A visit with several implications

King Abdullah’s visit to Indonesia this week carries more political implications than the visits he had to other South Asian countries.

The Islamic dimension of the trip was clear; there are 241 million Indonesians. Islam was brought from Yemen to that archipelago eight centuries ago. It is the largest group of people to convert to Islam peacefully, without resorting to any form of conquest or war. 

For decades, Indonesians identified with the Arabs, politically and emotionally. Ahmed Sukarno, the founding president, visited the Arab world several times. Following the Arab defeat in the 1967 war and the fall of Jerusalem to Israeli hands, 50 highly trained air force pilots sent a letter to King Hussein expressing their wish to volunteer in the Jordanian air force, hoping to have a share in the honour of liberating Al Aqsa Mosque. 

The then Indonesian ambassador, Nour Shazeli, could not find a way to communicate to those officers that their request could not be accepted due to political considerations.

When former Indonesian president Mohmmed Wahidi visited Jordan on his way to Jerusalem, several years ago, he spoke about the potential of having one million Indonesian tourists coming to Jordan annually as part of their pilgrimage to Mecca and Jerusalem.

Members of the delegation accompanying King Abdullah during this trip were stunned by the way the Indonesian Al Nahdha society, the Mohammedan society and Sufi imams expressed love to the King, asking him to be the spiritual leader of this huge nation who is willing to follow whatever course he wants them to.

The depth of emotions evinced by religious leaders and imams surprised all observers and reminded all of the Islamic depth Jordan has in the Muslim world.

Such a great potential can be used to Jordan’s advantage, economically and financially since the Indonesian gross domestic product reached last year $1.285 trillion.

An Indonesian engineer, Mohammed Habib, was the first to build, decades ago, an aircraft manufacturing factory in South Asia, to satisfy the needs of the region, following his graduation from a German university.

Jordan can invest in the Islamic dimension of the Indonesian equation, which has so far rejected Iranian attempts to dominate the religious scene there.

Through post-graduate scholarships, Arabic language teaching programmes, tourist bilateral agreements for a million pilgrims a year to the nine holy shrines in Karak and Salt, and through economic joint ventures, Jordan can reinvest in King Abdullah’s visit to a nation that considers him to be its spiritual leader.