Palestinian Christian theologian Reverend Munther Isaac, the director of the Bethlehem Institute for Peace and Justice, has questioned the Israeli military’s announcement that it will investigate the killing of Hind Rajab and other Palestinians in the Gaza genocide.

After two years of denial, Israel has officially admitted firing on the 5-year-old’s car on on 29 January 2024. But her family and others don’t expect justice.

Reverend Munther asked in a post on X: “Can we, in any seriousness, trust the Israeli military to investigate itself?”

• READ MORE: Who was Hind Rajab and why is Israel investigating her killing?
• Israeli military launches criminal probes into killings of 5-year-old and paramedics
• Other Gaza genocide reports

“And let us not forget: There are thousands of Hinds in Gaza — thousands of children killed, each with a name, a family, a story, and a future stolen from them,” he said.

“Justice must prevail. Justice will prevail.”

Can we, in any seriousness, trust the Israeli military to investigate itself?

And let us not forget: There are thousands of Hinds in Gaza—thousands of children killed, each with a name, a family, a story, and a future stolen from them.

Justice must prevail. Justice will… pic.twitter.com/f2eecJejXJ

— Munther Isaac منذر اسحق (@MuntherIsaac) August 19, 2026

Rajab’s mother, Wissam Hamada, continues to travel to several cities globally to speak out about the unimaginable impact of Israel’s war on children, even though she is unable to watch the critically acclaimed Oscar-nominated docudrama, The Voice of Hind Rajab, about her daughter’s death because hearing Rajab’s voice remains too painful.

More than 20,000 children have been killed by the Israeli military in the war on Gaza with a total death toll of more than 73,000 Palestinians.

In the killing of the paramedics that is also being investigated, Israeli troops fired on an ambulance driving to retrieve casualties from an Israeli offensive in the southern city of Rafah. They then fired on other emergency vehicles that came looking for the first one, according to phone footage and the sole survivor of the shootings.

Fifteen medics and emergency responders from the Red Crescent and Gaza’s Civil Defence were killed.

Australia summons Israeli envoy over ‘outrage’
Meanwhile, Australia has summoned Israel’s ambassador to express “outrage” over the Israeli military’s decision not to pursue criminal proceedings against those responsible for a 2024 drone attack that killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in Gaza.

The victims included 43-year-old Australian citizen Lalzawmi “Zomi” Frankcom.

The Israeli military announced that an extensive internal review found no “reasonable suspicion of criminal misconduct” to justify opening criminal investigations into the April 2024 attack.

Israeli authorities previously cited operational errors, misidentification, and procedural failures for the strike on the clearly marked aid convoy.

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said Canberra learned of the decision moments before its public release on World Humanitarian Day, calling the timing “especially insulting” to Frankcom’s family, humanitarians globally and all Australians.

“This decision falls far short of the accountability we expect,” Wong said in a statement.

“The Australian government will not stop pressing Israel for justice for Zomi and her colleagues.”

Wong summoned Ambassador Hillel Newman in Canberra, and instructed Australia’s envoy in Tel Aviv to lodge formal objections directly with Israeli officials.

The Australian government reiterated that disciplinary measures alone were insufficient for an alleged mistake of this magnitude and stated it would continue to press Israel for justice, full transparency, and formal criminal accountability.

Papua New Guinea being declared a Christian nation may offer the impression that the country will improve, but it is only “an illusion”, according to a Catholic priest in the country.

Last week, the PNG Parliament amended the nation’s constitution, introducing a declaration in its preamble: “(We) acknowledge and declare God, the Father; Jesus Christ, the Son; and Holy Spirit, as our Creator and Sustainer of the entire universe and the source of our powers and authorities, delegated to the people and all persons within the geographical jurisdiction of Papua New Guinea.”

In addition, Christianity will now be reflected in the Fifth Goal of the Constitution, and the Bible will be recognised as a national symbol.

• READ MORE: Other PNG Christianity reports

Father Giorgio Licini of Caritas PNG said that the Catholic Church would have preferred no constitutional change.

“To create, nowadays, in the 21st century a Christian confessional state seems a little bit anachronistic,” Father Licini said.

He believes it is a “cosmetic” change that “will not have a real impact” on the lives of the people.

“PNG society will remain basically what it is,” he said.

An ‘illusion that things will improve’
“This manoeuvre may offer the impression or the illusion that things will improve for the country, that the way of behaving, the economic situation, the culture may become more solid. But that is an illusion.”

He said the preamble of the 1975 Constitution already acknowledged the Christian heritage.

Father Licini said secular cultures and values were scaring many in PNG, including the recognition and increasing acceptance of the rainbow community.

“They see themselves as next to Indonesia, which is Muslim, they see themselves next to Australia and New Zealand, which are increasingly secular countries, the Pacific heritage is fading, so the question is, who are we?” he said.

“It looks like a Christian heritage and tradition and values and the churches, they offer an opportunity to ground on them a cultural identity.”

Prime Minister James Marape, a vocal advocate for the amendment, is happy about the outcome.

He said it “reflects, in the highest form” the role Christian churches had played in the development of the country.

Not an operational law
RNZ Pacific’s PNG correspondent Scott Waide said that Marape had maintained it was not an operational law.

“It is something that is rather symbolic and something that will hopefully unite Papua New Guinea under a common goal of sorts. That’s been the narrative that’s come out from the Prime Minister’s Office,” Waide said.

He said the vast majority of people in the country had identified as Christian, but it was not written into the constitution.

Waide said the founding fathers were aware of the negative implications of declaring the nation a Christian state during the decolonisation period.

“I think in their wisdom they chose to very carefully state that Papua New Guineans are spiritual people but stopped short of actually declaring Papua New Guinea a Christian country.”

