>From: "Deddy Mansyur" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>Op-Ed Columnist
>
>
>Obama's Indonesian Lessons
>
>
>
>
>
>By ROGER COHEN
>Published: April 14, 2008
>
>JAKARTA, Indonesia
>
>When Barack Obama's 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 Obama's 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 couldn't 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 Sambuaga's wall: she's a Christian. Most of the other classmates are
>Muslims in this country that is home to the world's largest Muslim population.
>
>Only Citra Dewi wore a headscarf. "I used to sit next to him and I'd say
>'Berry, move away, you're 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
>Obama's 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 world's 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
>America's 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, it's better to deal with a multi-faced reality than
>simplified demons.
>
>I'm troubled by Hillary Clinton's 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 she's a pro-gun churchgoer. That may play in
>west Pennsylvania but won't 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 there's a huge photograph of pilgrims at Mecca
>in the entrance; I imagined Fox News filming it one day to pronounce the
>place a Madrasa. It's nothing of the sort. It's a state school whose
>students are 85 percent Muslim, a little below the national average.
>
>There's 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 what's really happening."
>
>Obama already has. He's shed his chubbiness but not Indonesia's lesson,
>emblazoned on the national coat of arms, of "unity in diversity."
>
>Blog: <http://www.iht.com/passages>www.iht.com/passages
>
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