The use of a small network of Indonesian boarding schools as a recruiting avenue for the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terrorist group has sent alarm bells ringing in the West.

Some officials worry that Saudi Arabian money is being used to spread the intolerant Wahhabi Islam adhered to by members of Al Qaeda and the affiliated JI through the country's schools and mosques, producing a steady creep of radical ideas in a country famed for its religious tolerance.

Of particular concern is what, precisely, is being taught in the country's 10,000-plus Islamic boarding schools, called pesantren. Abu Bakar Bashir, the alleged spiritual leader of JI who was sentenced to four years in jail earlier this month, is still the head of the Al-Mukmin pesantren in Central Java.

Three brothers on trial for the Bali nightclub attacks that killed 202 people, helped run Pesantren Al-Islam in East Java, and Imam Samudra, sentenced to death this past week for being the field-commander of the Bali attack, told interrogators that he used Koran study groups at government-run Islamic high-schools in western Java to recruit operatives.

The flurry of information about these men's activities and their links to Al Qaeda may be creating the impression that radical, foreign ideas are taking hold in the pesantren of the world's most populous Muslim nation.

But while recent research into Indonesia's Islamic boarding schools is yielding some alarming findings, most scholars here are convinced that the spread of radical rhetoric has far less to do with Saudi-trained religious teachers than it does with fury at America's foreign policy and domestic disappointment with the performance of secular President Megawati Sukarnoputri.

"This is still a minority group of people, but radical sentiments, particularly among students, have been strengthened by the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan,'' says Lies Marcoes, who works with Islamic organizations in Indonesia for the Asia Foundation in Jakarta.

She says the invasions have fueled the perception that America is an enemy of Islam. That view leads some, in turn, to see themselves as part of a global Muslim community struggling with an American enemy and gives them a desire to symbolically join that community by becoming more pious and advocating that Indonesia become an Islamic state.

Ali Achmad, a portly 26-year-old teacher wearing Arab-style dress at Pesantren Al Kamal in Jakarta, says domestic and international political events have had a profound impact on the way he has seen the world in the past few years. In particular, he says: "America has revealed that it hates Islam and it's trying to take control of Indonesia through making stuff up about terrorism."

In Indonesia's last general election, he voted for the party of the resolutely secular Megawati, because he says he expected she'd help clean up the notoriously corrupt government and do something to help the legions of Indonesian poor.

"This government is a total failure; they haven't embraced reform or protected our rights. There's gambling and prostitution everywhere. I'm so disappointed." He says at the next election he intends to vote for the tiny Justice Party, which favors strict Islamic law for Indonesia over the country's secular arrangements. "Islamic law would wipe out corruption. It seems like the only solution to our problems."

Page: 1 | 2