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Wahid and the Voice of Moderate Islam

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Published: Thursday, 07 January 2010 16:42

Written by PAUL WOLFOWITZ

Published: 7 January 2010

The Wall Street Journal
OPINION
JANUARY 6, 2010, 9:45 P.M. ET

Wahid and the Voice of Moderate Islam
Indonesia's first democratic president espoused a philosophy of religious and ethnic tolerance.
By PAUL WOLFOWITZ

Abdurrahman Wahid, who died last week at the age of 69, was the first democratically elected president of Indonesia, the world's fourth largest country and third largest democracy. It has the largest Muslim population of any country in the world. Although he was forced from office after less than two years, he nevertheless helped to set the course of what has been a remarkably successful transition to democracy.

Even more important than his role as a politician, Wahid was the spiritual leader of Nahdlatul Ulama, the largest Muslim organization in Indonesia, and probably in the world, with 40 million members. He was a product of Indonesia's traditionally tolerant and humane practice of Islam, and he took that tradition to a higher level and shaped it in ways that will last long after his death.

Wahid recognized that the world's Muslim community is engaged in what he called in a 2005 op-ed for this newspaper "nothing less than a global struggle for the soul of Islam" and he understood the danger for Indonesia, for Islam and for all of us from this "crisis of misunderstanding that threatens to engulf our entire world."

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Cuba's Vitriol

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Published: Wednesday, 06 January 2010 04:40

Written by Gen. Barry McCaffrey (ret)

Published: 5 January 2010

Posted on Thu, Dec. 31, 2009

As Cubans end 51 years of living under the Castro brothers' rule, the regime continues to crack down on bloggers, artists, dissidents and others who dare question the communist dictatorship.

Sometimes it can seem that little will ever change. But it's clear that a new generation of Cubans raised on the government's anti-U.S. propaganda aren't buying it.

It's clear, too, that efforts in Congress to drop the U.S. travel ban on Cuba have stalled, and for good reason. Even those who have tried to work with Fidel and Raúl Castro to improve U.S.-Cuba relations are questioning the Cuban regime's true intentions.

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