Inside Indonesia : the world's largest Muslim nation is not in the Middle East. Its tropical islands hold vast potential--and equally vast challenges.

• Author: Perlez, Jane

Jakarta, Indonesia--In a crowded classroom at an Islamic boarding school, an American visitor interrupts a session on Islamic thought. The teenage boys, dressed in traditional white shirts and sarongs, with Islamic caps perched on their black hair, are welcoming. What do they think of the United States? the visitor asks. "I admire American science and technology, but I think American foreign policy is wrong," says Syamsul, 19, to a general murmur of approval from his friends.

His comment represents the attitude of many people in Indonesia, which has the largest Muslim population in the world. Most Indonesians practice a moderate form of Islam, yet skepticism about U.S. policies abounds at all levels of society. Put simply, many Indonesians believe that the United States lumps terrorism and Islam in the same category.

"There are many different interpretations of what it is to be a good Muslim in Indonesia," says Douglas Ramage, director of the Asia Foundation in Indonesia, who has lived in Jakarta, the capital, on and off for 11 years. "Indonesians don't believe being a good Muslim defines their identity. They are more likely to define themselves as Indonesians first."

Indonesia is a country with great potential and great challenges. It has the fourth-largest population in the world (behind only China, India, and the U.S.), with 220 million people scattered across about 13,000 tropical islands. It holds rich deposits of oil, natural gas, and gold, along with large supplies of rubber and timber, and its location in Southeast Asia makes it strategically important. As a colony of the Netherlands from the 1600s to 1945, it was called the Dutch East Indies.

Indonesia's position as the most populous Muslim country is of special interest to the United States. Some officials in Washington would like to see Indonesia become the model for a moderate Islamic country that can enjoy good relations with the U.S. Paul Wolfowitz, now the deputy secretary of defense, was the U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia in the late 1980s, and is a proponent of strong ties between the U.S. and Indonesia.

"What makes Indonesia so important is not just its size, but that it represents a Muslim tradition that epitomizes tolerance, respect for women, and a very open attitude to the world--and it is in marked contrast to that view that the extremists who carried out the World Trade Center attack are trying to present as Muslim," Wolfowitz recently told the Brown Journal of World Affairs at Brown University.

...