Becoming Sinless

DEBRA McDOUGALL

Becoming Sinless: Converting to Islam in theChristian Solomon Islands

ABSTRACT Islam is beginning to have a significant presence in the predominantly Christian nation of Solomon Islands. A few

well-educated Islanders were drawn to Islam’s elegant monotheism and promise of unity in the 1980s and early 1990s, but numbers

have grown significantly in the years following a violent civil conflict (1998–2003). Many of these new Muslim converts, especially those

from the island of Malaita, seem preoccupied with the problem of sin and blame Christianity for destroying customary rules, especially

those enforcing gender segregation. Echoing long-standing Malaitan critiques of Christian freedom, they say that Christians rely too

heavily on God’s grace and their own ability to resist temptation. Unlike Christianity and similar to the traditional religion of the islands,

Islam provides clear moral rules for living. Seeking an escape from a cycle of sin and redemption, these ex-evangelical Christians now

see in Islam the possibility of becoming sinless. [Keywords: Christianity, Islam, morality, Solomon Islands, Melanesia]

People like hearing the words “born again.” Every Tom,

Dick, and Harry says that he is born again, but does not

change to lead a holy life. Unless we live righteously and

in a holy way, this nation will not move forward.

—Solomon Islander at the Mbokanavera Sunni Center

N INETY-EIGHT percent of the inhabitants of the

Melanesian nation of Solomon Islands identify as

Christians. Most remain members of the five main churches

founded in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but a

growing number have joined new evangelical Christian de-

nominations that have proliferated in recent decades. A

small minority, moreover, are embracing a world religion

without a historical presence in the region: Islam.

Indigenous Muslims in Solomon Islands, as well as

neighboring Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu, face oppo-

sition from the Christian majority.1 Until recently, many

ordinary citizens knew of Islam only through news reports

on the global “war” against Islamic terrorism; now that

Islam has become more prominent in the region, some

national leaders have advocated curtailing religious free-

dom to stop the spread of non-Christian religions. Out-

side analysts worry that the growth of Islam indicates a

potential for terrorism in a region that has experienced

considerable political instability in recent years. In one

of the few scholarly works on the topic, Scott Flower

(2008) argues that such speculations are unfounded. He

suggests that indigenous converts are drawn to the goods

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Vol. 111, Issue 4, pp. 480–491, ISSN 0002-7294 online ISSN 1548-1433. C© 2009 by the American Anthropological Association.

All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1433.2009.01157.x

and services that Islamic organizations provide and are

attracted to Islam because it resonates with indigenous

cultural practices. Although indigenous Muslims tend to

deny that they are attracted to Islam for pragmatic pur-

poses, they also draw parallels between traditional cultural

practices (referred to in neo-Melanesian pidgin as kastom)

and Islam. Like kastom, they say, Islam emphasizes gender

separation rather than gender equality; retribution rather

than forgiveness; external codes of behavior rather than

internal self-monitoring; and an acceptance of polygamy

rather than an insistence on monogamy (see, e.g., Bohane

2007; Radio Australia 2008a). They downplay the influence

of Christianity, portraying it as a foreign imposition that

did not penetrate Melanesian minds and souls.

Rather than dismissing the influence of Christianity, in

this article I argue that the vision of moral selves and vir-

tuous communities that Solomon Islander converts hope

to achieve through their practice of Islam has been pro-

foundly shaped by their prior experience of Christianity.

Most obviously, Christianity influences their understand-

ing of Islamic doctrine. In the Solomon Islands capital of

Honiara, where most of the research for this article was con-

ducted, some Muslim converts contrasted Islam’s simple

monotheism to the complications of the Christian Trinity,

while others lauded Islam’s insistence on moral law and

condemned Christians’ overreliance on God’s grace. Con-

version from Christianity to Islam also has profound social

McDougall • Becoming Sinless 481

and political implications. In culturally diverse Melanesia,

shared Christianity has provided some measure of ideolog-

ical cohesion despite divisions arising from denomination-

alism. In the absence of well-functioning states, moreover,

church organizations are some of the few modern organi-

zations that touch the lives of the mainly rural population

(see Douglas 2007; McDougall 2008). Disaffected with their

own Christian communities and the Christian nation as a

whole, some recent converts to Islam have embraced the

oppositional identity offered by Islam.

Solomon Islander Christians and Muslims alike seek

moral and spiritual solutions to what secular outsiders

might see as social or political problems. They differ only

in feeling that, rather than offering the solution to the na-

tion’s manifold problems, Christianity has helped to cause

them. Recent Muslim converts from the island of Malaita,

in particular, blame moral decline on the way that Chris-

tianity freed people from traditional rules of behavior, thus

echoing critiques that followers of ancestral religion have

leveled against Christianity since the beginning of mis-

sionization (see, e.g., Akin 1993, 1996, 2004; Burt 1994;

Keesing 1987, 1992). According to this logic, a religion that

does not require costly sacrifices cannot be effective, and

the individual freedom that Christianity seems to entail

inevitably leads to transgressions of moral rules. As the in-

terlocutor quoted above complained, Christians may claim

to be “born again,” but they always fall back into sin.

Nowhere are critiques of Christian freedom more

pronounced than in the realm of gender and sexual-

ity. Throughout Melanesia, missionaries and converts de-

stroyed male cults and lifted social and spatial restrictions

on women (in Malaita, e.g., Christians abandoned the prac-

tice of segregating women from the community during

menstruation). Such changes have led, in some areas, to

a sense of disempowerment, emasculation, or even a per-

ception of bodily shrinkage among Melanesian men (Clark

1989; Tuzin 1997; cf. Wilde 2004). There is also widespread

belief that Christianity has, for better or for worse, empow-

ered women. Although men occupy most formal leader-

ship positions in most churches, today women often make

up a majority of congregations and have formed powerful

and effective women’s fellowship organizations (Douglas

2003; McDougall 2003). Writing of Vanuatu, Annelin Erik-

sen (2008) has argued that modes of social action tradition-

ally gendered female have been amplified by the church

and that, in this sense, the church itself is gendered female.

The most recent converts to Islam in Solomon Islands ap-

pear to be attempting to reassert male virtue outside of a

feminized Christianity.

Despite its short history, Islam in Solomon Islands is

complex. Converts come from different provinces, differ-

ent socioeconomic backgrounds, and different Christian

denominational traditions. They also belong to two dis-

tinct branches of Islam—Sunni Islam, which includes a

majority of the world’s Muslims, and Ahmadiyya Islam,

which is considered heretical by other Muslims for taking

its founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, rather than Muhammad

as the final prophet. In Solomon Islands, the Ahmadiyyas

are part of the Australian Ahmadiyya Muslim Association,

which has provided funds for a center, a satellite television,

and a resident missionary. Since becoming incorporated in

2003, the group has condemned violence and has engaged

frequently with the national press and the Solomon Islands

Christian Association (Bin Masran n.d.). Overseas support

for the Sunnis is more sporadic, consisting of short visits by

Muslim laymen, primarily from Australia. The group does

not have a clear organizational structure and some new

converts have established mosques in their own urban and

rural neighborhoods.

