One of Indonesia's most senior Muslim scholars has warned that a failure to release jailed cleric Abu Bakar Bashir could result in an Islamic backlash. The Vice-Chairman of Mohammadiyah says Indonesian authorities have come under international pressure to keep the cleric behind bars.

Presenter/Interviewer: Marion MacGregor

Speakers: Din Syamsuddin, Professor of Islamic politics at the National University of Indonesia and the vice chair of Mohammadiah

MacGregor: Abu Bakar Bashir is due to be released from Jakarta's Salemba prison this Friday, after serving eighteen months for immigration offences. Thousands of the cleric's supporters across the country are excitedly awaiting his release.

But the United States and Australia, among others, believe that Mr Bashir is the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, the group blamed for the 2002 Bali bombings, and they want Mr Bashir to remain behind bars while they try to prove it.

Din Syamsuddin, deputy head of Muhammadiyah, the country's second-largest moderate Muslim group, says the US ambassador to Jakarta has approached Muslim leaders, including Muhammadiyah's Chairman, asking them to help prolong Mr Bashir's detention. While Muslim leaders are unlikely to comply, foreign pressure on the Indonesian authorities could still see the preacher detained beyond Friday.

Last week police formally named Mr Bashir a terrorist suspect, and they're expected to begin questioning him soon. Din Syamsuddin says that won't go down well in Indonesia.

Syamsuddin: "Maybe the two governments of the countries, Australia and the United States will insist that, but really here in Indonesia, there'll be great resistance, bitter resistance, and anti Americanisms maybe also anti-Australianisms, because they perform injustice and unfairness."

MacGregor: The list of injustices is long, say Mr Bashir's supporters. For example, they point out that the US refuses to send another terrorist suspect, Hambali, to Indonesia for interrogation. Yet Indonesian police are planning to question Mr Bashir using US transcripts of Hambali's interrogation. Indonesia's resistance to foreign interference is likely to favour Mr Bashir. And in the world's most populous Muslim country, it's enough to have turned him into an icon. But contrary to perceptions in the West, Professor Syamsuddin says other more important factors are affecting the course of Islam in Indonesia.

Syamsuddin: "Indonesian Islam is complex and Abu Bakar Bashir doesn't serve as a determinate factor, but the way we handle the problem like the issue of terrorism, war on terror are the main factors and the determining factors that encourage radicalism. Not only among the Muslims, but among the people of the world. So these are the real challenges for the world that we are facing. The accumulative global damage stems from the world system, engineered by the three powers like the United States."

MacGregor: Outsiders continue to reduce Islam in Indonesia to a group of extremists with Abu Bakar Bashir at its head. Yet Mr Bashir and the group he leads Majlis Mujahadeen Indonesia have advocated the adoption of Islamic Sharia law in Indonesia, but not the establishment of an Islamic State.

Professor Din Syamsuddin says this puts them somewhere in the middle of the spectrum in the broader debates taking place among the country's Muslim leaders.

Syamsuddin: "So it's not in my opinion in my conclusion far extremism as compared for example to those groups who proposed the Islamic state during the fifties in Indonesia. So it's merely aspiration for the Muslims to perform an Islamic Sharia and I have contact to these groups that have inclination to perform Islamic Sharia that they have different opinions, perceptions and definitions towards Islamic Sharia, Shariate Islam. Because there's increasing emphasis law, Islamic Sharia law, and in my opinion and other Muslim leaders here from the mainstream see it as a reduction to Islam, because Islam is much more than law, Islam emphasises ethics and moral values. So this only small, I mean this call among the Muslims and it's a good thing in the sense of democracy, if we are going to discuss it and to come closer to the truth."