He said that, unlike Fiji, which has had a 200-year experience with different religions, the first mosque in PNG opened in the 1980s.

“It is not as diverse as you would see in other countries. Personally, I have seen instances of religious violence largely based on ignorance.

“Not because they are politically driven, but because people are not educated enough to understand the differences in religions and the need to coexist.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Churches in the Cook Islands are pushing for the country to be declared a Christian nation following the discovery of a mosque in Rarotonga.

The Religious Organisation Special Select Committee has heard submissions on Rarotonga and plan to visit the outer islands.

It was initiated by the Cook Islands Christian Church, which has proposed a constitutional amendment to recognise the Cook Islands as a Christian nation, “with the protection and promotion of the Christian faith as the basis for the laws and governance of the country”.

Cook Islands opposition leader Tina Browne said the proposal was in conflict with Article 64 of the Constitution which allows for freedom of religion.

“At the moment, it’s definitely unconstitutional and I am a lawyer, so I think like one too,” Browne said, who is also part of the select committee.

Late last year, a mosque was discovered on Rarotonga.

Select committee chair Tingika Elikana said it was the catalyst for the proposal.

Signatory to human rights conventions
He said the country was a signatory to several human rights conventions and declaring the Cook Islands a Christian nation could go against them.

“Some of the questions by the committee is the impact such an amendment or provision in our constitution [would have] in terms of us being parties to most of these international human rights treaties and conventions.”

Elikana said the committee had received lots of submissions both in support and against the declaration.

Cook Islands Christian Movement interim secretary William Framhein is backing it.

“We believe that the country should be declared a Christian country and if anyone else belongs to another religion they’re free to practise their own religion but it doesn’t give them a right to establish a church in the country,” he said.

Tatiana Kautai, a Muslim Cook Islander living in Rarotonga said the country was already considered a Christian nation by most.

However, she was worried that if the proposal became law it could have practical implications on everyone who was not a Christian.

“People have a right to practise their religion freely, especially people who are just going about their day to day, working, supporting their families, not causing any harm, not trying to make any trouble.

Marginalising people ‘unfair’
“To marginalise those people just seems unfair, and not right.”

Framhein said he also wanted to see the Cook Islands reverse its 2023 decision which legalised same sex relations. He said this was a “Western concept”, acceptable elsewhere in the world but not in the Cook Islands.

Tatryana Utanga, president of rainbow organisation Te Tiare Association, said it was not clear what the Christian nation submission was trying to achieve.

However, she is worried that it would sideline minority groups.

“Should this impeach or encroach on the work that we’ve been doing already, it would be a complete reverse in the wrong direction.

“We’d be taking steps backwards in our advocacy to achieve love and acceptance and equality in the Cook Islands.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Ramadan is the most blessed month of the Islamic calendar. It began on the April 1 and will end sometime in the next day or two when the crescent moon is spotted in the night sky.

The month is observed by Muslims worldwide as a time of fasting, prayer, reflection and community.

To explain how she will be celebrating the end of Ramadan is Zainab Baba.

• READ MORE: RNZ ‘Lately’ podcast on Ramadan
• Other Ramadan reports

In addition to fasting through Ramadan, Baba and her family have also been caught up in the omicron wave.

“It’s been a bit eventful — my family has actually caught covid in the last week or so.”

Baba is “feeling OK” despite a little bit of a cough, she says.

The end of Ramadan is marked by the crescent moon appearing in the night sky signifying the end of the lunar cycle and the beginning of Eid al-Fitr, the festival of breaking the fast.

Don’t always know the exact day
“So we don’t always know the exact day of Eid, which is the kind of celebratory day in which the month is over, so it all depends on the moon sighting.”

What makes Ramadan so important for the world’s Muslims?

“Ramadan is basically one of the most holy months of the Islamic calendar. It’s obviously signified by the fasting that we do from sunrise to sunset every single day,” she says.

“You fast to show your self restraint, I guess. You’re showing that you can kind of overcome these low-level desires that you might have.

“So not only are you abstaining from food and drink, which obviously has many health benefits as most people who do intermittent fasting know, but also you’re committing to kind of staying away from things that maybe you know aren’t good for you.

“In a social way, you’re trying to be kinder, more compassionate in all kind of aspects of your life through the choice to commit to being the best version of yourself as possible.”

Commitment to higher values
It’s a commitment to higher values, she says.

“So you’re not only fasting from the physical kind of food and drink but also just from anything that is not good for you or for those around you.”

In their fasting, from sunrise to sunset those taking part in Ramadan won’t drink or eat anything at all.

“It’s a full fast. But after sunset obviously and before you start your fast at sunrise you can eat whatever you need to.”

Foods like oats in the morning or dates in the evening are often eaten, Baba says.

“This month’s all about community so even when you break your fast at the mosque or with community members usually you’ll see there’s very nice dishes prepared.”

Those who cannot fast for health reasons are encouraged to take part in other ways.

Replacing the fast
“That’s perfectly normal, so basically in Islam anyone who can’t fast for health reasons … instead of that, you can donate money or meals to the poor. You’re kind of replacing it with that.

“Things like charity and stuff are really encouraged. It’s meant to heighten your understanding of what people might be going through when they don’t have access to food and drink.”

Ramadan might end on Sunday or Monday, depending on the moon.

Baba is already looking forward to the meals.

“I’m from Kashmir, so my Kashmiri food is definitely at the top of my list.”

While New Zealand is still in orange alert levels and omicron is on the scene, this year’s Eid celebrations will be somewhat more open than the past few.

“Those of us who have had covid or are fully vaccinated are excited to be celebrating in Eid with the community especially after a couple of years of not being able to.

