Obama Pledges Expanded Ties With Muslim Nations
President Obama, renewing his call for better relations between the United States and the Muslim world, used a long-awaited homecoming trip to this island nation to make a symbolic visit on Wednesday morning to the largest mosque in southeast Asia — even as he declared that “much more work needs to be done” to fulfill the promise he made 17 months ago in Cairo of a “new beginning.”
Indonesia is the world’s largest majority Muslim nation, and Mr. Obama, on a 10-day, four-country trip through Asia, used his brief stay here to hold it up as an example of diversity, tolerance and democracy.
He closed his remarks at a news conference on Tuesday evening with the Muslim greeting “salaam aleikum” and said he intended to reshape American relations with Muslim nations so they were not “focused solely on security issues,” but rather on expanded cooperation across a broad range of areas, from science to education.
In a speech on Wednesday morning to an enthusiastic audience of 6,500 people at the University of Indonesia, he also harked back to his Cairo message.
“I said then, and I will repeat now, that no single speech can eradicate years of mistrust,” Mr. Obama said. “But I believed then, and I believe today, that we do have a choice. We can choose to be defined by our differences, and give in to a future of suspicion and mistrust. Or we can choose to do the hard work of forging common ground, and commit ourselves to the steady pursuit of progress.”
Earlier, at the Istiqlal Mosque, Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle, followed the Islamic custom of removing their shoes; Mrs. Obama wore a head shawl with beads. They walked along a courtyard on a pale blue carpet escorted by the grand imam, who told Mr. Obama that there was a church next door and that during Christmas parishioners use the mosque’s parking lot because the church does not have enough space.
Mr. Obama turned to reporters and said, “That is an example of the kind of cooperation” between religions in Indonesia.
For Mr. Obama, who suffered a backlash at home this year when he said he favored the right of Muslims to build a proposed Islamic center in Lower Manhattan — and whose personal history makes him the target of anti-Muslim sentiment — the outreach effort is a delicate one. Jakarta is the place that has given rise to many of the myths about Mr. Obama, including the rumor that he is Muslim (he is Christian); that he attended a madrasa that was connected to radical Islam (he attended two schools here, one Roman Catholic and one secular, although most of the students were Muslim); and that he was not born in the United States (he was born in Hawaii).
In his speech, Mr. Obama tried to correct the misperceptions and he spoke about Indonesia’s ability to bridge religious and racial divides. “As a Christian visiting a mosque on this visit,” he said, “I found it in the words of a leader who was asked about my visit and said: ‘Muslims are also allowed in churches. We are all God’s followers.’ ”
The last time Mr. Obama was in Indonesia, in 1992, he spent a month holed up in a rented beachside hut in Bali, where he swam each morning and spent afternoons writing “Dreams From My Father,” the memoir that later became a best seller. In it, he shared memories of his life here as a boy, “running barefoot along a paddy field, with my feet sinking into the cool, wet mud, part of a chain of other brown boys chasing after a tattered kite.”
He has chased after a few other things since then — notably the presidency — and when he returned here, he got the kind of rock-star welcome he no longer receives in the United States.
When Air Force One touched down on Tuesday in a typical Jakarta afternoon thunderstorm, a huge cheer went up inside the State Palace complex — not from average Indonesians, but from the local press corps, watching on television. “Finally, he arrived!” exulted Glenn Jos, a cameraman.
After descending the steps of his plane, Mr. Obama, in a dark suit, accompanied by his wife walked the red carpet that had been laid out for them and stepped into a black Cadillac limousine. He poked his head out the door to give a short wave.
“Yes!” the reporters shouted.
Indonesians have prepared three times previously for a visit from the president, only to be disappointed. Last year, the White House hinted that Mr. Obama might tuck in an Indonesia stop on a November trip to Asia, but it did not materialize.
Then, in March, Mr. Obama, his wife and daughters canceled a trip at the last minute so that he could shepherd his health care bill through Congress. In June, another Indonesia trip was canceled, this time so the president could deal with the BP oil spill.
And once Mr. Obama finally arrived, a cloud of volcanic ash played havoc with his schedule, forcing him to leave a few hours earlier than planned on Wednesday so that he could make it to Seoul, South Korea, to attend the Group of 20 conference of economic powers.
Mr. Obama spent four years, from ages 6 to 10, in Indonesia, living here with his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, and stepfather, Lolo Soetoro. In his memoir he writes richly of the experience. He described the markets: “the hawkers, the leather workers, the old women chewing betelnut and swatting flies off their fruit with whisk brooms.”
He wrote of his introduction to the food: “dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper (crunchy).” And the menagerie in his backyard: “chickens and ducks running every which way, a big yellow dog with a baleful howl, two birds of paradise, a white cockatoo and finally two baby crocodiles.”
Mr. Obama said Tuesday that he had come to “focus not on the past but the future,” but Indonesians seemed to have both in mind. At a state dinner, Mr. Obama was served Indonesian dishes he said he loved as a boy. And in a gesture that Mr. Obama said left him “deeply moved,” President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono presented him with a gold medal in honor of his mother, who worked here for years as an anthropologist and pioneer in microcredit for the poor.
Jakarta has undergone a transformation since Mr. Obama first moved here in 1967. The tallest building he remembered, a shopping mall, has been eclipsed by skyscrapers. Mr. Obama recalled riding on “little taxis, but you stood in the back and it was very crowded” or on bicycle rickshaws.
“Now,” he lamented, “as president I can’t even see all the traffic, because they block all the streets.”
At the university, Mr. Obama sprinkled his speech with Indonesian phrases, mimicking the sing-song sounds of street vendors. Then, in this country’s native tongue, he said,
“I’m home.”
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Sources: Daily Mail, MSNBC, NY Times, Google Maps
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