Introduction

The establishment and institutionalisation of Islam in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the recent growth of Islamic conversions in the country has been largely overlooked. This is surprising given PNG borders Indonesia (the world’s largest Muslim nation) and fact that a long and ongoing interest in new religious movements in PNG exists. For over 150 years scholars from around the world working in the fields of Anthropology and Religious Studies have come to the Pacific region and PNG to study traditional and Christian religions and the syncretic blending of the two. Yet despite the relatively large scholarly and general interest in religion in the region and country the presence and growth of Islam in PNG has gone effectively unnoticed. In 1976 when PNG became an independent country, the Muslim population totalled 120 and, until 1986, consisted exclusively of expatriate workers from Africa and the Indian subcontinent (Ahmad 1980). By 2009, one media report claimed the number of indigenous PNG Muslim converts exceeded 4,500 and appeared to be growing daily (Filali 2009), a growth estimate that would indicate 500 per cent growth in the last nine years, albeit from a small base. The time at which the spike in Islamic conversions in PNG occurred correlates with the terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists on 11 September 2001 (9/11) (Flower 2007). This spike in Islamic conversion growth since 9/11 resulting from seemingly negative media coverage has also been noted in many other countries including Britain, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands and America (Peek 2005; Zebiri 2008). As can be seen in the following statement by Zainul a PNG Muslim convert, the media reporting associated with the 9/11 attacks were perhaps paradoxically the greatest missionary event for promoting Islam in PNG.