“I think this is going to be really fun for everyone to finally be celebrating together.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) says it is very disturbed by the “11 journalism rules” that the Taliban announced at a meeting with news media on September 19.

The rules that Afghan journalists will now have to implement are vaguely worded, dangerous and liable to be used to persecute them, the Paris-based global media freedom watchdog said.

Working as a journalist will now mean complying strictly with the 11 rules unveiled by Qari Mohammad Yousuf Ahmadi, the interim director of the Government Media and Information Centre (GMIC).

• READ MORE: Other Afghanistan media freedom reports

At first blush, some of them might seem reasonable, as they include an obligation to respect “the truth” and not “distort the content of the information”, said RSF.

But in reality they were “extremely dangerous” because they opened the way to censorship and persecution.

“Decreed without any consultation with journalists, these new rules are spine-chilling because of the coercive use that can be made of them, and they bode ill for the future of journalistic independence and pluralism in Afghanistan,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said.

“They establish a regulatory framework based on principles and methods that contradict the practice of journalism and leave room for oppressive interpretation, instead of providing a protective framework allowing journalists — including women — to go back to work in acceptable conditions.

‘Tyranny and persecution’
“These rules open the way to tyranny and persecution.”

The first three rules, which forbid journalists to broadcast or publish stories that are “contrary to Islam,” “insult national figures” or violate “privacy,” are loosely based on Afghanistan’s existing national media law, which also incorporated a requirement to comply with international norms, including Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The absence of this requirement in the new rules opens the door to censorship and repression, because there is no indication as to who determines, or on what basis it is determined, that a comment or a report is contrary to Islam or disrespectful to a national figure.

Three of the rules tell journalists to conform to what are understood to be ethical principles:

• They must “not try to distort news content”;
• They must “respect journalistic principles”; and
• They “must ensure that their reporting is balanced”.

But the absence of reference to recognised international norms means that these rules can also be misused or interpreted arbitrarily.

Rules 7 and 8 facilitate a return to news control or even prior censorship, which has not existed in Afghanistan for the past 20 years.

‘Handled carefully’
They state that, “matters that have not been confirmed by officials at the time of broadcasting or publication should be treated with care” and that “matters that could have a negative impact on the public’s attitude or affect morale should be handled carefully when being broadcast or published”.

The danger of a return to news control or prior censorship is enhanced by the last two rules (10 and 11), which reveal that the GMIC has “designed a specific form to make it easier for media outlets and journalists to prepare their reports in accordance with the regulations,” and that from now on, media outlets must “prepare detailed reports in coordination with the GMIC”.

The nature of these “detailed reports” has yet to be revealed.

The ninth rule, requiring media outlets to “adhere to the principle of neutrality in what they disseminate” and “only publish the truth,” could be open to a wide range of interpretations and further exposes journalists to arbitrary reprisals.

Afghanistan was ranked 122nd out of 180 countries in the 2021 World Press Freedom Index that RSF published in April.

Christchurch’s Muslim community will today hold private prayers to remember the 51 people killed in the terror attacks on the Masjid Al-Noor and Linwood mosques two years ago today.

Hundreds of people attended the official commemorative services marking the second anniversary on Saturday.

The imam of Masjid An-Nur Gamal Fouda said today’s prayers will be held at both mosques to remember those who lost their lives.

• READ MORE: Ko Tātou Tātou We Are One: ‘The future is in our hands’

“Families will remember their loved ones in different ways, many will pay their respects today by visiting the graves of those who died.

“Saturday’s service went very well, it was great to see so many families coming together again, the wider community provided so much support,” he said.

Gamal Fouda said messages, flowers and cards from all over the world had helped families get through a very hard week.

“All we can do is repeat our message that only love can heal us and make the world greater for everyone.

‘Sad and peaceful’
“Today I feel sad and peaceful at the same time, sad for those who have left us but grateful that we can all come together again to remember our loved ones and friends.”

Christchurch Mayor Lianne Dalziel said it took a while for the full horror of what had happened that day to sink in.

“I was at a student protest in the square when we were first told something had happened, by the time we got back to council a staff member came up to me and said the police have said there’s been a shooting and at least 20 people have been killed.”

Dalziel said she was close to the Muslim community through her history as Immigration Minister and as a mayor who presided over citizenship ceremonies.

“I know some of the families personally so it’s been difficult coming to terms with what’s happened,” she said.

“Some of them came here as refugees and the essence of refugee status is offering people a level of protection they can’t get in their own country but we couldn’t protect them from the behaviour of a extremist, someone who was motivated to carry out a terrorist attack on innocent people as they were praying.”

She said it was sad that New Zealand still had some way to go to get rid of Islamophobia from our society.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

All Black and devout Muslim Sonny Bill Williams hopes New Zealanders will embrace Islam more in light of last week’s terror attack in Christchurch.

Williams was part of the 20,000-strong crowd that attended yesterday’s call to prayer in Hagley Park, Christchurch, to mark the one week anniversary since the attack.

The call to prayer, the adhan, is an Islamic practice that is observed by devotees five times a day. The call to prayer took place about 1.30pm, lasting about one minute and 40 seconds.

It was attended by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, Muslim community leaders, local iwi and international dignitaries, among others. It was followed by two minutes of silence, which has been observed nationally.

Williams, who previously played rugby for Toulon in France, said he had been proud of the way New Zealanders had embraced the faith since the attacks, but hopes for more acceptance.

“People don’t really know what Islam is. I feel like to get that light, you need that knowledge and you need to understand what Islam is, so it can give that light which will get rid of the darkness,” he said.

He told RNZ Checkpoint he wanted to attend the ceremony as “proud Muslim and a proud New Zealander … to come down here and show some love”.

