Obama's Jakarta district sees shift in Islam

“There was nothing like that in those days, when Obama was a kid here. None of these, what do you call them, terrorists,” said Agus Salam, who sells gado-gado, a local vegetable dish, from a Matraman stall and who remembers the president as a chubby-faced little boy.

“Religion then and now is different. Then, religion was not a big issue. Now religion has changed, everyone seems to have all these different beliefs. There's this type of Islam, that type of Islam, another type.”

Radical groups were kept tightly in check under the autocratic former president Suharto who ruled for three decades until he was ousted in 1998. His fall from power paved the way for greater democracy — including the freedom for groups like the FPI to express their views openly.

“Maybe our government at the moment is not firm enough. Back in Suharto's day, the government was much tougher,” said Rudy Yara, 61, who remembers teasing Obama about his tightly curled hair as a child.

Not everyone has such a rosy view of the past. One Matraman resident, who asked not to be named, remembered feeling scared at night in the 1960s in the West Java city of Bandung because of the fear of attacks by extremist group Darul Islam (DI).

Many of today's extremist groups such as Jemaah Islamiah have their roots in DI, which was repressed by the Indonesian army in the 1960s.

Noor Huda Ismail, an Indonesian expert on radical Islamist groups, said he thought that radicalism was growing in Indonesia, partly because of the effective use of internet technology by extremist groups.

“Yes, it's probably more widespread now but I would prefer to live now than in Obama's time, at least we now have freedom of expression,” he said.

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