Insight yang menarik, salam, Bismo DG
----- Original Message ----- From: "Salim Said" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, February 02, 2007 2:51 PM Subject: FW: [I-Discussion] Don Emmerson: Barack Obama's Indonesian connection > > > >>From: "Edward Aspinall" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >>Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >>To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >>Subject: [I-Discussion] Don Emmerson: Barack Obama's Indonesian connection >>Date: Fri, 2 Feb 2007 07:39:36 +1100 >> >> >> >>Hi, Ed, I thought perhaps this op ed might interest colleagues on the >>list. >>Cheers, Don >> >>"Obama's International Background an Asset, Not a Flaw," by Donald K. >>Emmerson, as printed in the San Jose Mercury News, 1 Feb. 2007, p. 16A: >> >>Anyone who has followed the U.S. presidential race knows that Sen. Barack >>Obama, if he runs and wins, will be the first African-American to live in >>the White House. Few know that, if that happens, he will also become the >>first U.S. president to have lived in Indonesia as a child and to have had >>an Indonesian stepfather. >> >>Until now, this bit of biography might have mattered only to fans of >>political trivia. But elements of the conservative press have made an >>issue >>of Obama's links to Indonesia by insinuating that during his time there he >>might have absorbed radical Islamist ideas at a Muslim school. >> >>"Hillary's Team Has Questions about Obama's Muslim Background" ran the >>headline in Insight magazine that started the flap. The editor may have >>wished to kill two birds--the presidential hopes of both Obama and his >>main >>rival for the Democratic nomination--with a single stone. Readers who >>believed the report would have thought twice before supporting Obama, >>while >>those who considered it false would have thought less of Hillary for >>stooping to plant it. >> >>Official representatives for Obama and Clinton, respectively, quickly >>denied >>the allegation as "completely false" and "an obvious right-wing hit job." >>But not before the charge had been repeated by Fox News and debated in the >>blogosphere. >> >>Obama's parents met at the East-West Center in Honolulu. He was born in >>1961. Two years later his parents divorced. His mother remarried. His >>new >>stepfather was Indonesian. In 1967, when Barack was six years old, the >>family moved to Indonesia's capital, Jakarta. There, as described in his >>1995 biography, Barack attended a private Catholic school and, later, a >>"predominantly Muslim" one. In 1971, when he was 10, his mother sent him >>back to Hawaii to continue his schooling. >> >>Investigative reporting by CNN, the Associated Press and other responsible >>media has established that the notion that Obama was influenced by a >>radical >>Islamist agenda is absurd. He was never enrolled in a madrasah. Nor is >>it >>surprising that students at the secular public school he did attend were >>"predominantly Muslim"--nearly nine-tenths of all Indonesians are. The >>atmosphere in Jakarta in 1967-69 was basically secular. Muslim head >>scarves, for example, were rare. I know because I lived there then. >> >>Obama was sent to a Catholic and then to a secular public school. His >>parents, of modest means, could not afford tuition at the international >>school. At the public school, which welcomed pupils of various faiths, >>Obama's parents registered him as "Muslim" only for convenience. The >>Indonesian Communist Party had just been destroyed, and atheistic Marxism >>outlawed. Pupils were required to state an affiliation with a major world >>religion. When enrolling a child, the common practice was to list the >>father's faith. >> >>Obama's stepfather, Soetoro, was only nominally Muslim. Like many if not >>most other ethnic-Javanese Indonesians at that time, he was a "statistical >>Muslim." That label was applied to those who, if required by a school >>registrar or a census taker to state their religion, would say "Islam," >>but >>who were Muslims far more from habit or heritage than by practice or >>conviction. >> >>Should we be glad that this smear has been so quickly put to rest, and >>move >>on? Yes. But not before noting--and regretting--an irony: Precisely >>when >>tides of disregard for the United States and its policies are sweeping the >>world, when Americans more than ever before need to understand Muslim >>societies, American fears of Islam are being evoked and stoked. >> >>Far from being seen as a detriment to his presidential candidacy, Obama's >>prior exposure to a foreign culture should be counted as an asset. >> >>At the same tender age as Obama's when he was in Jakarta, I was in Moscow >>attending a Soviet elementary school. I remember my teacher frowning at >>me >>when, on the anniversary of Lenin's death, unlike my Russian classmates, I >>couldn't manage to cry. My parents, my sister and I could have lived in >>the >>building that housed the American Embassy--a "golden ghetto." But my >>father >>wanted us to learn the Russian language and experience Russian life. I am >>grateful that he did. >> >>The idea that Americans, children or adults, should wrap themselves in >>familiar cocoons and avoid encounters with anything strange, including >>Indonesian Islam, is worse than just bad parenting. It is a willful >>parochialism that the United States as a country cannot afford. Not in >>this >>post-Sept. 11 world. Not if we wish to engage with that world as it >>actually is--rather than as we might, in fearful isolation, imagine it to >>be. >> >>Donald K. Emmerson is a Senior Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for >>International Studies at Stanford University and a co-author of Indonesia: >>The Great Transition. >> > > _________________________________________________________________ > Laugh, share and connect with Windows Live Messenger > http://clk.atdmt.com/MSN/go/msnnkwme0020000001msn/direct/01/?href=http://imagine-msn.com/messenger/launch80/default.aspx?locale=en-us&source=hmtagline > >
