Quotes of the Day

When the teenage students of the Tebu Ireng Islamic school, or pesantren, in Jombang, East Java, are asked about Australia, the answers come easily, amid much giggling. "Beautiful!" one boy says. "Koalas and kangaroos," shouts another. But when talk turns to the Bali bombing two years ago, the boys argue among themselves. "It was wrong," says one. "I say the bombers did a good action," says another, "because they looked at the people in Bali wearing very open clothes." A classmate interrupts: "Their action was very harsh - and their choice of victims was false."

It's a conversation that ripples through Java, Indonesia's most populous island, where chaotic cities jostle for space with serene rice paddies and dwindling enclaves of rainforest. And it's not yet clear whose telling of Islam will prevail. Will it be the moderation extolled by vast Islamic organizations like Muhammadiyah? The wildly popular entrepreneurship of Aa Gym, whose immaculately clad staff hand out glossy brochures in the gardens of his pesantren-cum-business headquarters while visitors sip on the celebrity preacher's own brand of soft drink? Will it be the dogma of Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia - set up by accused terrorist leader Abu Bakar Ba'asyir to lobby for Islamic sharia law - whose members sell Osama bin Laden T shirts outside a shabby office in Yogyakarta? Or will it be the intellectual questing of the Liberal Islam Network, whose leader Ulil Abshar-Abdalla has sparked wide debate and death threats with his calls for reforms to Islam?

The faith here has many moods. Some mosques bar non-Muslim visitors; others welcome them. Some pesantren strictly limit contact with strangers, Western music or the mass media, while others let students mingle freely with visitors. And whether it's the pesantren where a Sharon Stone movie is hurriedly replaced with a prayer video when visitors arrive, or the one where teenage girls can't leave their dormitories unveiled but clutter their rooms with pictures of American pop stars, the outside world seeps in. In Java, the call to prayer echoes across highways on which unveiled women ride motorbikes in Western dress.

Indonesia's brand of Islam has long been known for its tolerance, and many Javanese are horrified to hear of the suspicion with which many Australians now regard their nation. The fear goes both ways; one pesantren student, asked why he hated Australians, retorts, "because you have banned girls wearing headscarves to school." But Javanese hospitality to strangers endures. Ba'asyir's Ngruki pesantren banned Australian, American and Singaporean journalists after they reported links between the school and members of terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah. But after a special plea by an Indonesian-Muslim journalist, Ba'asyir approves from jail a visit by a group of Australians - who soon find themselves on his daughter Nanik's floor, lunching on fried chicken as veiled women move around beneath drawings of English castles and shelves stacked with children's toys. Her father is well, Nanik says politely through an interpreter. His faith sustains him. She waves the visitors off with smiles. Down the road at Ngruki, amid a labyrinth of laneways, students in the school grounds are deeply wary of strangers. "Australia is the world's largest wool producer," is all one student will say as he hurries away. In the distance several students wear T shirts adorned with images of machine guns. No one can explain their meaning.

In the sprawling port town of Surabaya, Yuyun Surya, a lively communications lecturer at Airlangga University, follows her faith by praying five times a day, yet disappoints many acquaintances by shunning the jilbab, the head covering worn by increasing numbers of Indonesian Muslim women. This graduate of an Australian university admires progressive Indonesian scholars for their moderation but also subscribes to the widespread conspiracy theory that Western agents are behind the terrorist attacks in her country: "They have created Islam as the common enemy." And in the dusty grounds of a pesantren in the same city, a young teacher wrestles with the question of whether his faith sanctions violence. Was the Bali attack acceptable? "It's difficult to say," he mumbles, before another student jumps in: "No, because so many people were killed." The teacher remains doubtful. "I support the bombers for some reasons and not for other reasons, but then, you have to look at what's happening to Palestinians," he says, before senior colleagues move him along. The young students of Indonesia have much debate ahead of them.

• Lisa Clausen / Java
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