'Why do they hate us?'

"American foreign policy has invited everybody, actually, to try to humiliate America, and to give it a bloody nose," he adds.

You wouldn't catch Rizky "Jimmy" Nur Zamzamy justifying violence that way, though he professes just as deep an attachment to Islam as Abu Hamza.

Mr. Zamzamy, a rangy young Indonesian advertising executive in a pink shirt, is sitting in a Western-style cafe in Jakarta, his cellphone at the ready, and his fried chicken growing cold as he explains how he tries to be a good Muslim by right action, not fighting.

That, he feels, is the best way of countering what he sees as the corrupting influence of American culture and morals on traditional Indonesian ways of life in the largest Muslim country in the world.

Until a few years ago, Zamzamy led a regular secular life, hanging out in bars and dating women. Then he met a Muslim teacher who became his spiritual guide. Now he follows Islamic teachings and donates most of his $1,300 monthly salary to his "guru" to be spent on building mosques and helping the poor.

He says he has made sure that none of the money goes to extremist groups that use violence in the name of Islam, such as the Laskar Jihad group, locked in bloody battle with Christians in the Maluku region of Indonesia.

Two years ago, in line with his growing religious beliefs, he quit the advertising agency he had worked for and set up his own company along Islamic lines: He won't take banks or alcoholic-beverage producers as clients, for example, and he does no business on Friday, the Muslim holy day.

But he is relaxed about those who don't share his beliefs: He does not insist that his wife wear a headscarf, for example, and he is not uncomfortable sitting alongside the rich young Jakartans in the cafe who are flirting and drinking. They must make their own choices, he says.

And though he does not like the sexual overtones of American pop culture, he knows that "you can't hide from American culture." By living his life according to Islamic precepts, he says, "I am fighting America in my own way. But I don't agree with violence."

All over the Muslim world, young people like Zamzamy are juggling their sense of Islamic identity with the trappings of a globalized, secular society.

In a classroom of Al Khair University, set in a concrete office park in Islamabad, Nabil Ahmed, a business student, and his classmates are fuming over their president's betrayal of the Pakistani people by pledging to support what they fear will turn into a crusade against Muslims.

Ahmed and his friends are well-dressed, middle-class boys, and represent neither the old-money security of Pakistan's elite nor dirt-poor peasants who make up the bulk of Pakistan's angry conservative masses. They are the silent majority of Pakistan, with their feet firmly planted in both the East and the West. On weekdays, they listen to Whitney Houston and Michael Bolton, wear Dockers and Van Heusen shirts. On weekends, many switch to traditional salwar kameez outfits and go with their fathers to the mosque to pray.

They have much to gain from a Western style of life, and most have plans to move to the United States for a few years to make some money before returning home to Pakistan. Yet despite their attraction to the West, they are wary of it too.

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