FINANCIAL TIMES: Barack Obama, the US president, reached out to moderates in the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, saying America was not at war with “a great religion like Islam” after he visited south-east Asia’s largest mosque in Jakarta on Wednesday.
In a speech at the University of Indonesia, which was peppered with childhood memories of street food and the sound of the Muslim call to prayer, Mr Obama sought to build on comments in Cairo last June when he vowed to repair relationships with Muslim countries damaged by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Indonesia, the world’s third-largest democracy and one of the fastest-growing economies in Asia, is a focal point in a wider diplomatic push to shore up Washington’s strategic ties in south-east Asia, where China has overtaken the US as a bigger trading partner… (more)
