Friday, June 29, 2007

Indonesia's Guitar Warrior

by Jason Tedjasukmana from Time

Ahmad Dhani (also known as Dhani Dewa), may have a way to go before reaching the musician-statesman stature of Bono, but he is talking the talk. Dhani first has to win over his homeland, however. After notching up seven platinum albums in Indonesia with his own band, Dewa 19, he announced his intention to wean millions of his countrymen away from extremist Islamic views. "What happens depends on how we deal with the radicals and teach people about Islam," explains Dhani, who says he quit a religious school as a child because he was put off by its conservative Wahhabi teachings. "It's time to come together, even if we have to do it one song at a time." ... Last October, Dhani spoke at a Defense Department-sponsored conference at NORAD in Colorado Springs, explaining to military and government officials why he rejected the path of his father, a former member of the hard-line body Dewan Dakwah Islamiyah Indonesia, as well as that of his grandfather, a member of the outlawed Darul Islam, which once fought for an Islamic state in the archipelago.

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