“Being a naturally shy person, I knew that I had to step out and be vulnerable and show that we are Muslims, but we are humans and New Zealanders as well,” he said.

He said he now left it in the hands of New Zealanders to find out more about Islam, because “it truly is a religion of peace and love”.

Williams said the charity he partnered with for the victims of the attacks had raised more than $200,000.

This article is republished under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.

• More Christchurch mosque attack stories

New Zealand is a religiously and ethnically diverse country with an almost negligible global terrorism index. Muslims have lived in New Zealand, peacefully, for more than a century.

In the latest census, Muslims represent 1.07 percent of New Zealand’s population, with the majority of Asian (63.1 percent) and Arab (21 percent) descent. Among the 46,000 Muslims in New Zealand, there are people from European countries, Māori and Pasifika Muslims, and those from Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa.

Worldwide, faith-based violence is on the increase. It is fuelled by extremist ideologies such as those held by Boko Haram, ISIS, jihadism and the pursuit of a global caliphate or dominance by brutal behaviours and fundamentalist interpretations of Islam.

READ MORE: Four lessons we must take away from the Christchurch terror attack

The term Islamophobia has emerged in public policy during the late 20th century. It has multiple connotations linked to anti-Muslim sentiment, discrimination, hatred, fear, harassment and exclusion of Muslims from public life.

Extremism such as violent jihadism and Islamophobia tend to feed off each other. This stokes white supremacists and encourages a general misunderstanding of the large majority of Muslims who are ordinary people like everyone else. The hesitation to include Muslims in public life is based on stereotypical notions, limited understanding of history and ignorance of multiple cultures.

The perceptions of Islam are often closely aligned with violence, hegemonic structures, jihadi actions, oppression of women, honour killings and intolerance. This means Muslims are often seen as a threat rather than as a disadvantaged minority.

But the Muslim diaspora means that people live in many parts of the world, either as migrants, refugees, expatriates or business partners. Their experiences are shaped by both their source country and their new home.

Disrupting Islamophobia
Islam is often presented as a monolithic religion. This ignores the diversity of religious interpretation, ethnicity, culture and source country.

Friday’s terror attack can serve as a catalyst to pledge diversity and different narratives.

While there is no singular frame for disrupting Islamophobia, we can actively seek to move beyond simplistic debates that demonise Islam. We can reduce Islamophobia through a suite of diversity initiatives.

Three diversity initiatives are helpful tools for disrupting Islamophobia:

1 Emphasising positive counter narratives
This can be done by acknowledging diversity in each of us and our communities. We are all more than a singular identity, for example as a Muslim/Christian, a parent, a migrant, a scholar, a poet, a holder of a New Zealand passport and a citizen of the world.

Strategies to achieve this can include legitimising difference, encouraging and rewarding generosity, and training programmes about different religions and cultures.

Brutality disguised in the name of Islam must be counteracted through positive communication about Islam’s contribution to astronomy, medicine, altruism and business.

2 Creating compassionate disruptors
This can be done by focusing on kindness in organisations, particularly business and educational institutions, so people learn to embrace diversity. Performance management can include how diversity is implemented and the benefits of multi-ethnic teams.

3 Highlighting social cohesion
When powerful figures in organisations call out discrimination and make sure their teams represent a diverse workforce, they broadcast positive stories of difference.

We must remember that civic disengagement, anger and lack of community provoke and promote terrorism and can result in Islamophobia.

Communities and nations that foster an environment of diversity in everyday life tend to enhance security of their people and diffuse a climate of extremism and Islamophobia.

As a final thought it is poignant to remember that the word Islam means peace.

Dr Edwina Pio is professor of diversity and director of Diversity at Auckland University of Technology. This article was first published by The Conversation and is republished under a Creative Commons licence.

• More mosque attack stories

The recent sentencing of Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama, the Christian Chinese-Indonesian Governor of Jakarta, to two years in jail for blasphemy will leave many people in the Asia-Pacific region confounded if not, sadly, further averse to Indonesia.

The court’s decision is not a small thing. Jakarta alone has a population roughly that of New South Wales and Victoria in Australia combined – and more than double the entire population of New Zealand.

Jailing its governor is the equivalent of putting an Australian state premier or the New Zealand prime minister behind bars, conceivable only for the most egregious of crimes.

When the official in question is also widely admired for his competency, opposition to corruption, and drive to reform the massive mess which is Jakarta, one could be forgiven for assuming his blasphemy must have been of medieval proportions.

Did he denounce Islam as “evil’ like the American evangelist Franklin Graham? Did he publicly denounce God as ‘stupid’ like Stephen Fry, now the subject of investigation for blasphemy by the Irish police?

On the contrary. Ahok is deeply respectful of Islam and has many Muslim supporters. Though a Christian, he is also impressively Islam-literate and can quote the Koran, an unusual ability for a Christian.

Ironically, it is this knowledge that worked against him. He asked an Indonesian audience not to be persuaded to vote against him by opponents who claimed the Koran prohibits Muslims from voting for non-Muslims. The implication that leaders should be chosen for their competence not their religion or ethnic background will sound like common sense rather than blasphemy to most people.

Huge numbers mobilised
But extreme Muslims claimed his comment vilified the Koran and that voting for an infidel is apostasy. Their campaign mobilised huge numbers, mainly from outside Jakarta, and resulted in Ahok losing the recent election for the governorship — and his freedom.

Unless his appeal to the Supreme Court succeeds, the blasphemy finding also means he will be banned for life from running for public office.

The affair has already done a serious disservice to Indonesia. It presents Indonesia as fanatical, racist and sectarian. While these perceptions are patently unfair, the affair also reveals some aspects of contemporary Indonesia that are obscured by Canberra’s often lavish praise of our important neighbour.

