Views below of an Obama supporter - Roger Cohen in the NYT. Do you think a
leader like Obama needs to step in now to enhance the US image? Does Obama
have a team of like thinkers?
Dilip Deka
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By ROGER COHEN
Published: April 14, 2008
JAKARTA, Indonesia
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Roger Cohen
Go to Columnist Page » Blog: Passages
When Barack Obamas Indonesian classmates are asked to recall the boy they
all called Barry (pronounced Berry), their description is unanimous:
chubby.
He was the tall, chubby kid in Bermudas who joined their 4th grade class at
the Besuki elementary school in 1970, the boy with the white mother and
Indonesian stepfather who brought his own sandwiches to school (odd to a
noodle-eating crowd) and, strangest of all, wrote with his left hand.
It was so weird that he was left-handed, recalled Ati Kisjanto, now a
marketing consultant. That was considered impolite here, and you were forced
to write with your right hand.
A dozen of Obamas classmates were gathered at the house of Sandra Sambuaga,
exchanging stories over Indonesian delicacies. For two years after Obama was
elected to the Senate in 2004, they were unsure this was the boy registered at
their school as Barry Soetoro (the family name of his stepfather).
We just couldnt believe this skinny U.S. senator with another name was our
chubby, hyperactive Berry! said Dewi Asmara Oetojo, a politician. We were
only convinced when we saw a photo of him as a boy.
The atmosphere at the gathering was raucous. The school was in the upscale
Menteng neighborhood; everyone has done all right. A small crucifix hangs from
Sambuagas wall: shes a Christian. Most of the other classmates are Muslims in
this country that is home to the worlds largest Muslim population.
Only Citra Dewi wore a headscarf. I used to sit next to him and Id say
Berry, move away, youre sweating! she told me. In Indonesia we say active
boys smell of the sun. Everyone laughed at that.
I listened and tried to imagine the 9-year-old Obama too embarrassed to sing,
swapping his sandwich for sticky rice, enduring the fascination with his hair
(it kept curling back, like our noodles, said Sambuaga).
No wonder Obama is adept at exploring the spaces in between, the areas that
are neither black nor white, neither with us nor against us, neither red
state nor blue state: he has spent his life building bridges to assemble a
coherent identity. Only by uniting disparate threads could he become whole
under the name of Barack Obama in a world experienced as defined by divergent
truths.
One such many-shaded truth was religion. His stepfather, according to Obamas
memoir, followed a brand of Islam that could make room for the remnants of
more ancient animist and Hindu faiths. That tracks with the pliant, tropical
Islam of Indonesia where a you shall have your religion, and I shall have
mine tolerance dwarfs pockets of radicalism.
The United States has an Islam problem. Say the name of the religion of
almost 20 percent of the worlds population and images of bearded, Wahhabi
extremists surge. They reflect a reductive unease born of 9/11 and ignorance. A
central challenge of the next president will be reinventing Americas relations
with the Islamic world, and stimulating open dialogue between Muslims.
Obama has lived with Islam, from his boyhood Indonesia to a later encounter
with the similarly malleable Islamic faith of Kenyan relatives. He can situate
Saudi Wahhabism as one current among many. With Islam as with most things, its
better to deal with a multi-faced reality than simplified demons.
Im troubled by Hillary Clintons recent innuendo-dripping remark that her
Christian faith is the faith of my parents and my grandparents. As opposed,
of course, to Obama, who came to Christianity from a mother whose secular
humanism held that rational, thoughtful people could shape their own
destiny, and a Kenyan father born into a Muslim family, and a Muslim
stepfather.
We live in the Age of Interaction. Fluidity and connectedness define the
world, forging hybrid identities not fixed in formaldehyde. Clinton, on an
Obama-is-aloof kick, now says shes a pro-gun churchgoer. That may play in west
Pennsylvania but wont bridge the national and international chasms Bush
bequeaths.
I used to support Hillary, but now I look at her eyes and see someone always
wired, always calculating, whereas in Berry I see some wisdom, said Kisjanto.
I went to the school, where theres a huge photograph of pilgrims at Mecca in
the entrance; I imagined Fox News filming it one day to pronounce the place a
Madrasa. Its nothing of the sort. Its a state school whose students are 85
percent Muslim, a little below the national average.
Theres a mosque and a small Christian prayer room with a sign saying: I
understand we are all different and include everyone. Kuwadiyanto, the
principal, told me: Christians and Muslim kids mix easily. Maybe more
Americans should come here to see whats really happening.
Obama already has. Hes shed his chubbiness but not Indonesias lesson,
emblazoned on the national coat of arms, of unity in diversity.
Blog: www.iht.com/passages
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