Another offer to mediate Middle East peace, this time from Indonesia

Indonesia is offering to act as a peacemaker in the Middle East. Distanced as it is from the region, but still a Muslim nation, Indonesia feels it is uniquely positioned for this role.

The New York Times reports:

As a country with about 15 percent of the world’s Muslims and good relations with other Muslim nations and the West, Indonesia hopes to encourage mutual understanding and show how Islamic states can profitably embrace modernity, better government and globalization, Indonesian officials say. . .

“Countries in the Middle East have been so deeply involved in the problems of the region for so long a time that they can get too focused on some specific aspects,” Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda said in an interview.

As the Times went on to report, the message Indonesia would like to bring to its brotherly nations in the Middle East is that they ought to go down the road Indonesia has. As the Times writes:

Last year, during a visit to Saudi Arabia, [Indonesian President] Yudhoyono urged Muslims to liberate themselves from isolationism, “to be at the forefront of globalism” and to “embrace technology and modernity.”

He said Islamic countries needed to promote better governance and to build bridges with the West. His message suggested that Islamic countries would be wise to follow Indonesia down the path to liberal democracy.

The Indonesian representative to the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Mecca in December 2005, urged his fellow nations to address the notorious “democracy deficit” that exists in the Islamic world:

“The tradition of Islam has nothing to contradict participatory politics and good governance,” he told an audience that included King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. “Indeed, democracy is fully commensurate with the ethical and legal precepts of this great religion.”

Indonesia itself only recently made the transition to democracy, only having emerged from the 32-year rule of its former president, Suharto.

Adding to its bona fides as a peacemaker, Indonesia has, as the Times writes, also "had the experience of contributing to peace efforts in Cambodia and the southern Philippines, as well as solving a Muslim separatist conflict in its own Aceh Province."

“We have our own credentials,” as Indonesia's foreign minister told the Times. “Perhaps from our experience we can contribute something.”

Hey, I give them credit for even having a willingness to walk through that mine field that is the Middle East.