Not long after the Bali bombing, I traveled extensively inIndonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia and was dismayed by thepervasive conspiracy theories, even among genuinely moderateMuslims. The U.S. Navy had visited Bali not long before thebombings, I was frequently told, and the explosives used were of aU.S. military type (which turned out to be untrue). The bombing wasdesigned to force Indonesia into the U.S. anti-terror coalition andso on. Indonesia's president at the time, Megawati, did nothing tocounter these conspiracy theories. All of this was shattered,however, by the Bali trials, not least by the testimony of thebombers themselves, some of whom yelled as they were led intocourt: "Death to the Americans! Death to the Jews! Death to theAustralians!"

Unfortunately, this victory for counter-terrorism was at leastpartially neutralized by the government's treatment of Abu BakarBashir, the Islamic cleric at the center of the JI network. Bashirwas not charged with offenses relating to Bali but he was chargedwith being head of JI, even though JI's existence is not formallyacknowledged in Indonesia. The court decided he was innocent ofthis charge, but to do this it had to ignore the testimony of a JIterrorist in custody in Singapore.

There is not a single analyst in Southeast Asia who does notbelieve Bashir is at the center of JI. He is routinely described asits spiritual leader. Yet the attitudes of official Indonesianleaders to Bashir were disturbingly ambivalent, with Hamzah Haz,the then vice-president, visiting Bashir in jail. Bashir has beencharged with a new slew of terrorism-related offenses and remainsin jail. Perplexingly, he remains free to give media interviews. Hecontinues to deny any involvement with terrorism, but theideological content of his interviews gives a sense of the outlookof his movement. He recently told an Australian magazine, "Americawill not be a superpower if Islam stands up. It is clear [therewill be a clash of civilizations] because kafir [non-Muslims] areevil and Islam is good." When asked specifically about Indonesia,he replied:

"The world and Indonesia belong to Allah. Therefore it should beruled under Allah's law without bargaining. I believe the clash ofcivilizations will continue, but in the end Islam will definitelywin. It has been predicted by our Prophet Muhammad."

And on the U.S. president: "Bush is being used by the Jews. TheJews are the most evil men in the world."

This is a true picture of Jemaah Islamiyah's ideology. Itsinternational cooperation across Southeast Asia is impelled by itsdesire to set up a new united Caliphate across all the Muslim areasof the region, including even territories such as East Timor, whichare not now populated by Muslims but were once under Muslimrule.

JI is believed to have 25,000 to 30,000 followers in Indonesia,more than enough to make life difficult. Moreover, JI has deeproots in sections of Indonesian society both through its pesantrennetwork and because it is the successor of a much older movement,Darul Islam, which struggled in the earliest days of independenceto make Indonesia an Islamic state.

What is more worrying than this extremism, however, is the waygenuine moderates sometimes refuse to acknowledge its reality.Hasyim Muzardi, Megawati's vice-presidential running mate, saidduring the election that JI did not exist in Indonesia, even if itexisted in other countries, and that the United States wasexaggerating the terrorist threat in order to gain more influencein Indonesia.

Muzardi's comments were particularly distressing because he wasalso chairman of Nadhlatal Ulama ("Religious Scholars"), theworld's largest Muslim organization with some 40 million members.It has been the bastion of tolerance and moderation in modernIndonesia. Islam came to Indonesia on the ships of traders and fromthe mouths of Sufis. Nadhlatal Ulama honors traditional Malaycustoms and mysticism. Its approach to Islam is syncretic andrespects the rights of non-Muslims. It is big enough withsufficient resources and self-confidence to have produced its owninterpretations of Islam. Although many of its leading membersspend some time studying in the Middle East, it is proud of itsdistinctive approach to Islam.

A former leader of Nadhlatal Ulama, Abdurrahman Wahid, was oncepresident of the country. Indonesia sets a high standard ofeccentricity among its leaders, and Wahid was no exception. He wasalso a courageous democrat and the most remarkable leader of anational government the Muslim world has seen in recent years.

In his writings, speeches and interviews, he stressed thatIndonesian Islam had developed over many centuries and itscharacter would not be easily changed by Middle Eastern or otherforeign influences. He was prepared to say things no other Muslimleader would. He once told me in an interview, for example, "Israelis a democracy in a sea of misunderstanding", and that Indonesiashould have diplomatic relations with Israel. He also told me thathe did not think Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat was brave enoughto make peace.

Wahid is an unusually fearless Muslim leader, but there are manyIndonesian intellectuals in his tradition. The activities of JI aredesigned in part to challenge the leadership of moderates. Theyalso frighten off foreign investment and tourism, which arecritically important in a country as poor as Indonesia. Terroristswant the moderate state to fail so that the practice of moderationitself is discredited. So far, the Indonesian people are not buyingthe extremists' message.

In his influential book, Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Amongthe Converted People, V. S. Naipaul famously argued that Islamcrushes the converted peoples by casting their non-Islamichistories as illegitimate. He contends that in converted lands suchas Indonesia, the Muslim fundamentalist rage is directed againstthe local past in an effort to erase its non-Muslim aspects.However well this thesis may apply in other Muslim lands, it seemsan overdrawn proposition in connection with Indonesia, where mostpeople are proud of their country's complex and diverse history,with its long Hindu period and its Buddhist and mystical andanimist traditions.

It is true that the forces of global Islamist extremism aim toArabize and standardize Indonesian and Southeast Asian Islam. Theyare not, however, having it all their own way, and the forces ofcivilization are by no means exhausted. The region's fight to holdtrue to its vision of Islam and to honor its own ethnic andcultural traditions while embracing economic and socialmodernization is an epic struggle of our time and one in which theWest has a deep interest.

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