Although it is a simplification, I distinguish between

two waves of conversion.2 The first indigenous Muslims

in Solomon Islands converted in the two decades follow-

ing national independence in 1978 after encountering Is-

lam at regional universities or by meeting expatriate Mus-

lims working in Honiara. Most of these first-wave converts

are well educated, hold formal employment in town, and

have come from mainline churches (on Honiara’s fledgling

middle class, see Gooberman-Hill 1999). Islam has spread

slowly among the friends and families of these first con-

verts, but it experienced a more dramatic growth in the

years following September 11, 2001, and in the wake of a

civil conflict. It is this second wave of conversion that I

discuss at length in this article.

The “ethnic tensions,” as this civil conflict is known

locally, began when militants from the island of Guadal-

canal began attacking the settlements of people from the

nearby island of Malaita who had been drawn to Guadal-

canal by economic opportunities available in the national

capital of Honiara (see Figure 1). The attacks were fueled,

in part, by Guadalcanal people’s anger that some Malai-

tan settlers did not respect their rights as landowners and

that few Guadalcanal people were benefiting from devel-

opments around Honiara. By 1999, tens of thousands of

Malaitans had been displaced. A Malaitan countermilitia

was formed and, in June 2001, joined with the Solomon

Islands police to mount a de facto coup. Conflict between

militias gave way to general lawlessness and violence in

Honiara, rural Guadalcanal, and some areas of Malaita

until mid-2003, when the Australian government finally

heeded repeated calls from Solomon Islands for military

assistance. The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Is-

lands (RAMSI) quickly restored order and remains in the

country without a firm exit date (for accounts of the con-

flict, see Fraenkel 2004; Moore 2004). Islam appears to be

gaining a significant number of converts among Malai-

tan men who were most directly affected by the crisis.

These second-wave converts tend to have less formal educa-

tions, hold less secure employment, and are more transient

than the first-wave converts; a disproportionate number

come from a fundamentalist or Pentecostal Christian back-

ground. After the violence and disruption of the conflict,

rather than turning to Christ for redemption as they have

in the past, some are now seeking a return to virtue through

Islam.

482 American Anthropologist • Vol. 111, No. 4 • December 2009

FIGURE 1. Solomon Islands. (Map created by author)

The educated and urbanized converts of the first wave

tend to see Islam as similar to the mainline forms of

Christianity they grew up with but more universal, more

monotheistic, and more egalitarian. The less privileged con-

verts of the second wave, in contrast, tend to reject modern

Protestant celebrations of freedom from externally imposed

rules and rituals, blaming Christianity’s emphasis on for-

giveness for leading people to disregard God-given moral

laws. They thus reject one of the keystones of Christian

theology—namely, the idea that Jesus, as God incarnate,

atoned for humanity’s original sin through his death. Writ-

ing of the evangelical Christian Urapmin of the highlands

of Papua New Guinea, Joel Robbins (2004) argued that

while they welcomed the freedom from ancestral taboos

that Christianity offered, Urapmin found themselves strug-

gling with new kinds of interiority in the process of “becom-

ing sinners.” Today, some Solomon Islands Muslims assert

that believers cannot be trusted to monitor themselves and

require a return to externally imposed law. Seeking an es-

cape from Christian cycles of sin and redemption that they

blame for the problems of their families, communities, and

their troubled nation, these ex-evangelical Christians now

seek in Islam the possibility of becoming sinless.

IDEOLOGIES OF CONVERSION

Scholarly and popular ideas about religious conversion of-

ten draw on Christian models and presume Western forms

of “personhood.” Religion is seen as a matter of individ-

ual belief, and conversion is assumed to require a dramatic

change of heart, such as that experienced by Paul on the

road to Damascus. Since the 1990s, anthropologists have

critiqued such approaches to conversion. Jean Comaroff

and John Comaroff, for example, argued that the very idea

of conversion relies on a modern Western construction of

the individual subject who can choose a faith in the same

way one might choose a commodity. To take conversion as

a “significant analytical category in its own right,” they ar-

gue, is to “dress up ideology as sociology” (1991:250, 251).

Similarly, Talal Asad (1993) questioned the very category

of religion itself. Critiquing Clifford Geertz’s (1973) well-

known definition of religion as a system of symbols, Asad

argued that religion emerged as a distinct analytical cat-

egory only through modern Protestantism’s emphasis on

individual faith.

Turning away from the intellectualist approaches of

scholars like Geertz (1973) and Robin Horton (1971), an-

thropologists began to pay more attention to the politics

of religious affiliation and less to the power of religious

ideas. In an introduction to a volume on religious con-

version, for example, Robert Hefner argued that religious

conversion need not involve a “deeply systematic reorgani-

zation of personal meanings” but, rather, “an adjustment in

self-identification through the at least nominal acceptance

of religious actions or beliefs deemed more fitting, useful”

(Hefner 1993:17). As Rita Kipp (1995) argued, however, over

time, conversion may involve both a change of political or

social organization and a changed religious experience for

the individual. Among the Karo Christians in Sumatra who

she worked with, conversion was initially a strategic at-

tempt to maintain an autonomous local identity against a

dominant Muslim majority. First-generation Christians did

not narrate dramatic stories of internal transformation, but

second- and third-generation believers who moved from

the established church to a newer Pentecostal church told of

deeply emotional inner transformations. Similar processes


have occurred throughout Solomon Islands, where Chris-

tianity was initially embraced for apparently pragmatic

reasons, such as gaining access to education and medicine,

seeking protection from enemy groups, avoiding angry

ancestors, and forging alliances with powerful outsiders

(Akin 1993:508; Burt 1994:141–170; Dureau 2001; Hviding

1996:118–124; McDougall 2004:256–314; White 1991:81–

102). Eventually, though, converts came to see Christianity

as a matter of personal conviction as well as social identity.

