fines for drink-driving offenders. Nik Zawawi asserted that religions other than Islam forbade their followers from drinking alcohol. A Christian Member of Parliament, Datuk Ngeh Koo Ham, corrected him, adding that Christians are allowed to consume alcohol, but not to the point of intoxication and debauchery. Nik Zawawi replied curtly that Datuk Ngeh should check his facts as the original Bible, before it was changed, forbade any consumption of alcohol, adding that he had read about Christianity in documents written by Christians. Christian apologists who engage with Muslim critics of the Bible and Christianity are very familiar with the common claim by Muslim polemicists that today’s Bible has been changed. According to this claim, Jesus received an original Gospel which...

     As with the United Kingdom, the Black Lives Matter protests which have swept across the United States have overflowed to Australian society. The tangle of BLM issues with the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered bitter debate and some social dislocation.      The weekend of June 6–7 was a particular focal point. Black Lives Matter protest organisers announced plans for significant gatherings in Australia’s major cities to draw attention to the deaths in custody of Aboriginal Australians arrested for various reasons. There have been at least 432 indigenous deaths in custody since a royal commission examined the issue in 1991. This has been a simmering matter for decades, erupting into protest action at various point in time, and almost predictably piggybacking onto the worldwide BLM activism presently underway.      When the plans for the early June protests were announced, most state and federal governing authorities banned the...

In this edition of The Interview, Fair Observer talks to Peter Riddell , vice-principal at the Melbourne School of Theology in Australia. The interview was conducted at the end of 2018 via a written transcript, which has been edited for clarity. Kourosh Ziabari: How serious is Islamophobia in the modern world? What are the root causes of growing prejudice and bias against Muslims in the West? Peter Riddell: Any discussion about prejudice should aim to reduce or, ideally, eliminate it. In that context, prejudice by one community toward another needs also to take account of similar prejudice in the opposite direction. So to discuss Islamophobia, namely prejudice against Muslims in the West, without also considering “Westophobia,” or prejudice against Westerners by Muslims, is like looking at a painting and deliberately covering one eye. There are many causes of mutual prejudice between Muslims and Westerners. History is a factor. Simply put, wars between Christian Europeans and M...

On 17 April Indonesia underwent a uniquely complex democratic process, when around 190 million citizens cast their votes in national elections at both presidential and legislative levels of government. The presidential election was a repeat of the 2014 race for the presidency. The incumbent, Joko Widodo (known as Jokowi), was standing against a former army general Prabowo Subianto. Each was supported by a coalition of political parties represented in the national parliament. Jokowi’s support came from both nationalist and moderate Muslim parties, the largest party being the multi-religious Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) which is led by Indonesia’s first female President Megawati Sukarnoputeri, who held office from 2001-2004. Prabowo , as the former general is commonly known, was supported in his bid for the presidency by a coalition of activist Islamic parties, as well as more notorious community groups such as the Islamic Defenders Front. During the six-...

Terrorism takes diverse forms and attracts different levels of attention. The New Zealand city of Christchurch is reeling from an attack on Muslims by what appears to be a white supremacist. The death toll currently stands at 50, with dozens of injured being treated in hospital. The targets were innocent Muslims taking part in Friday worship at two mosques in Christchurch, who were mown down by a man with semiautomatic weapons and evidently supported by certain accomplices. The international news agencies have been hot with reports of the Christchurch attacks. Britain’s Sky News and BBC World are covering the situation in detail, as are the American chains CNN, CNBC and Fox News. Al-Jazeera from Qatar is reporting in similar vein, interviewing witnesses, drawing on the perspectives of commentators worldwide, broadcasting certain images of ambulances rushing victims to hospitals, giving a voice to the New Zealand Prime Minister and police authorities, and a host of other details of ...

Australia conjures up images of sun, beaches and a relaxed lifestyle. As with most stereotypes, there is a kernel of truth to such perceptions. For example, in the annual list of the world’s most liveable cities produced by the Economist Intelligence Unit, Melbourne gained first place for seven years in a row between 2011 to 2017. This year, Melbourne came second, with Sydney and Adelaide also placed in the top ten. In this context, considerations of terrorism seem somewhat anachronistic. However, Australia is steadily increasing its prominence in another list: that of targets for Islamist-inspired terror plots. In November, images went global of a lone terrorist attacking police and bystanders with a knife. Hassan Khalif Shire Ali, a Somali born immigrant to Australia, was shot dead by police after killing one 70-year-old civilian and wounding several others, as well as trying to blow up his car filled with gas canisters in Melbourne’s central business district while reported...