Radical Islam is increasing in strength and confidence in Indonesia. “Be careful what you wish for,” an Indonesian academic said to me during the anti-democratic Suharto years.

He went on to observe that democracy would allow Muslim organisations sidelined during the Suharto years to operate freely and accept generous funding from benefactors like the Saudi regime whose King Salman recently made a historic visit to Indonesia. The majority of Muslims are moderate and disagree with the hard right but the Ahok case shows that, in a country of 240 million people, a minority can comprise millions and exercise significant political influence.

This influence extends to the nominally independent judiciary whose pronouncement on Ahok is widely considered to have been dictated by the protesters. In effect Ahok was “lynched”.

Aggressive sectional politics
Most fair-minded people in Indonesia and beyond, not least in places like England and Wales where blasphemy laws have been abolished, would struggle to see what was blasphemous about Ahok’s reference to the Koran. The court put aggressive sectional politics ahead of its duty to comply with the rule of law and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which post-Suharto Indonesia is a signatory.

As with Indonesia’s mock trials on human rights violations in East Timor when the court absolved the powerful military, the court has compromised its independence and bowed to external pressure.

The sidelining of Ahok also demonstrates the continuing power of entrenched political and economic interests in Indonesia. Ahok stood for clean government. He is a vigorous opponent of corruption, a vice roundly condemned in the Koran. Arguably Ahok’s opposition to this Indonesian curse should have earned the admiration of all Muslims, not jail.

Ahok’s removal is also a victory for Prabowo Subianto, recently headlined by The Age as Indonesia’s possible next president. The ex-general’s candidate beat Ahok in the governship elections, thereby delivering Prabowo a major platform from which to conduct his assault on the presidency, currently held by Joko Widodo, himself a former governor of Jakarta.

The Age reported that Prabowo forbids the killing of insects on his ranch. Timorese would laugh in disbelief. Their truth commission report lists him as having command responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the many years he was active in East Timor.

The Catholic archbishop of Jakarta has publicly condemned growing fundamentalism and intolerance in Indonesia and the Protestant Council of Churches has called for Ahok’s release and the revocation of the blasphemy law.

Nuns, priests, seminarians and laity have rallied in support of Ahok. One sincerely hopes that the Supreme Court will overrule in Ahok’s favour and that the campaign to scrap the blasphemy law will succeed.

Both measures would do much to restore faith in Indonesia and its future.

Pat Walsh is a human rights activist and former adviser to the Timor-Leste Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation. He co-founded Inside Indonesia magazine.

Incumbent Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama’s defeat at the hands of rival candidate Anies Baswedan in the recent runoff election raised alarms among many observers that Indonesia’s young democracy still has a long way to go in combating religious and ethnic discrimination.

However, the capital was calm in the evening after the nail-biting election last month, defusing fears among some residents that mass gatherings or rallies would consume city streets during and in the wake of Wednesday’s vote.

READ MORE: ASEAN lawmakers alarmed at ‘blasphemy’ conviction of Ahok

Investors seemed relieved as well, as the country’s benchmark stock index dropped only slightly the day after the election, with businessmen observing that risks or uncertainties in Indonesian markets were largely dispelled due to the peaceful election turnout.

Indeed, more relief came later in the week, as state prosecutors pushed for reduced charges in a blasphemy case against Jakarta’s first ethnic Chinese and Christian leader in the post-Suharto era.

However, this came to nought when the trial judges ignored the prosecutors and imposed a harsher sentence of two years’ imprisonment on Ahok after finding him “guilty”.

However, rhetoric and methods used by politicians in defeating Ahok have nevertheless raised concerns among local and foreign political observers concerned about the future for democracy in the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation.

Stigma
Poet and senior journalist Goenawan Mohamad wrote a comment on his official Facebook account analysing what the defeat of Ahok – an outspoken governor who often drew ire from his political opponents – could mean for the path ahead.

“Ahok has lost; this has now been settled by the 2017 regional election. All that noise surrounding it will soon become history. Many are relieved ¬ either because Anies has won, or because the campaign, poisoned with hate that shattered many friendships, has finally passed,” said the former editor-in-chief of investigative magazine Tempo.

“But I hope one thing will not be forgotten. Ahok has entered the arena bound in fetters and labeled as ‘a blasphemer’. He can move and talk, but he is not entirely free.

“His achievements as the region’s head, which have been acknowledged by many and made him unparalleled, are now almost no longer seen or heard of.

“The use of the label against Ahok is probably the most successful stigmatisation technique in the history of Indonesian politics. A stigma derived from slander. He did not insult Islam, but the charge had been continuously repeated.

“If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes ‘the truth,’ the Nazi’s propaganda chief used to say. We hear it at mosques, in social media, in everyday conversations; the allegation has been turned into a conviction,” Goenawan said.

“Now Ahok is tried by the court, charged under the anti-blasphemy law that was produced by the New Order regime ¬ a law with unclear provisions, unclear even on who has the right to represent the religion that had been insulted. As a result of it, Ahok has been treated unjustly in three ways: through slander, by being presumed guilty before the court’s verdict and by being tried under a dubious law.

“It is hypocritical to pretend to recognise this injustice while cheering his immutable political defeat. Ahok has lost, he may even be sentenced in a court process informed by mass pressure. The truth may also lose ¬ as it is wont to do in this ‘post-truth’ era,” Goenawan said.

Identity politics
Concerns over the future of democracy in the Southeast Asian country were shared by foreign observers as well.

Reuters news agency reported that international rating agency Fitch said in a statement previous religious tensions during the Jakarta gubernatorial election could resurface in the run-up to the country’s next presidential race in 2019.