Recent work on the anthropology of Christianity is

once again taking religious ideas and ideologies seriously

(e.g., Engelke 2007; Keane 2007; Robbins 2004; Scott 2007;

Tomlinson 2009). The notion that conversion must involve

a dramatic internal change of heart may be ideology, rather

than sociology, as the Comaroffs suggest, but anthropol-

ogists studying Christian cultures must engage with this

ideology because it is shared by the subjects they are study-

ing. Robbins (2007) has argued that anthropologists need to

take seriously the ways in which non-Western converts take

onboard the cultural assumptions embedded in Christian

culture, including ideologies about cultural change. In his

ethnography of the Urapmin of Papua New Guinea, Rob-

bins suggests that Christianity provides “a set of arguments

for why people need to throw over an inadequate tradi-

tional moral system in favor of the new one” (2004:319)

and leads believers to see change in moral terms. Like Kipp,

he examines conversion in historical perspective. The Urap-

min of Papua New Guinea were initially drawn to Chris-

tianity 30 years ago as a way of regaining prominence in a

regional ritual-political system, but as they embraced Pen-

tecostal Christianity, they encountered new ideas of the

self and of morality. Because of the religious ideas that they

adopted, they came to see their faith as internal and mean-

ingful and to see themselves as sinners—that is, as individ-

uals who are solely responsible to God for their transgres-

sions.

As described below, the conversion stories of some of

the highly educated first-wave converts to Islam seem to

validate the so-called intellectualist theories of religion of

Horton and Geertz. Islam, they said, offered an explanation

of the ultimate conditions of existence they found more

satisfying than those of Christianity. Yet they found them-

selves struggling with the social implications of their con-

version, especially the fact that, even as they sought a more

encompassing form of collectivity through the image of a

global Islamic community, they were alienated from their

devoutly Christian families and communities. The stories of

the newer converts, in contrast, seem best explained by ana-

lytical approaches that emphasize the politics of affiliation.

Disgruntled with the state of the nation and angry at the

hypocrisy of their Christian neighbors, many embraced the

oppositional identity that Islam provided. Yet, informed by

their evangelical Christian backgrounds, they are also en-

gaging with the theological and intellectual implications of

their conversion, particularly new ideas about sin and sal-

vation. In both of these cases, Solomon Islanders have not

converted to Islam from ancestral religions but from Chris-

tianity, and they approach their new faith through the lens

of the faith they hope to leave behind.

ISLAM IN SOLOMON ISLANDS

In the light of what is going on in the world today, and

also for the security of the nation, we have some concern

about the presence of not only of Muslims in the country

but also other religions that begin to come into Solomon

Islands. As you know, we have just been through a dark

time, and right now we are working on mending and

healing this nation from the ethnic crisis, and if we do

have other people coming in with different motives and

attitudes, it could cause problems to us.

—Reverend Eric Takila, Chairman of the Solomon

Islands Christian Association and Bishop of the South

Sea Evangelical Church on Radio Australia

It is difficult to estimate the number of Muslims in Solomon

Islands. The most dramatic growth of Islam has occurred

since the last census in 1999, on which “Islam” was not

listed as a category of religious affiliation (De Bruijn 2000).

Observers’ estimates range from a few hundred to a few

thousand (Terry Brown, personal communication, October

16, 2008; Flower 2008:215; Moore 2008:397). With a na-

tional population of just over 400,000 in 1999, even the

highest estimates would have Islam as only about one per-

cent of the total population, although significantly higher

in Honiara and other areas where converts are concen-

trated.

Despite small numbers relative to an overwhelming

Christian majority, the growth of Islam is seen as a threat

by church leaders and Christian politicians throughout

Melanesia. Like their evangelical counterparts in the United

States and elsewhere, many Christians in Melanesia un-

derstand the “war on terror” to be a religious conflict be-

tween Islam and Christianity and view local Muslims in this

light. Although they have not been violently attacked like

their counterparts in Papua New Guinea (Flower 2008:411–

412), Solomon Islands Muslims are called “terrorists” when

they wear their distinctive white robes and caps. Some

Solomon Islander Christian leaders worry, moreover, that

Islam threatens the national unity that results from a shared

Christian faith and may undermine postconflict reconcil-

iation work that is being carried out in Christian idioms.

In a recent interview (quoted above), the chairman of the

Solomon Islands Christian Association (the main ecumeni-

cal organization in Solomon Islands) urged the Solomon

Islands government to reconsider the constitutional guar-

antee of religious freedom to prevent the growth of non-

Christian religions (Radio Australia 2008b). Some Chris-

tians suspect that converts to Islam are attracted by the

promise of money or other benefits from overseas. Aware

of such accusations, one Sunni Muslim compared overseas

(mainly Australian) Muslim teachers to the Australian-led

Regional Assistance Mission—like the Australian govern-

ment, these visiting Muslim brothers are just helping out a

needy neighbor.


The question of why Islam is attracting significant

numbers of followers must be considered in light of a more

general tendency toward religious diversity in Melanesia.

Islam is one of the more novel choices in a region long

given to religious innovation (see Harrison 2006 for a recent

overview). Christian missionization led to unprecedented

religious and social consolidation, but ideals of Christian

unity were always undercut by the reality of mission ri-

valry. Although Catholics, Anglicans, and Methodists in

the British Solomon Islands Protectorate grudgingly agreed

to avoid one another’s mission fields, the fundamentalist

South Sea Evangelical Mission and Seventh-Day Adven-

tist Mission made no such concessions. Since World War

II, new Christian denominations have proliferated: Jeho-

vah’s Witnesses, Baha’i, Worldwide Church of God, and

scores of Pentecostal denominations all have found ea-

ger converts in Solomon Islands (Ernst 2006). That reli-

gious diversity is common, however, does not mean that

it is unproblematic. Changes of affiliation from one Chris-

tian denomination to another can express and exacerbate

other kinds of social fission in rural areas (see Eriksen

2008:104–110). Many recent Malaitan converts to Sunni

Islam cited hostility between members of different Chris-

tian denominations in their home villages as one reason

why they turned to Islam. Ahmadiyyas I spoke to were

knowledgeable about the emergence of different sects in

Islam, but Sunnis acknowledged such sectarian differences

only when pressed. Aside from the Ahmadiyyas (whom

they dismissed as not really Muslim), many Sunnis had

not encountered other branches of Islam. In such cir-

cumstances, the contradiction between ideological unity

under a single God and pragmatic division into compet-

ing denominations seems less glaring in Islam than in

Christianity.

The first Solomon Islanders became Muslim around

the time of national independence in 1978 as indigenous

elites began to come into sustained contact with their peers

from other former British colonies and newly independent

Pacific nations. Some learned of Islam in the 1970s at the

University of the South Pacific in Fiji, while others encoun-

tered Muslim professionals working in Honiara. A Muslim

League was formed but had relatively little contact with any

overseas organizations. In 1987 and 1990, an Ahmadiyya

missionary named Hafiz Jibrail visited Muslims in Solomon

Islands. More than ten years later, in 2001, Musa Bin Mas-

ran was sent as a missionary to the fledgling group, which

was eventually registered in 2003 (Bin Masran n.d.). In the

meantime, in 1997, the Sunni Imam of Papua New Guinea

carried out a da’wa (mission) visit to Solomon Islands and,

finding the group in disarray, he recommended that a per-

manent Sunni teacher be posted to Honiara.3 He also re-

portedly warned local converts to avoid the Ahmadiyyas.

