Indonesia's second-largest Islamic organization Muhammadiyah is hosting the second World Peace Forum from Tuesday to Thursday at the Sultan Hotel in Jakarta. Some 200 international religious, political and business leaders expected to attend the forum will discuss root causes of violence and address the surge in conflicts at the national and international levels. The Jakarta Post's Abdul Khalik talked with Muhammadiyah chairman Din Syamsuddin on the role of Indonesian Muslims in helping to mitigate and reduce conflict. Below are excerpts of the interview:

Question: Why has the second World Peace Forum chosen the subject of violence as its theme?

Answer: Muhammadiyah sees that Indonesian Muslims still lack the initiative to help find solutions to global problems. As a country with the largest Muslim population in the world, we should have great confidence in proposing our ideas.

Violence has become a global phenomenon, and we see many forms of violence in the name of religion, economy, politics and culture both at the global and national levels, including in Indonesia, perpetrated by individuals, groups or states.

We believe that if we let the stream of violence continue unabated, the world's civilization will be brought down to its lowest level. We think we should take a comprehensive approach to help counter the surge in violence.

How do you see the level of violence in Indonesia, especially if we look at the recent string of attacks by radical Muslims against pro-pluralism groups and Ahmadiyah?

To be frank, we've raised the issue because we have concerns over the rise in violence at the domestic level in addition to the global level. We've become targets of terrorism and bombing attacks as well as religious and ethnic-based conflicts in several regions in Indonesia.

But all the recent domestic violence doesn't stand alone, as it relates to global violence. With this international event, we hope we can gain feedback to solve our own domestic problems of violence.

We can't solve these problems with an ad-hoc approach, as national radicalism may have connections with global problems of injustice in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan, creating solidarity at the national level.

We can also share our own experience in handling conflicts in the Ambon-Poso clashes or Aceh.

What do you hope will result from the conference?

By the end of the conference, we will have a moral message to all world leaders of our hope that they can address the problems of violence both at the national and global level.

We hope also we can arrive at a set of practical steps to be applied by all participants after they return to their respective countries.

What can Muhammadiyah and Indonesian Muslims in general offer to help eradicate lingering problems of violence?

First, as a religious movement Muhammadiyah wants to underline that violence is against our religious teachings, has no root within the religion and in fact, will only damage religion's image.

That's why we call on leaders from all other religions who will attend the conference to be able to see Islam as a peaceful religion, and together we can impose moral messages of anti-violent means to solve problems.

We also demand economic and political leaders to refrain from engineering an agenda that could create violence or help perpetrate violence.

In Southeast Asia, we see there are lingering problems of violence, especially in the southern Philippines and southern Thailand. What can Muslims do about this?

We will discuss these conflicts, as many figures from the conflict areas will attend the conference. And we will use them as case studies although we probably don't have time to address them in detail, as the conflicts have lasted for years.

But I believe that as a neighbor with the world's largest Muslim population, we must try to help solve the conflicts.

Besides the conflicts in Southeast Asia, we will also continue finding ways to solve problems in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

Since the U.S. intervention in Iraq, there has been a concern that the country can use the pretext of preemptive strike against any country, including Iran. How do Indonesian Muslims react to the possibility?

U.S. intervention against Iraq is one of main sources for global violence beside conflicts in Palestine. It is proof of massive state violence. We will touch upon the problem in the conference and we will convey a message to the United States asking that it refrain from using violence in achieving its goals.

Muhammadiyah hopes that with the victory of (Barack) Obama and the Democratic Party, the United States could abstain from using violence that would ruin the global order.