“The early results of the tense Jakarta elections seem to suggest that religious factors could play an increasingly significant role in future Indonesian elections,” the statement said, as cited by Reuters.

Three mass rallies against Ahok were led by hardline Muslim groups in the campaign period before last week’s vote, threatening to erode the country’s longstanding tradition of practising a moderate form of Islam.

However, the rating agency still acknowledged Indonesia’s recent progress, explaining that the country has made “substantial” strides in improving good governance over the past two decades. The country’s democratic electoral processes, the statement said, were still intact.

Still, experts and academics around the world say that religious and ethnic discrimination should be expected to play a greater role in future elections if the government and high-ranking Muslim figures do not take significant steps to promote tolerance.

“Going forward, the politics of religion is going to be a potent force,” Keith Loveard, an analyst at Jakarta-based Concord Consulting and an author of books about Indonesian politics, said in a report on Wednesday.

Reluctant to vote
According to Loveard, some residents may have been reluctant to vote for Ahok due to worries of “five more years of protests on the streets by Muslim hardliners”.

Muhammad Najib Azca, a professor of social and political sciences at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, viewed religious and ethnic intolerance as a driving factor in the election’s outcome.

“What happened in Jakarta was an anomaly. Ahok and Djarot were unable to translate their high approval rating […] into real political support,” Najib said.

“There were variables beyond public approval ratings, including strong undertones of religious-based identity politics,” he added.

Najib argued that identity politics has become a main force in driving public opinion, even in the face of successful governance programmes directed by Ahok. “This intervening variable has affected voters through a very sophisticated and elaborate political process.”

Ian Wilson, a lecturer in politics and security studies and a Research Fellow at Murdoch University’s Asia Research Center, said – in an article published by newmandala.org – the election results will most likely have a lasting impact on national politics for years to come.

“Judging from national and international headlines, Jakarta’s gubernatorial election on April 19 represents not just a major turning point for the nation’s capital and city of 12 million, but potentially for the entire country,” he wrote.

“The alarmist tone is largely due to the unsettling direction campaigning has taken over the past eight months, that has seen any possible substantive policy debates over how to best tackle Jakarta’s complex infrastructural, economic and social problems subsumed by sectarian identity politics.”

Economic inequality
Wilson, whose research touches on the political economy of gangs, organised crime and violence in Indonesia, went on to say that: “While the campaigns present, at one level of analysis, a stark contrast between ‘diversity’ on the one hand and sectarian populism on the other, a shared point of commonality is the respective silence regarding a significant shaping force in Jakarta, and arguably the election: rising levels of economic inequality.”

He pointed to data from the country’s Bureau of Statistics – which shows a steady increase in levels of economic inequality in Jakarta – that reflects a broader trend that has been sweeping the nation over the past decade.

“The country’s much-heralded economic growth has been marked by growing concentrations of that wealth in the hands of a few, and a stagnation if not deterioration in the standard of living of a vast majority of Indonesians,” he said.

Wilson also pointed to a 2017 Oxfam report on the widening wealth gap in Indonesia, in which “inequality has been driven by a combination of ‘market fundamentalism,’ high concentrations of land ownership,” and the fact that Indonesia registered the second lowest rate of tax collection in Southeast Asia.

“The poor and precarious bear the most drastic and damaging impacts of economic inequality, though in a densely populated megacity like Jakarta, it is felt by all social and economic classes ¬ albeit in often vastly different ways and with a range of social and political consequences,” he said.

Wilson continued, “For Jakarta’s upper middle classes the desire for security, lifestyle and convenience ¬ together with the push by developers for profitable all-inclusive developments ¬ has meant increasingly self-imposed spatial separation from other social and economic groups within gated estates, apartment towers, shopping malls and private vehicles.”

“Once a city of economically mixed neighborhoods, large parts of the city are spatially divided by class and ethnicity. This can be seen in the city’s north, where remaining kampung sit in uneasy tension alongside luxury apartments and gated communities,” Wilson said.

Old political and business elites emerge
For President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, the election outcome poses a new challenge of rising Islamism and the renewed influence of Indonesia’s old political and business elites in the public sphere.

Many old guard figures have shown support for Anies during the election campaign, including moguls Aburizal Bakrie, Hashim Djojohadikusumo and Hary Tanoesoedibjo and retired general and failed 2014 presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto.

All were prominent businessmen or military officers linked to the three-decade authoritarian regime of Suharto before his ouster in 1998.

Reconciliation
While Jakarta remains hampered by a dizzying array of social and political hurdles, scholar Komaruddin Hidayat, dean of Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University in Banten, Jakarta, called on city residents to eliminate any racial, religious or ethnic intolerance.

“We should eliminate the notion of majority and minority, and the government should establish a way to bridge any gaps through the improvement of people’s welfare,” Komaruddin said.

Komaruddin, a widely known liberal Muslim scholar and author of several books on religious diversity, said minority groups in Indonesia have existed long before the country achieved independence in 1945-48 and have worked hard to personify the ideals of the state ideology, Pancasila.

“Therefore, they should be granted equality in our society and government,” he said.

Indeed, Ahok is not the first Chinese Christian governor of Jakarta. From 1964-65, Hendrik Hermanus Joel Ngantung, known as Henk Ngatung, served as the capital’s chief executive and was instrumental in installing artistic statues and monuments throughout the city as befitted his status as one of the country’s leading painters at that time.

Various reports show that ethnic Chinese, who currently comprise about 15 percent of the country’s population, have historically fought alongside local freedom fighters, known as pribumi, against the Dutch – Indonesia’s colonial masters – and the Japanese.

Sadly, their participation in building modern Indonesia has been expunged from the country’s historical consciousness.

Muhamad Al Azhari and Eko Prasetyoare journalists with the Jakarta Globe. This article includes some news agency content.