Some early converts heeded the warning and remained

Sunni but nonetheless directed Bin Masran to friends and

relatives who had shown interest in Islam and who eventu-

ally joined the Ahmadiyyas.

The Sunni and Ahmadiyya centers occupy different po-

sitions in Honiara. The Sunni center is a rundown house

located in Mbokanavera, a neighborhood in a stuffy river

valley occupied primarily by Solomon Islanders with mod-

estly paying formal employment. Lacking any way to con-

tact the center, I arrived there unannounced one afternoon

and waited on the edge of the property as a handful of

men emerged from prayers. Eventually a non–Solomon Is-

lander (who I later learned was visiting from Melbourne)

approached me and, looking into the distance, explained

that because I was neither his wife nor daughter, he could

not look at me and should not speak to me. After asking

whether I could talk to any women and learning that none

were present, I was about to leave when my interlocutor

said that I could speak to a young Solomon Islander man

who sat down near us. This young man, Robert, had opened

what he called a small mosque in Gilbert Camp, one of the

predominantly north Malaitan periurban neighborhoods

that have spread beyond Honiara town boundaries onto

Guadalcanal customary land since the 1970s (see Stritecky

2001a). Not wanting to overstay my tenuous welcome, I

did not speak to the man for very long, but I returned later

with a male research assistant and spoke to several other

converts at the center who were also from north Malaita

living in Honiara’s settlements. Because I was temporarily

staying with friends in one such settlement, I was also able

to conduct a lengthy interview with one of our Muslim

neighbors.4

The Ahmadiyya Center is located on West Kola Ridge,

a neighborhood with ocean views and sea breezes inhab-

ited by elite Solomon Islanders and expatriates. I arrived

at this center as a few women were leaving (I later learned

that some women have joined the Ahmadiyyas); and, rather

than being ignored, I was quickly welcomed inside. I spent

nearly four hours chatting with two young men who ex-

plained the history of the Ahmadiyyas, the relationship be-

tween Christianity and Islam, and how they themselves

became Muslim. The Ahmadi missionary, an ex–Jehovah’s

Witness from Ghana named Malik, returned from a visit to

another Honiara branch as I was leaving. Far from avoid-

ing eye contact with me as the visiting teachers at the Sunni

Center had done, he invited me to return the next day then

pulled out a digital camera to take a photo of me with the

young men I had talked to.

UNITY AND EQUALITY UNDER ONE GOD

Whether you are a priest or you are a peasant or you are

a king, you have the same clothes. . . . It’s unity. If the

world were like that, like one month in Mecca, it would

be a happy place to be.5

—Felix Narasia

Felix Narasia is one of the early members of the (Sunni)

Muslim League and is an articulate spokesman for the

group, often publicly clarifying misconceptions about Is-

lam in Solomon Islands. Like other first-wave converts,


Narasia embraced Islam because he was attracted to its sim-

ple monotheism and the promise of unity it held.

Narasia grew up Anglican, the dominant denomina-

tion in his home island of Savo, a volcanic island visible

just northwest of Honiara. He learned about Islam in the

1980s, when he was a student in Honiara’s top secondary

school, King George VI, and he happened to see a foreign

man in white robes walking down a Honiara street. Curi-

ous, he followed the man to his hotel and asked him why

he was dressed the way he was. To Narasia’s surprise, this

man explained that he was not a priest or holy man, just a

layman on a business trip, and he invited Narasia to watch a

video of the Hajj. After this encounter, Narasia embarked on

what he called his own “private study of comparative reli-

gion.” Like a handful of other educated Solomon Islanders

who encountered Islam in their travels or studies, he be-

came a Muslim before any significant Islamic community

existed.

What most impressed Narasia in that initial encounter

was the promise of unity and equality in Islam. Watching

the video of the Hajj, he was struck by the way that the pil-

grims stood shoulder to shoulder all bending to the ground

like a “white hall of carpet folding”—black and white, rich

and poor, all acted in unison wearing the same humble

white cotton robes. Narasia had little to say about sectar-

ian differences in Islam, speaking instead of how Mecca

provides a single orientation point for all humanity. Islam,

he said, has no different churches, no different ancestral

shrines, just one center for all humanity. His comments

about Islam reminded me very much of how the Solomon

Islander Christians I have worked with spoke of the conver-

sion of their ancestors. In the past, they say, everyone wor-

shipped their own ancestors and fought with one another,

but Christianity taught that all people were brothers in

Christ and children of a single God (McDougall 2004:256–

314; see also White 1991). Far from rejecting this vision of

universal brotherhood, Narasia suggested that Islam fulfills

such ideals better than Christianity.

Narasia explained that Muslims and Christians alike

believe in God and follow the teachings of Jesus, differing

only with regard to the divinity of Jesus. Like the other ex-

Anglican and ex-Catholic Muslims I spoke to, he critiqued

what he considered the irrational doctrine of the Trinity:

When we [Muslims] are talking about one God, we are

talking about an arithmetical one. Whereas the Christian

formula is: the father is God, the son is God, and the Holy

Ghost is God but they are not three gods but one God.

The father is almighty, the son is almighty, the Holy

Ghost is almighty, but they are not three almighties but

one almighty. The father is a person, the son is a person,

the Holy Ghost is a person, but they are not three persons,

but one person. What language is that? Person, person,

person, but not three persons but one person. That is

not English, that is gibberish! [conversation with author,

February 2, 2007]

Far from requiring a leap of faith, he explained, Islam

was “rational”—it was simply submitting to the will of

God without the esoteric complications of Christian doc-

trine. Echoing orthodox Muslim principles of da’wa (Murad

1986), he called Islam “natural religion,” the religion with

which all humans are born, saying that one does not “con-

vert” but simply “reverts” to Islam.

Others who converted in the 1980s and 1990s told sim-

ilar stories. One of the Ahmadiyya Muslims, Muhammad

Asad, initially learned of Islam in primary school through

conversations with a Sudanese boy whose father was work-

ing in the newly independent Solomon Islands. Later, at

King George VI, Asad and his schoolmate Felix Narasia en-

gaged in heated debates about the Trinity, original sin, and

the divinity of Christ. In 1995, ten years after he had first

heard of Islam, he visited the Mbokanavera Center with

Narasia and began reading materials on Islam, eventually

realizing that Islamic teachings were consistent with the

Ten Commandments. He came to believe that Islam was

the only religion dedicated to the oneness of God, and a

year later he made the pledge to accept Islam. As his doubts

about the Trinity grew, he found it difficult to attend church

services and faced opposition from his family, who were

prominent in the church of his home village in the Rus-

sell Islands. Yet there was no viable Muslim community

he could join that could help him practice his new faith.

