JAKARTA, March 12 (AFP) - Dozens of Indonesian Muslim students protested in front of the US embassy Friday against US President Barack Obama's visit later this month to the world's largest Muslim-majority country.

The around 50 protestors, who were coordinated by a Muslim university student body, shouted "Reject Obama... God is greater," and threw their shoes at posters of Obama, copying a protest in Iraq against former US president George W. Bush.

Obama, who is hugely popular in Indonesia as he spent several years of his childhood in Jakarta in the late 1960s, is expected to visit the country for three days starting from March 20.

"Just like Bush, he is a war president and an enemy of Islam," protest coordinator Fikri Ahmad Irhamul told AFP.

"He sent thousands of soldiers to Afghanistan, and many of our Muslim brothers have died because of him," Irhamul said.

Small protests were also held in other cities across Indonesia.

Students under the same organisation protested in Banjarmasin in South Kalimantan province and in Bandung in West Java, according to the Antara state news agency.

Protestors from the hardline Muslim group Hizbut Tahrir, which aims to establish a Muslim caliphate, also staged similar protests, according to local media reports.

Obama will seek to use his visit to Indonesia to build on a speech he gave last year to the Islamic world from Cairo urging improved ties with the United States, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Thursday.