BYU Forum by Indonesian Leader

From a BYU press release:

Brigham Young University will host an Indonesian political leader, author and leading Islamic scholar at a forum Tuesday, Oct. 10, at 11:05 a.m. in the Marriott Center.

Alwi Shihab will speak on "Building Bridges to Harmony through Understanding."

Shihab has been minister of foreign affairs (equivalent to the U.S. secretary of state), coordinating minister for people's welfare and president of the National Awakening Party. He is also an adviser to the Indonesian president and special envoy to the Middle East and all Islamic countries.

It is not clear if this forum will be shown on BYU-TV or not. It will be broadcast to an auditorium on the other side of BYU campus from the Marriott Center, but they aren't always allowed to put these forums on public television.

I'm planning on attending this event. It sounds like Shihab served with Gus Dur, the first democratically elected president of Indonesia. I was sort of surprised to learn that Indonesia is actually the largest Muslim country by population.

I plan to put up a post on PonderIt about the forum, and hopefully I will get up a post before the forum about Gus Dur and his experiences with Mormons. I'll update this post with links when appropriate.

UPDATE: The PonderIt story on Gus Dur.