ABSTRACT
The wide-ranging and complex set of factors discussed thus far is leading Papua New Guineans (individuals and groups) to experience a number of crises, personally and/or socially that demand resolution. In seeking to find answers to these multiple crises, religion can offer structure, order and a sense of belonging that is lacking. The contextual influences and the resultant crises experienced by Papua New Guineans provide insight into why Islam is an attractive alternative religion. A crisis is best thought of as a disrupting experience that challenges a person’s or a group’s understanding of the world, a reality that prior to the crises may have been taken for granted or assumed permanent or natural. Crises can be personal or collective and, in the case of converts interviewed, were most frequently triggered by a number of concurrent contextual influences. I highlight the range and nature of crises experience by converts under three broad categories: Religious Crises; Social, Cultural, and Political Crises; and Personal Crises. Most scholars agree that some form of crisis precedes religious conversion, and that crises may be singular or multiple, social and/or personal, and spontaneous or cumulative (Rambo 1993: 44-47). In the Papua New Guinea case, every convert interviewed either perceived and/or experienced one or more forms of crisis prior to converting to a religious alternative. In some way their quest and subsequent conversion brought relief from their crisis. Six specific crisis types appear among Muslim converts in PNG: Externally Stimulated Crises, Desire for Transcendence, Protean Selfhood, Apostasy, Illness and Healing, and Near-Death Experiences.1 The most significant crisis type present among Muslim converts in PNG is Externally Stimulated Crises (present in 100 per cent of converts interviewed). This form of crisis was described by converts interviewed as being related to the external influences of colonial contact, pressures of Western modernity and Christian religion. Rambo’s other crisis types were present, although in more limited cases. Of the other crisis types among Muslim converts interviewed Apostasy, Desire for Transcendence, Illness and Healing, and Protean Selfhood were experienced by a limited number of converts. Near-Death Experiences were very limited, with only two converts expressing this as a catalyst for conversion. Only two Muslim converts (Abdul and Assad) claimed a near-death experience (NDE)
was one of the triggers that led them to embark on a religious quest that ended with conversion to Islam.2 The varying nature of crises can be understood through ‘contours of crisis’ which positions crises along a number of continua. The crises continua relevant to PNG include Intensity, Duration, Scope and Source, as detailed in Figure 5.1. In general, Muslim converts interviewed appeared to have experienced crises on the more extreme end of each of these continua. The greater the intensity, duration and scope of crises experienced, the more open a potential convert is likely to be to religious alternatives that may have previously been unknown, ignored or rejected. It has been observed that the collective memory of converts to fundamentalist Christian sects in PNG generally exhibits a sense of ‘entropy’, or recent history as ‘things fall apart’ or ‘growing disorder’ (Dalton 2001: 106). A sense that the broader PNG population perceives a general social crisis partly explains the large-scale changes in religious affiliation that are underway in PNG towards fundamentalist Christianity. As described by Laitin (1986: 36-38), conversions to stricter religions are likely to occur if a new religion ‘provides answers to a problem of meaning that the earlier religion did not, or where the new religion covers more ground or provides better answers than the old religion’. The assumption underlying the conversion process in PNG therefore is, those experiencing more intense levels of crisis were more likely to move away from their current religion (most frequently Christianity) and commit to Islam on the grounds that Islam’s narratives, beliefs, symbols, and values provide practical methods for resolving crises. The nature of these beliefs, symbols, and values are significantly congruent with traditional PNG kastom, which converts associate with the more stable environment that existed prior to the period of rapid change caused by colonial contact. Thus, conversions occur as part of converts’ longing for the perceived stability and security of the past. The most interesting aspect of crises among PNG converts is that even nonreligious types of crisis are seen by converts to be causally related to religion. Converts who did not directly express their personal experience of a religious crisis made mention of the social, cultural, and political crises they had experienced, and their view that these were caused by the negative impact of new religions in the country.
