PAPUA NEW GUINEA HIGHLANDS TURNING TO ISLAM
My interest in Islam stems from the 14 years I worked in Indonesia, where the great majority of the population is Muslim. When I came to PNG 20 years ago I set aside my interest in Islam since I thought there were no Papua New Guinean Muslims. I discovered that Islam had arrived in PNG about 15 years ago when I read a newspaper report that a mosque had opened near Kimbe in West New Britain. I visited it, and to my surprise, found that the new Muslim converts were Simbu people—originally Catholic—who worked on an oil palm plantation. I was even more surprised to learn that that they belonged to an Islamic reformist movement founded in India in the late 19th century called Ahmadiyya, after the name of its founder.