There are more Muslims living in Indonesia than in all the Gulf countries combined but, again, it doesn’t take up much space in what we usually think of as the ‘Islamic world’.

They also stretch incredibly far, wider than the continental US, so they’re so different from one end to the other, including in the kind of people, as well as plants and animals and climates, that you find within them.Īnother relevant superlative is that it’s the world’s largest Muslim-majority country. What’s cool about it, to me, is that it’s an island country, so it’s composed of-no one’s really sure quite how many-but about 15,000 islands at the last count. Just by virtue of that alone, it’s really worth knowing more about, because it doesn’t get a whole lot of media coverage or leave a huge cultural imprint in America or, I think, in Europe.

Indonesia is the fourth largest country in the world and home to 268 million people.

Foreign Policy & International Relationsīefore we get to the books you’ve chosen, I thought you could maybe take us on a bit of a tour of Indonesia and give us a sense of why it’s a country we might want to know more about.

Novel the power of six bahasa indonesia