Anti-Shia acts triggered by Middle East politics

Islamic radicalism expert Noorhaidi Hasan of the State Islamic University (UIN) Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta expressed confidence that the dynamics of Islam in Indonesia had always been linked to the various political situations in the Middle East.

He said that former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s policy to develop nuclear weapons had threatened Middle Eastern countries, especially Saudi Arabia.

Shia beliefs, centered in Iran, and Sunni beliefs, centered in Saudi Arabia, had always been hostile toward each other.

“This is what has probably been going on in Indonesia. The anti-Shia movement has intensified as an effort to corner Iran in the Islamic world,” said Noorhaidi, who is also dean of UIN Sunan Kalijaga’s School of Sharias.

Noorhaidi said that Indonesia was chosen as the base for strengthening the anti-Shia movement because it had the world’s largest Muslim population, the majority of whom were Sunnis although in terms of Islamic tradition they were also close to Shia traditions.

If the anti-Shia movement was formed in Indonesia, he added, it would become a strong capital to form Sunni solidarity against Shiites.

“History is being repeated but with a different format,” said Noorhaidi, who is also a researcher on terrorism and various manifestations of Islamic politics in contemporary Indonesia and Muslim countries in Southeast Asia.

He said that in the 1980s, the anti-Shia movement was growing across the globe following the leader of Iran’s Islamic revolution Ayatollah Khomeini’s plan to internationalize Mecca and Medina. Saudi Arabia then used Wahhabi-influenced religious organizations in different countries to denounce Shia beliefs.

In Indonesia, Noorhaidi continued, Saudi Arabia would not directly ask these organizations to take action but indirectly inserted anti-Shia discourses through its partners.

Noorhaidi also said that there was a possibility of local actors playing in the game by providing channels for the radical desires of these religious organizations by choosing Shia followers as the target.

Quoting the result of his own research, Noorhaidi said that the Wahhabi movement in Indonesia had weakened. There are local cultural mechanisms that cause people to reject teachings that they deem strange.

The peak of the Wahhabi movement in Indonesia happened in the 2000s when it turned into the jihad movement operating in conflict regions such as Poso in Central Sulawesi and Ambon in Maluku.

After the 9/11 attack in the United States, Saudi Arabia stopped its support of Wahhabism due to pressure from its ally, the US. “At the same time Saudi Arabia also tried to restore its good image so that it would not be considered as an exporter of radicalism,” said Noorhaidi who gained his doctoral degree from Utrecht University, the Netherlands.

Separately, freedom-of-faith defender Dawam Rahardjo, said that the anti-Shia movement emerged because Saudi Arabia with support from the US did not want to lose its leadership status in the Islamic world.

This is considered necessary because from a political aspect, Iran is more developed because it is more democratic and progressive while Saudi Arabia is authoritarian and feudal.

“Indonesia in this case depends on Saudi Arabia in relation to Indonesian migrant workers and the haj pilgrimage, meaning that political issues in Saudi Arabia are very influential in Indonesia,” Dawam said.

The persecution of Shiites has been escalating in the past few years. In East Java, some Sunni clerics have asked the local administration to issue a regulation limiting the spread of Shia Islam, saying that the sect matched the criteria for heresy issued by the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) in 2007.

In December 2012, hundreds of people burned houses in a Shia community in Sampang, Madura, forcing more than 160 Shia followers to take refuge in Sidoarjo, around 100 kilometers away. They were even forced to convert to Sunni beliefs if they wanted to return home. Previously, Shia cleric Tajul Muluk was sentenced to two years in prison for blasphemy.

In Yogyakarta, the growing anti-Shia movement has caused the Rausyan Fikr Institute, which is said to be affiliated with Shia beliefs, to freeze its activities since December 2013.

“We have chosen to freeze this organization until our safety can be guaranteed by the state as stipulated in the Constitution,” the institute’s spokesman Edy Syarif said recently.

Source: The Jakarta Post