A Call to Prayer

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Such radical language is prompting a reaction. A growing group of moderate Indonesians is fighting back against the move toward puritanical interpretations of Islam's role in society. Many have formed NGOs that funnel cash to liberal mosques or distribute pamphlets calling on Indonesians to defend their more inclusive spiritual traditions. Researcher Misrawi, whose religious credentials are burnished by study at Cairo's famed Islamic Al-Azhar University, says his organization coordinates with 5,000 moderate pesantren, many of which are located in traditionally conservative regions like southern Sulawesi or West Java. The moderates admit they face a rhetorical disadvantage in their spiritual battle. "Salafi Islam is attractive because it says that if you are not rewarded in this lifetime, you will be rewarded in the next," says Jakarta scholar Anwar, who as a student leader around the time of the Iranian revolution considered himself radical, then later gravitated toward a more moderate faith. "It's hard to compete against that ideology. Being moderate is more subtle and complex. It's harder to sell."

There are some signs, moreover, that the drift toward radicalism is, at last, prompting action by the nation's central institutions. Last year, the Indonesian parliament quietly shelved a controversial antipornography bill that could have criminalized public kissing and forms of traditional dance. And in December, after a popular Muslim cleric announced that he had joined a growing trend of flouting national law by taking a second wife, President Yudhoyono spoke out against polygamy—even though the Koran permits it in certain circumstances. The President surely knows the risks of radicalism. Foreign direct investment fell 46% year-on-year between January and November 2006, with one visiting European Parliament legislator blaming the rash of Shari'a bylaws for turning investors off. The specter of violence, too, acts to dampen foreign interest in Indonesia. The indigenous terror group Jemaah Islamiah—an organization linked to al-Qaeda that is blamed for hundreds of bombing deaths in Bali and Jakarta since 2002—doesn't have broad appeal among Indonesians, and its infrastructure has been battered by a number of recent arrests. But in January, clashes between police and alleged jihadis in the central Sulawesi city of Poso resulted in 16 deaths.

In a response of sorts to the growing radicalism, Yudhoyono has recently paid lip service to Pancasila, the secularized state ideology promoted during the Suharto era. But if Indonesia is to shore up its international reputation, more will be needed than recycling an old ideology tainted by its association with a former dictator. In the absence of more vigorous mobilization by moderates, the rising conservative tide in Indonesian Islam looks unlikely to wane soon. Indonesians who return from study overseas—and those who don't leave home—are just a mouse click away from Salafi scholars anywhere else. "The Internet has helped encourage a uniformity of opinion in the Islamic world," says Sidney Jones, Southeast Asia project director for the International Crisis Group. "Some of the loudest voices online are Salafi scholars in the Middle East."

The newfound piety of University of Indonesia student Lintang Anisa, however, came not from Saudi Arabia but from closer to home. In high school, Anisa lived what she calls a "hedonist" lifestyle, never praying five times a day as is required by Islam. But after enrolling at UI, where she took part in student-organized Koranic study, the 19-year-old English major began wearing a headscarf. "It was God's will that I could study at UI," she says, "so wearing the jilbab is an expression of gratitude for God's blessings." When Anisa and her classmates finish their studies, they will not be donning miniskirts for a cruise around campus. Instead, like millions of other Indonesians also heeding a new call to conservatism, they will bow their heads in prayer.