INDONESIAN schoolchildren gave Tony Blair a lesson about the vast scale of his mission to bridge the gulf between Islam and the West yesterday.

On a one-day visit to the world’s largest Muslim nation, both to mark its move from dictatorship to democracy and to show his support for the voice of “moderate Islam”, the Prime Minister learnt in a Jakarta classroom that the next generation of Muslims are just as suspicious as their elders of the motives of America and the West.

After talks with President Yudhoyono, Mr Blair went to the Pondok Pesantren Darunnajah, an Islamic boarding school twinned with the Holy Family School in Keighley, West Yorkshire.

He was given an enthusiastic welcome by pupils as he witnessed displays of martial arts and dancing and heard the girls’ school band serenade him with John Lennon’s Imagine.

But during a question and answer session he came face to face with the matters that preoccupy young Muslims when they told him in straightforward language about their concerns over their “brothers and sisters” in Iraq and Palestine.

Impeccably polite, addressing the Prime Minister as “his excellency”, the children — in their early teens — posed Mr Blair a series of searching questions that would have given him trouble had he been in the House of Commons.

From the start the questions were deeply political. The first was about the Luton schoolgirl banned from wearing the jilbab to class. He was asked what British rules were.

Mr Blair replied: “We leave it up to the individual school. Some schools permit it, some do not, but we let the final decision be with the school. There are different views in my country about this.” Another student then asked if he would persuade his “best friend” President Bush to stop the war in Iraq. The student said that Britain always helped America but on this it was wrong.

Mr Blair, who appeared to be enjoying what was becoming a bruising encounter, said that they would have to disagree about the war. But he said that the people of Indonesia now had the right to vote and the removal of Saddam Hussein had given that right to the people of Iraq. “It means that the politicians are now underneath the people, not the people underneath the politicians,” he said.

Another student asked him how he would feel if he were an Iraqi civilian who had had relatives killed in the conflict. Mr Blair replied: “You feel very strongly that what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan was wrong. I understand that. But in those countries now people can vote and their governments should decide what is right and what is wrong. You might say Iraqi Muslims want this, I might say they want that. But the best test of what the people truly wanted was how they voted.”

Mr Blair went on: “You have a view of America which is not a view I share. We have got to see how we build a bridge of understanding between the West and the Muslim world. That doesn’t mean we always agree, but we understand why we disagree. That’s the important thing so that in the end even if we do disagree we never distrust or hate each other.”

He was then tackled on the Middle East peace process and urged to “stop the war against our brothers and sisters in Palestine”. The Prime Minister replied: “I agree with you. There’s no more important issue than to bring peace between Israel and Palestine. This has been difficult but I will try to do my best to ensure we can bring peace there.”

Earlier Indonesian scholars and leaders had criticised Western policy on Iraq and Afghanistan at the meeting with the President. Din Syamsuddin, head of the 30 million-strong Muhammadiyah, Indonesia’s second-biggest Muslim group, said that the Islamic representatives had told Mr Blair that “ . . . to increase the dialogue between the British and Indonesia and the Muslim world, the British Government must pull its troops out of Iraq because Iraq’s occupation will only stimulate radicalism, extremism and new terrorism”. Mr Blair said later that promoting greater understanding between the West and Islam was “more important than any security measure to combat terrorism”.

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