A backlash by moderate Indonesians, angry at the West's response to the Bali bombings, may promote radical Islam. Hamish McDonald and Matthew Moore report.
They arrive in a minibus after an all-night journey across Java: young men in turbans, white skullcaps and long, loose shirts. Intently they move along the walkways of Jakarta's police force hospital to a room marked VIP. There they press against a barrier, asking to be let in to see their teacher.
Inside, a 64-year-old Islamic cleric is lying on a bed, mounting a challenge that discomfits the government of Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri and sends outrage as far as Washington. "If you have proof I was connected to the Bali bombings or other acts of terror, produce it," says Abu Bakar Bashir. "Meanwhile," he taunts Megawati, "tell me I'm not under arrest because of American pressure."
Among Bashir's supporters at the hospital is Fauzan al-Ansari, a young man with a goatee beard, dark glasses and a black tunic. He is the spokesman of the Indonesian Mujahideen (Holy Warrior) Council, the only organisation to which Bashir admits belonging amid charges that he is linked to al Qaeda or its alleged South-East Asian counterpart, Jemaah Islamiah.
Al-Ansari is almost happy with the arrest. "I believe that absolutely it will increase support for our ideas," he says. Those ideas mainly involve applying Sharia law - the ancient Islamic legal system derived from the Koran and the sayings of the Prophet Mohammed - across Indonesia.
Indonesians have rejected that notion many times in the past. As well as living alongside sizeable communities of Hindus, Christians, Buddhists and animists, Indonesia's 187 million Muslims (who make up about 85 per cent of the population) pursue their religion with varying theological interpretations, a mixture of mysticism and a great deal of tolerance.
But in the political and economic chaos that has followed the collapse of the 32-year autocracy of former president Suharto, and latterly in the widely perceived leadership vacuum since the October 12 bombings in Bali, there are growing fears that radical Islamists could gain ground.
Megawati, daughter of the country's revered founding president, Sukarno, is already seen as a lame-duck president in political and diplomatic circles, with two years of her present term to run. Opinion polls also show a widespread fluidity in party loyalties among disillusioned voters. One poll recently showed an overwhelming majority of Indonesians believed none of the current crop of candidates was up to the job.
How this plays out in the 2004 elections, when Indonesians will directly elect their president for the first time, instead of through horse-trading in an electoral college, is still unpredictable.
The Sukarno bloodline, and the lack of serious rivals, may pull Megawati through again despite her weak performance. Or politics could become even more fractured than they are already. Some 48 parties contested the last elections in 1999. So far, 218 have lined up for 2004, including a new party launched earlier this month, bankrolled by former general Hartono and Suharto's oldest daughter, Tutut.
The radicals are miles from attaining a vote that would bring them a share of government. But they could extend their influence over a clutch of small Muslim-based parties, which have already acted as king-makers and got one of their leaders, Hamzah Haz, installed as Megawati's vice-president and constitutional successor if anything happens to her.
Moderates certainly see themselves as fighting to hold the line against Islamic radicalism. "This radicalism is a trend that is taking place across the board. It is a new sensibility among the new generations," says Ulil Abshar-Abdalla of the Jakarta-based Liberal Islamic Network, which tries to counter fundamentalist ideas through radio programs, newspaper columns and meetings.
The wave is being felt at a grassroots level in all Islamic institutions, he says, and has flourished since the lifting of Suharto's repression. "The core idea in radicalism is to revive the Islamic tenet, Islamic teaching, Islamic values, in order to challenge Western hegemony and purify our society from social illness and moral bankruptcy."
Increasingly, Ulil says, the notion of jihad or holy war is turning from mere rhetoric to a struggle against the United States, Israel and any countries allied with them. "To use a George W. Bush turn of phrase, 'America is the imminent threat to the Muslim world'," Ulil says.
Professor Azyumardi Azra, the vice-chancellor of state-run Islamic university Syarif Hidayatullah in south Jakarta, agrees that radical sentiments are taking hold.
Educated in New York, where he did his PhD at Columbia University, Azyumardi says anti-American and anti-Australian feeling is gaining a foothold among his moderate students.
"More and more people believe in the conspiracy theory that the West wants to destroy Islam and especially Muslim radicals," he says.
The overwhelming sentiment is that Megawati has failed to provide strong leadership after Bali and that the anti-terrorist steps she has taken have been dictated by the West.
Raids by heavily armed Australian agents on the homes of Indonesians in Australia have compounded the perception of Western bullying and provided the Indonesian Government with a convenient diversion to the charge that they arrested Bashir only on Washington's insistence.
Jakarta's official protests about the raids added to the impression that Australia had begun a "sweeping" operation against Indonesians and Muslims to harass them out of the country. Even educated people like Azyumardi believe the raids are against Indonesian people in general and are not just aimed at a handful of suspected JI sympathisers.
"Yes, it's sweeping in Australia. According to the TV report last night, 60 homes were raided, according to students there," he says. "The sweeping in Australia will increase the anti-Australian sentiment. This creates a lot of resentment among Muslims."
The Megawati Government is not so much leading this sentiment as following a tide.
Syafii Maarif, leader of the modernist Muslim organisation Muhammadiyah, which has 30 million supporters, admits he is concerned by rising radicalism. "I hope this will not happen. But it will depend on our ability to handle our domestic problems. The government is very, very weak. It always hesitates in taking decisions. It has no vision to liberate this nation from acute crisis," he says.
Syafii laughs at claims by Bashir's followers that the fundamentalist interpretation of Sharia law is spreading across Indonesia, first in the rebellious province of Aceh and possibly in the strongly Muslim province of South Sulawesi, as well as in a string of cities in Java itself.
"That is a political illusion," Syafii says. "The Sharia was drawn up centuries ago. It cannot be implemented now without changing substantially its content."
Yet Syafii also says Muhammadiyah has joined forces with Indonesia's other big Muslim organisation, the more traditionalist Nahdlatul Ulama, to check the activities of radical groups. Early this week, he conferred with NU's chairman, Hasyim Muzadi, on reports that a town in Madura, an island adjacent to the country's second-largest city, Surabaya, was moving to apply Sharia.
Like other Indonesian leaders, Muslim and secular, Syafii is treading warily around the issue of Bashir's arrest, which has the potential to turn a fringe figure into a leader with much greater influence than that he wields over the 2000 or so "santri" (Koranic students) gathered at the boarding school he runs at Ngruki village in central Java.
It would have been better to pursue investigations without putting Bashir under arrest, says Syafii, who met Bashir two weeks ago for "humanitarian" reasons rather than to show support for his ideas.
The Muhammadiyah leader is also disturbed that much of the evidence said to link Bashir to terrorist outfit Jemaah Islamiah and to a string of anti-Christian and other bombings two years ago was based on the testimony of an alleged associate named Omar al-Faruk, a Kuwaiti arrested in June by Indonesia's National Intelligence Agency and handed over to the United States. Bashir's followers say al-Faruk is either an intelligence "plant" or has been coerced into giving false evidence.
"It would be very wise and important if al-Faruk is brought back to Indonesia and confronted with Mr Bashir," Syafii says. "Then we can see who tells the truth and who the falsehood. Otherwise people will speculate."
Across Indonesia this week, as Muslims began the fasting month of Ramadan in the searing heat of a prolonged dry season, they watched on television the police hunt for the Bali bombers, the United Nations debates on Iraq, the victory of Islamists in Turkey's elections and the police raids in Australia. They see battle lines appearing everywhere.