04-04-2007, 09:20 PM
INDONESIA HOSTS SUNNI-SHIITE MEETING
Dandy Koswaraputra
http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satel...=Article_C&cid=1175008823282&pagename=Zone-English-News/NWELayout
"We are concerned about it. Muslim Indonesia which does not have any problem with the two groups, can hopefully mediate the gap," said Rozi.
JAKARTA, April 2, 2007 — The Indonesian city of Bogor plays host Tuesday, April 3, to the International Sunni-Shiite Ulemas (scholars) conference, the first meeting of its kind in the predominantly Muslim country in an effort to bridge the Sunni-Shiite gap.
"We are concerned about it. Muslim Indonesia which does not have any problem with the two groups, can hopefully mediate the gap," Head of the Organizing Committee Rozi Munir told IslamOnline.net Monday,April 2.
Rozi, a former minister and currently the deputy chairman of the largest Muslim organization in Indonesia, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), said his country is keen on playing a pivotal role in ending Shiite-Sunni conflicts.
Pinning high hopes on the two-day conference, Rozi said his committee has been working behind the scenes to organize the meeting to make it a success.
"We intentionally set up it in silence to avoid controversy. That why we are holding the event remote from capital city," he said, referring to the city of Bogor, 65 kilometers from Jakarta.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is due to open the conference, which is held against a backdrop of mounting Shiite-Sunni tensions over the raging sectarian violence in Iraq, which kills dozens day in an day out in unquenched revenge attacks.
The Indonesian government has invited 25 Sunni and Shiite scholars from countries such as Malaysia, Pakistan, Jordan, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq and Syria, according to Rozi.
Iran's Participation
But Ahmad Suaedy, the head of an Indonesian delegation to the conference, predicted that Iran might snub the Indonesian invitation in protest at Jakarta's backing of UN Security Council resolution 1747 over Tehran's controversial nuclear program.
"If Iran is absent then the meeting will be unsuccessful," said Ahmad, the chairman of the Wahid Institute, which was initiated by former Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid to promote multiculturalism and inter-faith tolerance.
He said an Iranian boycott of the conference would make it " a merely ineffective discussion without any concrete consensus."
Besides, Suaedy said, the meeting would also be ineffective without inviting THE main Western players in the Middle East like the United States and European heavyweights.
Iraq's sectarian bloodletting has sparked fears of a region-wide Sunni-Shiite conflict.
In the first high-profile meeting between top Sunni and Shiite scholars, Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the head of Iran's influential Expediency Council, called on February 14 on Muslims worldwide to act in unison and take into their strides differences to face challenges ahead.
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Saudi Arabia early in March to ease Sunni-Shiite tensions.
In his meeting with King Abdulla Bin Abdel Aziz, Ahmadinejad have warned against "the plots carried out by the enemies in order to divide the world of Islam."
Award-winning American investigative reporter Seymour Hersh has revealed that Washington was sowing a flammable Sunni-Shiite divide to weaken the newly-bolstered Iranian role in the region.
Dandy Koswaraputra
http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satel...=Article_C&cid=1175008823282&pagename=Zone-English-News/NWELayout
"We are concerned about it. Muslim Indonesia which does not have any problem with the two groups, can hopefully mediate the gap," said Rozi.
JAKARTA, April 2, 2007 — The Indonesian city of Bogor plays host Tuesday, April 3, to the International Sunni-Shiite Ulemas (scholars) conference, the first meeting of its kind in the predominantly Muslim country in an effort to bridge the Sunni-Shiite gap.
"We are concerned about it. Muslim Indonesia which does not have any problem with the two groups, can hopefully mediate the gap," Head of the Organizing Committee Rozi Munir told IslamOnline.net Monday,April 2.
Rozi, a former minister and currently the deputy chairman of the largest Muslim organization in Indonesia, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), said his country is keen on playing a pivotal role in ending Shiite-Sunni conflicts.
Pinning high hopes on the two-day conference, Rozi said his committee has been working behind the scenes to organize the meeting to make it a success.
"We intentionally set up it in silence to avoid controversy. That why we are holding the event remote from capital city," he said, referring to the city of Bogor, 65 kilometers from Jakarta.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is due to open the conference, which is held against a backdrop of mounting Shiite-Sunni tensions over the raging sectarian violence in Iraq, which kills dozens day in an day out in unquenched revenge attacks.
The Indonesian government has invited 25 Sunni and Shiite scholars from countries such as Malaysia, Pakistan, Jordan, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq and Syria, according to Rozi.
Iran's Participation
But Ahmad Suaedy, the head of an Indonesian delegation to the conference, predicted that Iran might snub the Indonesian invitation in protest at Jakarta's backing of UN Security Council resolution 1747 over Tehran's controversial nuclear program.
"If Iran is absent then the meeting will be unsuccessful," said Ahmad, the chairman of the Wahid Institute, which was initiated by former Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid to promote multiculturalism and inter-faith tolerance.
He said an Iranian boycott of the conference would make it " a merely ineffective discussion without any concrete consensus."
Besides, Suaedy said, the meeting would also be ineffective without inviting THE main Western players in the Middle East like the United States and European heavyweights.
Iraq's sectarian bloodletting has sparked fears of a region-wide Sunni-Shiite conflict.
In the first high-profile meeting between top Sunni and Shiite scholars, Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the head of Iran's influential Expediency Council, called on February 14 on Muslims worldwide to act in unison and take into their strides differences to face challenges ahead.
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Saudi Arabia early in March to ease Sunni-Shiite tensions.
In his meeting with King Abdulla Bin Abdel Aziz, Ahmadinejad have warned against "the plots carried out by the enemies in order to divide the world of Islam."
Award-winning American investigative reporter Seymour Hersh has revealed that Washington was sowing a flammable Sunni-Shiite divide to weaken the newly-bolstered Iranian role in the region.