It's always perplexing in Washington, as in most Westerncapitals, that when one attends a seminar about Islam, it isgenerally focused on the Middle East, with perhaps an occasionalnod to Pakistan and the Islamic bomb.
Indonesia, the most populous Islamic nation in the world, seldomrates a mention. There are 200 million Indonesian Muslims (out of atotal Indonesian population of 230 million), more than can be foundon the entire Arabian peninsula and many more than live in the nexttwo most populous Muslim states, India and Pakistan. Yet Arabdisdain for the peoples of the region (charging, for example, thatthey don't even speak Arabic, the language of the Prophet), adisdain generously reciprocated by Southeast Asians for the Arabworld, has kept Southeast Asian Muslims on the margin of Muslimdebate and out of Western consciousness. That low profile has beengreatly to the benefit of the stability and independent evolutionof Islam in Southeast Asia. But this is set to change, both becauseof the increasing economic and strategic strength of Southeast Asiaand the spread of Islamist terrorism.
There is today a life and death struggle under way in Indonesiaand its Southeast Asian neighbors over who owns Islam, a contestthat is almost as important as any political battle facing theinternational community. In many ways it is a conflict ofglobalization, though not in the usual sense. For in this battlethe interests of the West lie overwhelmingly in the triumph of thelocal, the ethnocentrically particular and the traditional--againstthe interests promoted by global communications technology and thespread of internationalist ideas.