• ASEAN lawmakers alarmed at ‘blasphemy’ conviction of Ahok

The “war on terror” was supposed to contain violence, but the whole world is a battlefield now.

The promise of the “global war on terror” was that “it was better to fight them there than here.” That promise brought mass violence to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, Yemen and Somalia — in the name of peace in the West.

That formula has clearly failed. Tuesday’s bombings in Brussels come on the heels of similar incidents in Grand-Bassam, Ivory Coast; Maiduguri, Nigeria; Istanbul; Beirut; Paris; and Bamako, Mali, all in the last six months. Rather than containing violence, the war on terror turned the whole world into a battlefield.

We should not be surprised. Violence inflicted abroad always comes home in some form. Last year, the U.S. military dropped 22,110 bombs on Iraq and Syria. The Pentagon says these bombs “likely” killed only six civilians, along with “at least” 25,000 Islamic State fighters.

The true number of civilian deaths, though, is likely to be in the thousands as well.

War on terror kills more civilians
Indeed, we know that the war on terror kills more civilians than terrorism does. But we tolerate this because it is “their” civilians being killed in places we imagine to be too far away to matter. There is no social media hashtag to commemorate these deaths; no news channel tells their stories.

Because we pay little attention to the effects of our violence in the places we bomb, it appears that terrorism comes out of the blue. When it does happen, then, the only way we can make sense of it is by laying the blame on Islamic culture.

When opinion polls find that most Muslims think Westerners are selfish, immoral and violent, we have no idea of the real causes. And so we assume such opinions must be an expression of their culture rather than our politics.

Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have exploited these reactions with their appeals to Islamophobia. But most liberals also assume that religious extremism is the root cause of terrorism.

President Obama, for example, has spoken of “a violent, radical, fanatical, nihilistic interpretation of Islam by a faction — a tiny faction — within the Muslim community that is our enemy, and that has to be defeated.”

Based on this assumption, think-tanks, intelligence agencies and academic departments linked to the national security apparatus have spent millions of dollars since 9/11 conducting research on radicalisation. They hoped to find a correlation between having extremist religious ideas, however defined, and involvement in terrorism.

In fact, no such correlation exists, as empirical evidence demonstrates — witness the European Islamic State volunteers who arrive in Syria with copies of “Islam for Dummies” or the alleged leader of the November 2015 Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who was reported to have drunk whisky and smoked cannabis.

‘Radicalisation’ models
But this has not stopped national security agencies, such as the FBI, from using radicalisation models that assume devout religious beliefs are an indicator of potential terrorism.

The process of radicalication is easily understood if we imagine how we would respond to a foreign government dropping 22,000 bombs on us. Large numbers of patriots would be volunteering to fight the perpetrators. And nationalist and religious ideologies would compete with each other to lead that movement and give its adherents a sense of purpose.

Similarly, the Islamic State does not primarily recruit through theological arguments but through a militarised identity politics. It says there is a global war between the West and Islam, a heroic struggle, with truth and justice on one side and lies, depravity and corruption on the other. It shows images of innocents victimised and battles gloriously waged.

In other words, it recruits in the same way that any other armed group recruits, including the US military.

That means that when we also deploy our own militarised identity politics to narrate our response to terrorism, we inadvertently reinforce the Islamic State’s message to its potential recruits. When British Prime Minister David Cameron talks about a “generational struggle” between Western values and Islamic extremism, he is assisting the militants’ own propaganda.

When French President François Hollande talks of “a war which will be pitiless,” he is doing the same.

Utopian and apocalyptic vision
What is distinctive about the Islamic State’s message is that it also offers a utopian and apocalyptic vision of an alternative society in the making. The reality of that alternative is, of course, oppression of women, enslavement of minorities and hatred of freedom.

But the message works, to some extent, because it claims to be an answer to real problems of poverty, authoritarian regimes and Western aggression. Significantly, it thrives in environments where other radical alternatives to a discredited status quo have been suppressed by government repression.

What’s corrupting the Islamic State’s volunteers is not ideology but by the end of ideology: they have grown up in an era with no alternatives to capitalist globalisation. The organisation has gained support, in part, because the Arab revolutions of 2011 were defeated, in many cases by regimes allied with and funded by the US.

War creates terrorism
After 14 years of the “war on terror,” we are no closer to achieving peace. The fault does not lie with any one administration but with the assumption that war can defeat terrorism. The lesson of the Islamic State is that war creates terrorism.

After all, the organisation was born in the chaos and carnage that followed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Russia and Iran have also played their role, propping up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime — responsible for far more civilian deaths than the Islamic State — and prolonging the war in Syria that enables the militant group to thrive.

Meanwhile, the alliances that we consider crucial to the war on terror have worked in the Islamic State’s favor. The group’s sectarianism and funding have come from the Saudi and Gulf ruling elites, the West’s closest regional allies after Israel.

And the groups that have been most effective in fighting the Islamic State — the Kurdish militia — are designated as terrorists by Western governments because they are considered threats to our ally Turkey.

The incoherence of our response to the Islamic State stems from our Islamophobia. Because we believe religious extremism is the underlying problem, we prop up Arab dictatorships that we think can help us contain this danger.

Paradoxically, we support the very regimes that have enabled the Islamic State’s rise, such as the Saudis, the most reactionary influence in the region.

With our airstrikes, we continue the cycle of violence and reinforce the militants’ narrative of a war by the West against Islam. Then, to top it all off, we turn away the refugees, whom we should be empowering to help transform the region.

If we want to avoid another 14 years of failure, we need to try something else — and first, we need to radically rethink what we’ve been doing.

