The weapons are fast and devastating, driven by big bucks and high tech. They’re being used in a war of religions that’s almost 14 centuries old. Both sides have recruited God. A man of war from Southeast Asia thinks he can bring reason to bear. He can’t.

It’s tough trying to imagine a politician more conceited than Donald Trump, but Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto comes close. He’s elbowing his way onto the world’s centre stage to harangue and holler. His brand is military and blokeish.

His attempts at peacemaking are superficially praiseworthy but impractical. They don’t show a smart strategic mind working to raise the status of the globe’s fourth most crowded nation through peacemaking, but an unrehearsed actor fumbling with the script.

His latest bid for international admiration has been to offer his mediation services to solve the US-Israel war on Iran, a day after it started. The fighters hadn’t called for a referee and most likely never will, but the gesture looked grand domestically.

Wow, say the Indonesian voters, our guy is the world’s top cop, and the mighty want his solution services.

Then we learned that the attackers had already killed President Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. No boss, no deal-making.

Since then, there’s been a significant crash in support for Prabowo backing US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace.

Earlier, and without consultation with the public, the former general sacked for subordination in 1998 dobbed in his Republic to join the BOP. Officially, it’s “a global collaboration platform to support the stabilisation of conflict areas and post-conflict recovery, especially in Gaza.”

Western nations like Australia, NZ, the UK and Canada have been disinterested.

So far, 20 mostly Middle East Muslim-majority states are reported to have joined the US and Israel, co-founders of the BOP, overseeing the Gaza Peace Plan as authorised by the UN Security Council last year.

Countries must pay US$1 billion to join – the money to be dispensed by Trump. It’s not known if Indonesia has coughed up.

At home, Prabowo has more than 80 per cent political support through a coalition of minor parties, so there’s no effective opposition in the legislature. But he needed the blessing of Islam for his venture.

Before he left for Washington and the first BOP session, Prabowo met local Muslim organisations, including Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah_,_ that together claim more than 140 million members.

At first, they endorsed Prabowo’s plan, but now the deal is disintegrating. The peak Majelis Ulema (Islamic Scholars’ Council) now wants Indonesia out of the BOP:

“The organisation condemned the offensive, saying it runs counter to humanitarian principles and the Indonesian constitution, which commits the nation to helping build ‘a world order based on freedom, lasting peace and social justice’.”

This is a real kick in the shins for the man who runs a state 7,400 km from the Middle East with more Muslims than any other nation. Almost all are Sunni, the branch of the faith followed by 90 per cent of the world’s second most popular religion after Christianity.

The root of their sect is the practice of selecting leaders on the advice of a council – a system used since the Prophet Muhammad died in 632 CE.

The origins were not democratic; many clerics were absent or disbarred at the first conference, and no women were present. That hasn’t changed.

The rejects went for nepotism; they claimed Muhammad had chosen his cousin and son-in-law to be his successor. This group is called Shia; it’s the majority in Iran and parts of Iraq.

On such apparently footling foundations, great enmities have grown and thrived, even till today.

There are tiny pockets of Shia in Indonesia – perhaps less than three per cent – and they reportedly suffer often brutal discrimination from one-eyed Sunnis through to the Anti-Shiite National Alliance.

The idea of Sunni Prabowo adjudicating for Shiites in Iran is like the Pope sorting out the many warring sects of Protestantism.

Trump hasn’t helped his BOP get the credibility of neutrality by tolerating comments by his mate, Mike Huckabee. Even before the BOP got underway (if it ever will), the US Ambassador to Israel suggested “Israel could claim a biblical right to territory beyond its borders in the Middle East.”

Not a statement to appease Muslims. More than a dozen governments called the comments “dangerous and inflammatory” and a threat to efforts to end the war in Gaza. As a Baptist Minister, the Ambassador would know the beatitude that “blessed are the peacemakers” even if he finds the exhortation awkward.

The Palestinians are largely Sunni, so no probs there, but Indonesia doesn’t recognise Israel and has no official diplomatic relationships.

Australia, the US, and a swag of European powers support a two-state solution – an independent Palestine alongside Israel.

UN General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock said the international community isn’t just committed to the two-state solution but “identifying tangible, timebound and irreversible steps for its realisation.”

“Member states owe it to all the children of Palestine and Israel so that they may not inherit rubble, grief and despair – but safety, dignity and hope.”

Fine ambitions – but Jerusalem under PM Benjamin Netanyahu says ’no way’. More precisely: “We are going to fulfil our promise that there will be no Palestinian state. This place belongs to us.”

Indonesians as peacemakers in the Middle East sounds nutty, but not to former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr Dino Patti Djalal. After talking to Prabowo, he reckoned that the BOP was the only option for peace.

Normally a commentator of clarity, the former Ambassador to the US seemed confused about the BOP’s purpose and negative about its abilities.

“But the bottom line is, this is an experiment, not a panacea that can cure all diseases. And I see him (Prabowo) as realistic about it. He sees the risks. Of course, the biggest risk is Israel, because Israel has enormous influence over Trump.

“The risk of failure is high, due to various factors. It could be Trump, America, Israel, the field, Hamas, and so on.”

Dino said that Prabowo was confident that Indonesia and other Muslim-majority countries could act as a counterweight to the decisions made by the BOP, though if Indonesia joins as pledged, it will dominate the agency.

“‘We can keep up because in everything we do, we guarantee there must be unity with Islamic countries.” But which ones?

A splendid ideal. Lacking is the way to erase 1,400 years of acrimony. Prabowo has no answers.