T

he conventional wisdom is that Jakarta will just ignore the Sunni-Shia or Saudi-Iran proxy war in the Middle East. The reasons for this are clear. Firstly, taking sides in a transnational sectarian conflict is unwise and dangerous. Secondly, what is happening in the Mideast is ludicrously convoluted so that little could be done, even by more powerful countries, to make a difference.

But this is by no means a risk-free position. We should not forget one obvious but crucial fact here: Indonesia has the world'€™s largest Muslim population, the majority of whom are Sunnis. So, while the government is sitting comfortably on the fence, acting as a cautious and detached bystander, a large number of Indonesian Muslims exposed to the violence in the Middle East and relentless online propaganda are becoming increasingly sectarian.

Since the Syrian civil war broke out, the country has seen a rising wave of anti-Shia sentiment, which has taken its toll on the small local Shia community. At least dozens of Indonesian citizens have traveled to Syria to fight a '€œholy war'€ against the Shias and some have vowed to return to wreak havoc at home. We can no longer pretend, or only pray, that the ongoing Sunni-Shia tensions overseas will have no bearing on the domestic situation. It already has and the situation is only getting worse day by day.

The problem is more than just Indonesian Sunnis becoming more sectarian and hateful against the Shia minority after years of living in harmony. The bigger issue is that a failure to properly and fairly respond to the carnage committed by armed forces on both sides has given rise to extremism, which the administration of President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo has been handling so carelessly.

To be fair, the government is in no good position to launch effective propaganda against Islamic radicalism, whose rise is propelled by conflicts in the Mideast. Not only does President Jokowi seem to lack any clue whatsoever on how to respond to the Mideast crisis, he clearly has no interest in the restive region beyond his election campaign to support the Palestinian cause, which many be taken as nothing but vacuous rhetoric. After all, Jokowi has said he wants to end past president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono'€™s grandiose internationalist foreign policy since day one in office.

That said, Islamic organizations now hold the bigger responsibility in keeping violent sectarianism from taking hold in the country. Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah, the nation'€™s largest Islamic groups, have spoken a lot against the Islamic State (IS) movement, condemning its brutalities and perverted interpretation of the Koran. But IS is not the root of the problem. Condemning IS does not address the causes of why otherwise decent people become sectarian and radical.

The major problem now is clearly the growing Saudi-Iran rivalry, a geopolitical showdown between the two great powers in the Islamic world that inadvertently (or by design) revived the ancient civil war of Islam. It is no secret that the two countries are competing for influence in the Mideast, especially after the Arab Spring. There are trails of Iranian and Saudi influences in war-torn countries like Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

Indeed, the myopic US foreign policies, especially in the past, and the rise of fringe groups like IS and al-Qaeda in those countries have made the situation more complicated, but the Saudi-Iranian cold war is the fuel that burns the senseless sectarian war between the two major Islamic denominations.

Indonesian Muslims, led by NU and Muhammadiyah, should no doubt refrain from getting involved in the ongoing conflict, but this does not mean that they should be indifferent to it. The civil war in Syria has taken the lives of many innocent Muslims. Many of them were victims of the cruel Bashar Assad regime, backed by Iran. In Yemen, the Saudi-led coalition has also conducted airstrikes that ended up killing civilians.

If the Assad government keeps killing its people, the non-combatant Syrians, with barrel bombs and chlorine gas, and if neither the Indonesian government nor the religious leaders say anything about it, people would easily find reasons to go to Syria and develop animosity against the local Shias. That said, Islamic organizations must inform the public about the political nature of the ongoing Sunni-Shia war and acknowledge and call for an end to the violence and atrocities committed by Iran and Saudi Arabia or their proxies.

The radicals have been exploiting the images of Assad'€™s Sunni victims on the web to provoke the local Muslims, while Muslim leaders and intellectuals are too busy condemning the violence of an exceptionally media-savvy group like IS. This creates a perception that mainstream Muslims only care about what IS does and ignore the crimes committed by Assad and Shia militias.

Indonesian Muslim leaders were always loud and unanimous in their protests against Israel and the US for whatever they did in Palestine, especially Gaza. So why are they not protesting against Iran and Saudi Arabia for fomenting sectarianism in the Islamic world that has left hundreds of thousands of Muslims dead to advance their own political interests?

The NU and Muhammadiyah must stand up against those responsible for the simmering Sunni-Shia tensions in the Mideast, be they IS, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah or the sectarian governments in Riyadh and Tehran. The main goal, of course, is not to change the Mideast, but to give a voice and understanding about the political nature of the ongoing conflict between Sunnis and Shias to Indonesian Muslims who are unable to grasp what is really happening in the Mideast. If they fail to do this, then the '€œsectarianists'€ are already winning.
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The author is a staff writer at The Jakarta Post.