When the Ahmadi missionary Musa Bin Masran arrived in

Honiara in 2001, Asad eagerly sought him out and decided

to join the Ahmadiyya group. Since that time, a number

of Asad’s relatives have converted to Islam and one of the

Ahmadiyya Muslim Association’s branches is located in the

Russell Islands.

A younger man at the Ahmadiyya Center, Muhammad

Adam, came to the Ahmadiyya group through family con-

nections. This young man was among the few Muslims that

I met who seemed to quote the Quran in Arabic nearly

as fluently as the Bible. He came from ‘Are’are in south-

ern Malaita, and like the others he had spent much of

his youth in Honiara attending school. Formerly Catholic,

Adam first encountered Islam in 1995 through his uncle

Mahmud Taro, one of the first Solomon Islander Muslims.

Taro was initially contacted by the Ahmadiyyas in 1987

and 1990, but by the time Bin Masran returned in 2001,

Taro had joined the Sunni group. Nonetheless, he suggested

Bin Masran talk to his cousin, Martin Rasu, who became

president of the Ahmadiyya association. Young Adam also

joined the Ahmadiyyas, becoming most actively involved

after the end of the civil conflict.6

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community works through a

global hierarchy, and the Solomon Islands Community is

part of the Australian Ahmadiyya jamat centered in Syd-

ney. Unlike orthodox Islamic da’wa, which is decentral-

ized and works through the efforts of ordinary laypeo-

ple (Ali 2006; Kerr 2000), the Ahmadiyya’s mission pro-

gram is similar to that of Christian missions like Jeho-

vah’s Witnesses or Seventh-Day Adventists, whose mem-

bers enjoy the benefits of being part of a global organization

with strong links to affluent nations. Despite the apparent


advantages of the Ahmadiyyas, however, some of the early

converts to Islam have remained affiliated with the Sunni

Center, even though many of their relatives and associates

are Ahmadiyya. Even if one of the most appealing features

of Islam to Solomon Islanders is the vision of a single global

community where distinctions of class and race and nation-

ality are insignificant, the local development of Islam has

led friends and family members to join different branches.

RESTORING VIRTUE THROUGH LAW

Christianity taught us who created us but didn’t give

us any rules. That is how Christianity and Islam are

different—Islam is a way of life. Christians learn how

to pray, but they don’t know which hand you should

use to rub your backside with and which you should eat

with.

—Young man, Mbokanavera Sunni Muslim Center

If the first wave of Muslim converts were attracted by the

elegant monotheism and unity of Islam, many Malaitan

men who converted after the period of civil conflict seem

preoccupied by the problem of sin. With oblique references

to their own moral failings, they complained of being ostra-

cized by churches at the same time that they condemned

Christianity for being too soft on sin. Echoing tradition-

alist critiques of Christianity, they argue that, rather than

upholding moral laws, Christians rely too heavily on God’s

grace, trusting that the blood of Jesus will wash away their

transgressions.

Some converts, like the young man quoted above, are

angry at Christians and Christianity. When another con-

vert complained of being called a “terrorist” as he walked

in the streets of Honiara, this young man said that maybe

he was a terrorist, because if someone tried to take his wife,

he’d surely “terrorize” him. Like the “Rambo” image of

the 1980s (Jourdan 1995) or the Rastafarian image pop-

ularized during the conflict period when some Malaitan

militants wore dreadlocks and one prominent leader took

the name “Rasta,” the image of the Muslim terrorist is be-

ing appropriated as an antiestablishment identity (see Allen

2009 on anti-RAMSI sentiment among Malaitans; cf. de

Montclos 2008:77; Moretti 2006). Some Muslim converts,

this young man admitted, are ex-militants who were re-

jected by their Christian churches: “They want angels in

church, they don’t like them scratched. But those who

think they are angels are disillusioned, all of us are just hu-

man beings” (conversation with author, January 28, 2007).

Not only did the church reject sinners, but it was to blame

for sin. Christianity is foreign, he explained, introduced

by a white woman (he was referring to Florence Young,

the founder of the South Sea Evangelical Mission), and it

brought “rubbish, immorality, alcohol—lots of things came

in that didn’t exist in the Solomons. . . . We say that Chris-

tianity brought light, but really it just brought darkness”

(conversation with author, January 28, 2007).

Few of the converts I met were as angry as this young

man, but many are deeply disappointed by Christianity.

Having tried to reform their lives by being “born again”

in Christ several times over, they turned to Islam as the

way forward for themselves and their community. Akmad,

who lived near the family I was staying with in Adaliua,

turned to Islam in the years following the civil conflict.

Although not educated in elite schools, he was extremely

well versed in the Bible: he had been a lay leader of

the South Sea Evangelical Church, worked for the Bible

Society, participated in evangelism training sessions run

by the (Pentecostal) Rhema Family Church, and toured

Solomon Islands with the global parachurch crusade “Ev-

ery Home for Christ.” Until fighting on Guadalcanal forced

him home, Akmad was employed by the Malaitan Ship-

ping Company. Back home in Fataleka in north Malaita,

he said, his spiritual life became “weak,” and for the next

five years, none of his Christian neighbors came to en-

courage him. Adopting the phrasing and cadence of a

preacher, he described the neglect through Biblical parables

(cf. the following with, e.g., Luke 15:1–32, Revised Standard

Version):

One message that they always give, they always say that

the prodigal son returned on his own. So I said, the devil

likes to use this message of the prodigal son to deceive

you. You Christians use this word, “prodigal son,” and

you are leading many people to go to hell. The lost sheep

and the lost coin are the real message that us Christians

should work from. Today there are many lost coins inside

of our homes. Today there are many lost sheep inside of

our churches. Where is the pastor, where are some of the

elders? You people aren’t carrying out your work, to go

and look for them, search for them, as Jesus said, I came

to seek and save that which is lost.

A lost sheep abandoned by the church, Akmad was drawn

to Islam when some Australian Muslims visited Malaita in

October of 2005. He decided that even if people called him a

“terrorist,” he was going to join them because Islam was not

a religion of empty talk like Christianity was (cf. Robbins

2001). It was a religion of action.

Akmad saw a disjuncture between Biblical teachings

and the behavior of Christians, but he also thought that

Christians depend far too much on God’s grace. Grace is

an attribute of God, he said, but “even though he is a God

who is most gracious, most merciful, most kind, as we say,

when sin adds up, when sin increases, even God’s grace can

have an end” (conversation with author, January 27, 2007).

