The growth of Islam in Papua New Guinea : implications for security and policy

Abstract

Since 2001 the Muslim population of Papua New Guinea (PNG) has increased by over 500 percent as a result of religious conversions by indigenous Papua New Guineans. The spike in Islamic conversions in this largely Christian nation has coincided with a period of increased Islamic missionary activity, and a rise in media coverage on Muslims following the attacks by Islamic extremists on September 11, 2001. This thesis analyses the growth of Islam in PNG and seeks to determine whether the growing Muslim population is likely to have an impact on the security environment. This research also contributes to a very small body of literature which seeks to understand potential security risks posed by Muslim converts (as opposed to born Muslims). Since 1950 Islamic minorities have been engaged in more internal conflicts than any other type of religious or non-religious minority. The conversion of non-Muslims to Islam is a key strategy employed by Islamic extremists to recruit new members who can be engaged in radicalism across the globe. In the last decade the number of converts involved with radical and militant Islamic networks has noticeably increased. In addition, PNG borders Indonesia, a country that houses the world's largest population of Muslims and is home to a number of activist, radical and extremist Islamic groups. Based on five months of fieldwork during which I lived among Muslim communities in urban and rural regions of PNG, I examined the empirical foundations of Islam's growth to write what is the first comprehensive history of the establishment and institutionalisation of Islam in PNG. Taking an interdisciplinary approach and using interview data and fieldwork observations, I applied knowledge from the religious conversion and security studies literatures to analyse the causes and processes of Islamic conversion in PNG. This approach enabled new insights into which factors of conversion may subsequently influence the radicalisation of converts and affect security in PNG the Pacific region, and globally.