Word: jakarta
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...bronze statue of a 10-year-old Barack Obama, shod in sneakers and holding aloft a butterfly, quickly turned into a tourist attraction. Foreigners flocked to the public park in Jakarta to honor the U.S. President, who lived four years of his childhood in the Indonesian capital. Locals visited, too, but they weren't as pleased. "Indonesians mostly came to protest," says park groundskeeper Yunus. "They didn't want the statue here." Less than three months after a local Obama fan club raised $10,000 for the monument, it was quietly moved in February to a nearby school where Obama...
...Soetoro, as he was once known by his Indonesian stepfather's surname, an honorary citizen. But even as Obama takes a trip down memory lane (followed by a visit to Australia), the fate of his boyhood likeness underscores his, and America's, growing image problem across Asia. Soon after Jakarta city workers used the cover of darkness to relocate the young Barry's statue, top U.S. diplomatic envoys were in Beijing to repair foundering relations with the world's third largest economy. Meanwhile, Japan, the world's No. 2 economy, has been calling for a more "equal" (read: less submissive...
...nevertheless key to U.S. interests. A 17,000-island archipelago, Indonesia boasts the world's biggest Muslim population. It is also the world's third largest democracy (after India and the U.S.), proving that Islam need not be the enemy of political freedom. Back when Obama lived in Jakarta, where his American mother was an anthropologist and aid worker, Indonesia was ruled by a dictator and mired in poverty. Today, it is a proud member of the G-20 club of wealthiest economies. While much of Indonesia is still poor (18% live under the poverty line), the country is finally...
...That's partly because Indonesia has done well fighting terrorism. Most Indonesians practice a syncretic, moderate form of Islam. Yet a small band of homegrown extremists is waging a bloody jihad. A string of bombing campaigns, striking everywhere from Jakarta to the holiday isle of Bali, has claimed hundreds of foreign and local lives over the past eight years. Just weeks before Obama was due in Indonesia, police shot dead at an Internet café outside Jakarta a man believed to have orchestrated the 2002 bombings of two Bali nightclubs. Indonesia's efforts to counter its terror threat...
...There's no question that orthodox dogma is gaining sway in Indonesia, like elsewhere in the Muslim world. In Jakarta, for instance, the number of women wearing headscarves has increased dramatically compared to a decade ago. As local governments have gained more autonomy, some have implemented a variety of Islamic-based legislation - ranging from enforced Koran literacy for Muslim children to the as-yet-unenforced stoning to death for adultery - despite the fact that Indonesia is officially a secular nation. At Menteng Elementary School where Obama once studied, the principal and many teachers wear veils. The Muslim prayer room...