JAKARTA, Indonesia  Reaching out to the world’s most populous Muslim country and the boyhood home of her new boss, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton traveled to Indonesia on Wednesday to pay tribute to its hard-won political freedoms.

“Indonesia has experienced a great transformation in the last 10 years,” she said, referring to the Asian financial crisis of 1998, which led to the ouster of Suharto, its autocratic president, and set Indonesia on the path to becoming a robust democracy.

“If you want to know if Islam, democracy, modernity and women’s rights can coexist, go to Indonesia,” she said at a dinner of academics, journalists, environmentalists and women’s rights advocates.

Mrs. Clinton said her decision to come to Jakarta  a nearly 7,000-mile detour between stops in Japan and South Korea  was also motivated by a desire to recognize the importance of Southeast Asia, a region that the Obama administration believes was neglected by the Bush administration.