Achmad Sukarsono, Jakarta – Elok Sulistianingsih, covered with a traditional Muslim headscarf, tells her young charges to love all religions as she teaches them to recite the holy Koran at a mosque in the Indonesian capital.
"Islam is the way to go, but you should never taunt friends from other religions," the medical student-cum-religious tutor says as she guides a six-year-old girl through Arabic scriptures.
But Indonesia's "smiling face" of Islam is being strained by rising anger among hardline groups in the world's largest Muslim nation over Washington's threat to attack Islamic Afghanistan in retaliation for the September 11 attacks on the United States.
Radical groups have already hunted Americans in luxury hotels, burned US flags in front of American offices, threatened to attack the US embassy and begun signing up to join Afghanistan in a holy war.
The rising tensions underline the perilous tightrope President Megawati Sukarnoputri must tread between supporting Indonesia's rich and powerful ally and appeasing Islamic hardliners flexing their muscles after years of strict controls.
Megawati walks a tightrope Megawati has not yet declared her stand on possible US attacks on Afghanistan, which Washington accuses of sheltering Islamic militant Osama bin Laden, chief suspect in the attacks.
A mis-step by the untested Megawati risks stirring up destabilising Islamic discontent or angering Washington, or both. So far, anti-US anger is confined to militant groups.
But analysts warn a long, complicated and bloody war may force moderates to choose between supporting attacks on fellow Muslims or condemning them in the name of Islamic solidarity "It's safe for us now here ... but these small groups can change everything. And that's bad news for Indonesia," German-born Catholic priest Franz Magnis-Suseno told Reuters.
In a turbulent country where 90 percent of the 210 million people follow Islam, moderate Muslim leaders and non-Muslims are anxious to maintain its softer face.
"The mainstream of Indonesia's Islam is moderate ... the so-called smiling face of Islam," head of Jakarta's State Institute of Islamic Studies Azyumardi Azra told Reuters.
"Indonesia is the most un-Arabicised Muslim country. We should not be misled by small [hardline] groups... and must take into account the mainstream opposes radicalisation."
Almost half Indonesia's Muslims follow its two main Islamic groups Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah, who claim a total 75 million supporters. Both have moderate interpretations of the Koran and meld Islam with local culture and traditions, including Hindu elements from past Indonesian kingdoms. "Islam is about peace. We are anti-violence," said Muhammadiyah secretary Goodwill Zubir.
Outside NU and Muhammadiyah are an assorted groups varying from diehard zealots to those who declare themselves Muslims simply because state I.D. cards compel them to belong to one of four religions – Islam, Christianity, Hinduism or Buddhism.
Anger rising Under the autocratic Suharto, Islam's political power was suppressed in the same way he kept a lid on all possible opposition. After his downfall amid political and economic chaos in 1998, the number and strictness of Islamic parties swelled. Megawati's deputy, Hamzah Haz, heads the country's largest Muslim party.
But efforts to make Indonesia a formal Muslim state or to implement Islamic sharia law have so far failed, strongly resisted by the secular Megawati. However, the coming war against terrorism and the lack of a stand by Megawati and moderate Muslim leaders is stoking anger amongst the millions of hardliners. The radical groups feel the Muslim mainstream and politicians have betrayed Islam.
"You must be radical if you say you're a Muslim," head of Jakarta's Mujahidin Council Sayid Hamidan told Reuters. "It's better to die than live under the feet of heathens who keep on insulting Islam," he said, adding thousands of his men, some veterans of Afghanistan's war against the Soviet Union, were ready to join the fight.