Arun Kundnani writes about race, Islamophobia, political violence, and surveillance. His latest book The Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, extremism, and the domestic War on Terror was published by Verso Books in March 2014. Born and bred in London, he moved to New York in 2010 on a fellowship with the Open Society Foundations and now lives in Harlem. He is the author of The End of Tolerance: racism in 21st century Britain, which was selected as a New Statesman book of the year in 2007. A former editor of the journal Race & Class, he was miseducated at Cambridge University, holds a PhD from London Metropolitan University, and teaches at New York University. This article first appeared on the Washington Post website.

Allegations of recent military and police intimidation, beatings and torture, kidnapping and murder in West Papua, have been documented in a new Church report.

The report documents Muslims being radicalised in the once predominantly Christian Papuan provinces, and “very active” Muslim militias that burn down Papuan houses.

The report was compiled by the Brisbane Catholic Justice and Peace Commission’s Shadow Human Rights Fact Finding Mission to West Papua, following a visit to West Papua last month.

It has not yet been publicly released, nor comment sought from Indonesian authorities.

The report documents religious, social and economic discrimination, including how the carve up of land for major development has benefited multinationals and excluded Papuans from ownership and jobs.

It refers to a slow motion genocide happening and states that “the Indonesians want to replace the Christian religion with Islam”.

The report author, Josephite Sister Susan Connelly, was accompanied to West Papua by Brisbane archdiocese’s Catholic Justice and Peace Commission executive officer Peter Arndt. During their fact-finding mission they interviewed more than 250 community leaders in Japapura, Merauke, Timika and Sorong.

Comparison to East Timor
Sr Connelly, a respected human rights advocate, likened her visit to West Papua to “stepping back 20 years when I first went to East Timor”.

“The same oppressive security presence everywhere, the same suspicion, bewilderment, frustration and sadness,” she said.

“The same fear. The same seemingly groundless hope. A man took my hands in his and said, ‘We are in danger’. That simple statement sums up for me the experience of the whole visit.

“The Papuan people have lost so much, and are facing erasure as a people, merely preserved as oddities of the past or artifacts to be photographed for tourist brochures. They realise that their land is considered more valuable than they are.”

The fact-finding team heard many accounts of alleged military and police brutality and murder.

“There is clear evidence of ongoing violence, intimidation and harassment by the Indonesian security forces,” Arndt said on his return to Brisbane.

“That is especially the case for Papuans expressing their support for particular political points of view. Authorities want to close down any Papuan efforts to promote discussion about self-determination, and they have applied a military response to deal with the irrepressible desire of a large number of Papuans to promote their cause for freedom.”

Instigators identified
Based on his interviews across West Papua, Arndt (pictured) identified the instigators of alleged human rights violations as members of the Indonesian army including Kopassus, police including a special counter insurgency unit, Detachment 88, and Indonesia’s intelligence agency, BIN.

“Even demonstrations about social issues such as access to education get broken up by authorities,” he said.

The fact-finding team heard many examples of how the Indonesian government pushed economic development, but ignored human rights.

“The government has carved up the land and given it for exploitation to some 50 multinational companies,” the report said.

“The procedure is that the local government invites companies to come and gives permits. People are usually shocked when the companies come to sign a MoU (memorandum of understanding) with them, showing them the permit and the map. If the villagers don’t agree to the proposal, the company goes back to the local government and returns with the police.”

In the 1970s, ethnic Papuans accounted for 96 percent of the population. Today they are a minority 48 per cent, because of the rapid migration of Indonesians from other more populated islands such as Java.

The report found that Papuans were now marginalised economically at the expense of immigrants, the majority of whom are Muslims. The report said there was “a movement for Muslims from Indonesia to replace Papuans in every sector”.

Many mosques built
“The Indonesians want to replace the Christian religion with Islam.

“Many mosques are being built everywhere. They want Papua to be a Javanese Malay nation,” the report said.

“Radicalisation is happening in Papua, with some militias very active near the border with PNG. They burn down the Papuan houses. They are recruited as illegal loggers. Their camps and logging are well protected by the military.

“The military are certainly killing the people, and closed access to opportunity to Papuans in all areas of life constitutes a slow motion genocide. The general opinion encountered was that Indonesia is a total failure regarding Papua and is just another coloniser.

“The Indonesian government does not give opportunities to Papuan people or protect them. It was said that most Church leaders try to deal with the problems one by one, but the whole picture should be looked at as a series of policies designed to overcome the Papuan people.

“In every sector of government the system is composed of Indonesian tactics to destroy the Papuans. Beatings and torture are used, but also the economic aspects of lack of opportunity, the sidelining of the indigenous peoples, the taking over of land by companies… are part of the plan.”

Accusations in the report

• A young, wealthy businessman poisoned in 2015. He had financially supported building an office for the National Committee for West Papua, an independence-oriented group. He also funded Papuans being sent to international conferences.
• A Papuan woman activist arrested in 2015 by police for holding a prayer service in support of an international conference in London. She and her group were interrogated for five hours.
• -In January this year, 27 Papuan palm oil workers were allegedly tortured by the Indonesian army’s special force Kopassus. The men had previously complained to their company bosses after they had not been paid for two months.
• A man aged 35 who used to work for Papua’s Freeport gold mine was kidnapped in 2015, killed, and his body thrown on the street. There was no sign of torture and the police told his family that it was an accident.
• Police and military broke up community activities such as prayer meetings.
• In September 2015, 18-year-old Daniel Bowgow was killed. His father was a local prayer meeting leader.
• People reported they could not move freely at night to search for food for fear of being kidnapped. The military and police use Papuan informers to let them know of people’s movements.

Mark Bowling is a contributor to The Catholic Leader. This article was first published by The Catholic Leader and republished here with permission.