The "Ashoka Approach" and Indonesian Leadership in the Movement for Pluralist Re-Awakening in South and Southeast Asia.

Leaders of Indonesia's Nahdlatul Ulama, the world's largest Muslim organization, are working to consolidate South and Southeast Asia as an alternate pillar of support for a rules-based international order founded upon respect for the equal rights and dignity of every human being. Integral to this effort is a regional strategy called the "Ashoka Approach," which seeks to reawaken the ancient spiritual, cultural, and socio-political heritage of the Indianized cultural sphere, or "Indosphere"—a civilizational zone that pioneered, long before the West, key concepts and practices of religious pluralism and tolerance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]