Many Christians know that God was wrathful in the Old

Testament times of Noah and the great flood but think that

the God of the New Testament is endlessly merciful. “If God

is merciful and graceful,” he asked, “Why then did Ananias

and Sapphira die?” (conversation with author, January 27,

2007). Ananais and Sapphira were a husband and wife who

were struck dead by God after holding back a portion of

the sales of their land from the community of believers fol-

lowing Christ’s resurrection (Acts 5:1–11, Revised Standard

Version). The major difference between Islam and Chris-

tianity, as Akmad saw it, was that the former laid down


rules for people to live by, while the latter left everything

up to an individual’s conscience. With Islam, he explained,

Things that are prohibited are prohibited. But with Chris-

tianity, it is your own choice to accept it or not. And then

people say, oh, it is a trial or a temptation for you to

overcome these things. But we cannot sit down with

temptation and trials all the time. [conversation with au-

thor, January 27, 2007]

Far from leading people into righteousness, Akmad and

other Muslims think that Christianity’s emphasis on in-

dividual freedom led them into endless cycles of sin.

New Malaitan Muslims believe Islam can restore a kind

of virtue that their ancestors practiced. Although first-wave

converts spoke in general of similarities between Islam

and Melanesian culture, these second-wave Malaitan con-

verts claimed that Islam is in fact their own lost ances-

tral religion. As evidence, several cited similarities between

Arabic and Malaitan languages and claimed that Malai-

tan place names have a meaning in Arabic; they also de-

scribed similarities between Malaitan and Arabic culture,

especially the separation of men and women. One con-

vert from north Malaita explained that Islam arrived in

Malaita with the first ancestors who were Arabs. After mi-

grating to the island, these ancestors got confused and be-

gan to worship their own dead instead of God. Christian

missionization, this convert explained, was good insofar as

it returned them to monotheism and worship of the one

true God. In the process, however, it destroyed the ances-

tral taboos that were the remnants of Islamic law.

Even if historical links between Islam and ancestral

Malaitan religion are untenable, Islamic critiques of Chris-

tian freedom resonate with similar arguments long ad-

vanced by Malaitan ancestralists. Whereas in much of

Solomon Islands conversion to Christianity occurred en

masse in the late 19th and early 20th century, significant

although dwindling numbers of Malaitans continued prac-

ticing ancestral religion throughout the 20th century. Ac-

cording to David Akin (1993:474–512, 1996:165, 2004),

Kwaio ancestralists in eastern Malaita have consistently

critiqued Christianity for being “free”: Christians are free

from ancestral rules, free from paying compensation for

infractions against both the living and the dead, and free

from providing brideprice payments. Unlike the ancestral-

ists, Christian Malaitans celebrate this freedom, but, as Ben

Burt (1994:162–163) has argued for Kwara’ae, they have

nonetheless gravitated toward fundamentalist versions of

Christianity, thus replacing ancestral taboos with strict Old

Testament–inspired rules.

These new Malaitan Muslims’ resentment of Christian-

ity as a foreign influence and their portrayal of Islam as

indigenous must be seen in light of earlier developments

within the South Sea Evangelical Church (SSEC; see Burt

1994). Malaitans tended to be more suspicious of British

colonial governance than many other Solomon Islanders

in part because their experience of colonialism was largely

through labor on plantations. A disproportionate number

of Malaitan men were recruited as indentured laborers to

work on the sugar plantations of Fiji and Queensland in the

late 19th century (Corris 1973; Keesing 1992). Along with

sometimes brutal discipline, laborers encountered Chris-

tianity on the plantations; in Queensland, the largest group

joined the nondenominational Queenland Kanaka Mission

founded by Florence Young, the predecessor of the South

Sea Evangelical Mission (SSEM, which later became the

SSEC).7 Returning laborers founded Christian villages in

Malaita before the island was pacified. After the end of the

labor trade, white SSEM missionaries were soon posted to

Solomon Islands but toured from bases at mission stations.

Local converts evangelized in their home areas and were

supported entirely by their own communities, relying on

the expatriate missionaries only for instruction.

As the first pan-Malaitan indigenous institution, the

SSEM played a critical role in the anticolonial Maasina Rule

movement that arose in Malaita after World War II. Al-

though Maasina Rule is best known for attempts to revive

and codify kastom as an alternative to colonial law (see,

e.g., Keesing 1978–79, 1992), many of its head chiefs were

Christian (Akin n.d.; Burt 1994; Laracy 1971; Ross 1978).

The SSEM took a hard-line stance against all kinds of tradi-

tional practice, but in the context of Maasina Rule, pastors

from all the churches worked with non-Christians to rec-

oncile kastom and Christianity. One such effort resulted in

the Remnant Church, founded by Zebulon Sisimia in the

1950s in the Kwara’ae area of north Malaita. Sisimia elab-

orated traditional myths by claiming that the first ances-

tor of Kwara’ae had originally traveled from Biblical lands

and brought with him the religion of the Israelites; his

descendents on Malaita, however, abandoned monothe-

ism and began to worship him as their ancestor (Burt

1983, 1994:208–211). Narratives linking Malaita and Israel

(and sometimes the United States) are not limited to the

heterodox Remnant Church but, rather, animate the ser-

mons of pastors of several of the Pentecostal denominations

that have grown rapidly among Malaitans in recent years

(Stritecky 2001b). Thus, Malaitan Muslims’ claim that Islam

is really the religion of their ancestors echoes neo-Israelite

Christian theologies that have been present on Malaita for

more than 50 years.

Islam also shares with the SSEC’s fundamentalist brand

of Christianity an emphasis on strict rules of behavior.

Far from leaving everything to the individual conscience

(as some of the Muslim converts suggest), SSEC disciplines

members who break church rules (e.g., by committing adul-

tery) by banning them from holding church offices and

imposing periods of official social ostracism. Many of ex-

SSEC Muslims were themselves subject to that discipline:

rather than experiencing endless forgiveness, they felt os-

tracized or ignored. In complaining about Christian free-

dom, however, ex-SSEC Muslims may be reacting to so-

ciological rather than theological liberty, especially the

possibility of moving from one church to another. This

proliferation of churches may be part of what leads new

Muslims to portray Christianity as lawless and anarchic,


allowing a kind of selfish individualism that was not possi-

ble in communities following ancestral rules. Yet they, too,

are exercising their individual choice to opt out of exist-

ing communities and enact visions of a new more virtuous

community—a project not dissimilar to those that moti-

vated the first Christian conversions.

