Religion & Society

 In his latest book, Studying the Qur’ān in the Muslim Academy , Majid Daneshgar sets out to cast the spotlight on methods and priorities in the study of the Qur’an within what he describes as “the Muslim academy.” The Introduction maps out core arguments of his book. Daneshgar identifies Muslim apologetics as the device used to ensure that “Muslims are not given access to critical non-Muslim writings about the Qurʾān and Islam while guaranteeing that a customary sectarian divide insulates Sunnis and Shiʿi from each other’s ideas and works” (2). Read on here .

The High Court of Malaysia has passed a ruling allowing non-Muslims to use the term “Allah” for God in their Malay-language worship services and literature. On face value, this should appear uncontroversial as Christians in that region have referred to God as “Allah” for 400 years, including using the term in translations of the Bible into Malay. Lond-standing dispute However, this development masks a 35-year dispute that has undermined Christian-Muslim relations in Malaysia in substantial ways. In 1986 the Malaysian government prohibited the use of “Allah” by non-Muslims. This policy is unique to Malaysia. In today’s Arab world,  “Allah” is the standard term for God among Arabic-speaking Christians of different denominations. In neighbouring Indonesia,  “Allah” is commonly used by Christians; the 1974 New Translation of the Bible in Indonesian renders the Old Testament Hebrew terms for God with  “Allah”. These usages occur in their different locations witho...

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-...