Although some other regions of Solomon Islands were

initially dominated by a single mission church, Malaita

was divided between Roman Catholics, Anglicans, SSEC,

and Seventh-Day Adventists. Today, the SSEC appears to

be particularly prone to fission because of its open con-

gregational structure, with each pastor answerable only to

his congregation, and because the church’s strict discipline

may drive errant members to other churches. Disputes over

land are another factor underlying denominational schism,

and these have become worse in the years since thousands

of Honiara-resident Malaitan families were driven “home”

to Malaita: in theory these returnees had land rights, but

in practice there was little unused land available (Fraenkel

2004:61–62; Moore 2004:115–116, 269). Young men who

had been raised in town, moreover, were blamed for bring-

ing immoral lifestyles to rural areas. For various reasons,

then, rather than being welcomed home, many returning

Malaitans felt ignored or ostracized by their relatives and

neighbors and were thus likely to seek an alternative form

of religious community.

One of the most striking features of this latest wave

of Islamic conversions is that converts are almost exclu-

sively men, leading Clive Moore (2008:397) to suggest that

it functions as a men’s cult. The Christian transformation

of gender relationships had a particularly profound impact

on Malaita, where women were traditionally separated from

the rest of the community during menstruation and fol-

lowing childbirth. These “women’s taboos” were gradually

abandoned by Christians but, in the wake of Maasina Rule

codification efforts, became even more stringent among

those who continue to follow ancestral religion and now

function as a diacritic of non-Christian identity (Akin 2003,

2004; see also Keesing 1987). Even Christian Malaitans re-

tain a sense that female bodily fluids are potentially pollut-

ing. It is thus not surprising that the Islamic critique of the

Incarnation should resonate with these Malaitan converts.

As one interlocutor put it, it is unthinkable that a most

holy and sacred God could pass through what is called in

Solomon Islands Pijin “samting blong wuman” ([thing be-

longing to a woman]; i.e., female genitalia). The idea that

a God could beget a son, and that son would be born of

woman, struck them as blasphemous.

Yet the gendered nature of this new Muslim move-

ment is not only indebted to traditional gender ideologies

but also to men’s movements within evangelical Chris-

tianity. Beginning with the “muscular Christianity” of

Victorian-era England (Hall 1994) and flourishing in the

20th-century United States (Claussen 2000; Gallagher and

Wood 2005), these movements have attempted to counter

a perceived feminization of religion. Although direct links

with such movements are difficult to trace, evangelical de-

nominations like the SSEC are tuned into global trends

through tours of overseas evangelists and training. Many

Solomon Islanders laud the strength of women’s fellow-

ship groups but worry about the comparative weakness of

men’s faith (McDougall 2003), and most churches have in-

stituted special men’s and youth fellowship activities to

bolster it.

Without further research, it is hard to say how women

feel about their husbands and male relatives converting to

Islam. All of my male interlocutors said that ideally both

women and men would become Muslims but that their

own wives did not want to leave their churches. Akmad’s

wife, who remained an SSEC member, listened as I inter-

viewed her husband in their Adaliua house. She nodded

in agreement as Akmad explained how Islam had a posi-

tive effect on his life and those of Fataleka youth. As he

praised the overseas Muslim missionaries for avoiding local

women, however, she added, “they wouldn’t look at me,

wouldn’t shake hands, wouldn’t even say ‘good morning,’”

in a tone that suggested that she was not attracted to the

strict segregation of men and women that her husband saw

as a positive feature of Islam (conversation with author,

January 27, 2007).

Although these Malaitan Muslims are deeply con-

cerned with restoring appropriate relations between the

sexes they feel were lost when kastom was abandoned,

they are not primarily attempting to control women’s

behavior—they are more worried about men. Akmad said

that that Christians back home were coming to appreciate

Islam because they saw how it had reformed young men

who drank alcohol, smoked marijuana (the use of which

spread on Malaita only in the 1990s), committed adultery,

and beat their wives before becoming Muslim. Although

many Christian Solomon Islanders see control of women’s

dress and movement as crucial to public morality, these

new Sunni Muslims also spoke of how men should control

their gazes by not looking at other men’s wives. Akmad

told a story of being ridiculed by an elderly woman who

asked him why he was walking around in a “dress” (a story,

incidentally, that his wife found extremely funny). He ex-

plained his response to this old woman:

“Have you seen this kind of dress here, have you seen it

on your Catechists in church?” She said, “Yeah.”

“Like those robes that they wear in church?” She said,

“Yes.”

“Have you seen any sin inside of the church?” I asked

her, “Do you see any sins inside of the church?” Then

she was quiet.

I said, “Do you hear them gossip, do any rubbish things

inside of the church?” She said, “No.”

“I wear this one,” I said, “because I respect you.” [conver-

sation with author, January 27, 2007]

Sin, he continued, does not happen in the church, it hap-

pens outside, and men as well as women must be vigilant

in everyday life.

These ex-evangelicals Muslims see sin as avoidable,

rather than original. Christians, they argue, trust too much


in Jesus to redeem them from sin, instead of following the

laws that God gave to humanity to keep us on the straight

path. “Trust in the blood of Jesus to cleanse your sins, then

head back to the nightclub,” complained one older man at

the Mbokanavera Center. “Jesus was killed 2,000 years ago,

but they continue to kill him every day” (conversation with

author, January 28, 2007).

CONCLUSION: REJECTING CHRISTIAN FREEDOM

Islam is spreading in Solomon Islands in much the same

way that various Christian denominations have spread over

the past century: young men move away from their rural

villages and encounter new religious practices, which they

bring back home. In the late 19th century, indentured la-

borers brought Christianity back from Queensland and Fiji

plantations; in the early 20th century, native evangelists

were trained at mission stations and then founded churches

in their own villages; after World War II, Islanders learned

of new Christian denominations like Jehovah’s Witnesses

from visiting U.S. servicemen. After national independence

in 1978, educated elites learned about Islam from re-

gional universities or from Muslim professionals working in

Honiara. Today, Solomon Islands–based Ahmadiyya mis-

sionaries and itinerant Sunni teachers in Honiara and

Malaita are not so different from their Christian counter-

parts who have also flooded into the country since the

restoration of law and order in 2003 (see McDougall 2008).

Yet, especially for ex-evangelical Christians who have

converted since the civil conflict, becoming Muslim marks

a significant transformation in ideas about morality, sin,

and freedom. As a number of recent works on the an-

thropology of Christianity have illustrated (e.g., Asad 2003;

Engelke 2007; Keane 2007), secular liberal notions of free-

dom emerge from Protestantism’s rejection of the sup-

posedly empty ritual forms and meaningless rules of pre-

modern Catholicism. In missionary contexts, Protestants

transferred these critiques to heathen fetishism, which

was condemned for misrecognizing God’s agency and the

agency of the individual subject (Keane 2007). For many

Melanesians, freedom from onerous ancestral taboos was

one of Christianity’s greatest blessings. Yet, as Robbins

(2004) has argued for first-generation Christian Urapmin,

this new freedom had troublesome consequences. Antiso-

cial desires that had once been kept in check by external law

became the responsibility of the individual subject alone,

who must look inward and confess any sins to God.

Recent Muslim converts’ complaints about Christian

freedom from law reflect more than theology. Another

kind of freedom is perhaps more troubling: namely, the

liberty to move from one denomination to another. As

sociologists of religion (e.g., Niebuhr 1929) have long

noted, doctrinal and sociological freedom are entwined. Be-

cause it locates authority not in traditional institutions but

in the individual who reads the Bible or experiences the

Holy Spirit, Protestantism is prone to schism. In the rural

Solomon Islands, where churches pull networks of kins-

people together into consolidated villages, denominational

schisms reflect and exacerbate splits in social groups. It is

particularly problematic for those who depend on access to

land held by kin groups for their subsistence. Thus, the first-

generation converts, who are more firmly established in the

modern economy of Honiara and live at a distance from the

politics of rural communities, seem less concerned with ten-

sions between denominations in villages. Denominational

competition has been a feature of Solomon Islands Chris-

tianity since its origins, but it seems to have intensified in

recent years because of the influx of new foreign mission-

aries and the return of many town-dwelling Malaitans to

their rural homes. Ironically, even as they seek escape from

such trouble, Muslim converts add to the sectarian conflicts

within village communities and undermine the ideology of

Christian national unity.

After an unsettled period of Solomon Islands history

that was rife with transgressions of all sorts, some of the ex-

evangelical Christians who were both victims and perpetra-

tors of these sins found the burden too great to bear alone.

If, as Robbins argues, converting to Christianity means “be-

coming sinners,” then converting to Islam is a reversal of

this process: a return to the law that was given to the Bib-

lical prophets, Muhammad, and, according to some Malai-

tan Muslims, their own indigenous ancestors. Although

customary taboos represented a corrupted and polytheistic

version of God’s timeless law, they still engendered virtu-

ous living that was lost when Solomon Islanders embraced

Christian notions of “freedom.” Converting to Islam lifts

the burden of sin by promising a set of rules and a religious

community that will allow individuals to become sinless.

DEBRA MCDOUGALL Anthropology and Sociology, School

of Social and Cultural Studies, University of Western

Australia, Crawley WA 6009 Australia; debra.mcdougall@

uwa.edu.au; http://uwa.edu.au/people/debra.mcdougall

NOTES

Acknowledgments. I am most grateful to the Solomon Islander Mus-lims who were willing to talk to me about Islam. I also thank mylong-time interlocutors from Ranongga, especially Inia Barry andhis family, who hosted me in Adaliua, and Silas Pioh, who accom-panied me on interviews. I am very grateful to Scott Flower forhis generosity in sharing materials from his research on PNG Mus-lims and to Terry Brown for sharing news about Islamic groupson Malaita. Drafts of this article benefited from the critical com-mentary of participants in anthropology seminars at MacquarieUniversity, the University of Western Australia, and Monash Uni-versity as well as a panel on “Vice and Virtue in the Global PublicSphere: The Cultural Politics of Evangelical Morality” at the 2007AAA meetings. For their close readings and constructive comments,I also thank David Akin, Jan Ali, Terry Brown, John Cox, MarkEdele, Scott Flower, Courtney Handman, Clive Moore, and MattTomlinson, along with three anonymous reviewers and AA editorTom Boellstorff. Field research and writing was funded by the Aus-tralian Research Council through an Australian Postdoctoral Fel-lowship and a Discovery Project entitled, “Christianity, Conflict,and Culture: An Anthropological Investigation of the Political Roleof Churches in Solomon Islands.”1. Islam is a recent introduction among indigenous populationsin Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and PNG but has a long presenceamong the Indo-Fijian population of nearby Fiji.


2. I have not visited Muslim groups in Malaita or other provincesand do not discuss heterodox Muslim groups in east Malaita thathave taken a much more militant stance against local Christians(Rev. Terry Brown, personal communication, October 16, 2008; seealso Marau 2008; Palmer 2008).3. Photocopy of handwritten note from Imam Mikail Abdul Aziz’sDawaah trip to Solomon Islands, August 17–24, 1997, provided byScott Flower.4. Such settlements are often viewed as home to unemployed ortransient residents of Honiara, but low salaries and high housingprices within town boundaries mean that even steadily employedSolomon Islanders now live in such areas.5. All interviews cited were conducted in a mixture of English andSolomon Islands Pijin.6. Both Muhammad Asad and Muhammad Adam are now pursu-ing higher degrees (Musa bin Masran, personal communication,June 11, 2009).7. Ben Burt (1994:107) reports that Malaitans working in Queens-land were initially skeptical of the prominent role that women tookin the mission, fearing that it was part of a conspiracy to weakenthem.

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FOR FURTHER READING

(These selections were made by the American Anthropologist EditorialInterns as examples of research related in some way to this article. Theydo not necessarily reflect the views of the author.)

Boster, James, James Yost, and Catherine Peeke2003 Rage, Revenge, and Religion: Honest Signaling of Aggres-

sion and Nonaggression in Waorani Coalitional Violence.Ethos 31(4):471–494.

Brodwin, Paul2003 Pentecostalism in Translation: Religion and the Production

of Community in the Haitian Diaspora. American Ethnologist30(1):85–101.

Connolly, Jennifer2009 Forbidden Intimacies: Christian–Muslim Intermarriage in

East Kalimantan, Indonesia. American Ethnologist 36(3):492–506.

Deeb, Lara2009 Emulating and/or Embodying the Ideal: The Gendering

of Temporal Frameworks and Islamic Role Models in Shi’iLebanon. American Ethnologist 36(2):242–257.

Feinberg, Richard2006 Early European–Polynesian Contact Reenacted. American

Ethnologist 33(1):114–125.Newcomb, Rachel

2006 Gendering the City, Gendering the Nation: Contesting Ur-ban Space in Fes, Morocco. City and Society 18(2):288–311.

Rouse, Carolyn Moxley2007 Pious Muslim Bodies and Alternative Medicine. Transform-

ing Anthropology 15(2):111–124.Simon, Gregory M.

2009 The Soul Freed of Cares? Islamic Prayer, Subjectivity, andthe Contradictions of Moral Selfhood in Minangkabau, In-donesia. American Ethnologist 36(2):258–275.

Tomlinson, Matt2007 Publicity, Privacy, and “Happy Deaths” in Fiji. American

Ethnologist 34(4):706–720.

Becoming Sinless

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