Filmmaker Frank Smith travelled with Rageh Omaar across Indonesia to see a struggle between two very different visions of the country's future.

Indonesia is a country with over 200 million followers of Islam – a nation renowned for its ability to combine its many different traditional beliefs with those of the Muslim faith.

During the last 10 years it has seen the birth of democracy, and with that has come a fight – its modern liberal thinking versus a dawn of stricter adherence to faith and a politicised and publicly vocal Islam aware of the perceived injustices against fellow Muslims over the world.

For 32 years the strongman Suharto ruled the country. His iron-fisted secular polices forced many Islamic groups to operate underground.

When the Asian financial crisis of 1997 devastated Indonesia, mass student uprisings and violence in the streets forced him to resign.

The fall of the Suharto regime brought economic chaos, massive social upheaval, and as Indonesia remade itself, radical Islam found a willing audience.

Democracy helped create a space for the fundamentalist voice of Jamarat Islamiyah (JI), the shadowy group responsible for bombings that killed hundreds over the last decade.

And even for those who reject JI's vision of violence, the turmoil of the 1990s left a need for spiritual guidance – and Indonesia's concept of Islam is definitely changing.

Question of faith

The country has always been tolerant, but in just 10 years some Indonesians have started demanding a much stricter adherence to their faith.

We travelled across Indonesia, from the crowded capital of Jakarta to the Hindu Island of Bali, to the smallest villages in east Java and to the island of Sulawesi to try to work out what faith means to these millions of Muslims – each so different in ethnic, political and social character.

We met rock singers, clerics, drug addicts, the young, rich, old and poor – every single one had their own ideas on why Indonesia is how it is, and where it is going.

The question we asked them all was, whether political Islam and Indonesia – specifically, Indonesia's march to democracy – co-exist.

We met one school headmaster, who also happens to be perhaps the most infamous cleric in Indonesia. Abu Bakir Bashir is accused of being the spiritual leader of JI – and the man who nurtured the message of hate in the bombers hearts.

He was quick to deny his role, but happy to affirm the ideal of an Indonesia where even the Taliban were not a strict enough example.

Not far away we met the family of two men who had carried out the Bali bombings, men who had been executed for their acts.

In their small village there was still a strength of conviction. There was no call for revenge, but the family and neighbours believed that the bombers' faith was right, their purpose to create a caliphate by killing foreigners was correct.

Hen night

This was a view that has held, and now seems to be growing. Not to the extent that there are new volunteers, but that in bookshops and in mosques, we saw books that tied the US to global conspiracies against Islam, that proclaimed al-Qaeda as true warriors of the faith.

But it is still too easy to simply label Indonesia the next cradle of Islamic fundamentalism. The voices are indeed loud, but the actions fewer.

Terrorism has all but disappeared from the country and the voices of the bombers' relatives were muted compared to the rest we heard on our journey.

The next day we were in another world, yet still in Java at a wedding of Yemeni migrant families, descendants of traders who had set foot here hundreds of years ago.

We were welcomed to their version of the Hen Night – the first time an all male crew had ever been allowed to in a Muslim community. At the main reception more than 1,000 people from the community gathered to see the two families unite.

Every guest we talked to was overtly proud of the Indonesian reputation for religious tolerance. Not one was willing to see an Indonesia where faith could not allow for differences, be it in ideas, culture or politics.

In Jakarta, we met the men who had followed Bashir's teachings, but who had, in the mountains of Afghanistan, proved themselves against the Russians.

Religious diversity

One of the most renowned fighters was Nasir Abbas, a commander and weapons specialist. He trained with many of the JI terrorists at large today. But he fell out with Abu Bakar Bashir and the group over the issue of attacks on civilians.

Abbas believes in holy war – but not on the innocent. His reason "I'm Indonesian, it's not in our culture to do this."

Our last visit was to the island of Sulawesi where we were invited to a village to see a rare event, a religious ceremony to please the gods – animist gods – but a ceremony carried out by a village who were Muslim, and whose animist preachers were transvestites.

The Bugis seems to embody the very definition of religious diversity. Their animist priests are even seen as divine, their advice sought by the whole community.

Many Muslims might find it hard to understand, but for the Bugis, there is absolutely no contradiction between Islam and their culture and traditions. They embrace both. Their answer was simple – "why not?"

By the end of our journey, all of us – reporter and crew – were aware of how in this vast country the Islam we had seen, had been combined with other seemingly opposing ideas whilst at every point maintaining the nations tolerance and diversity.

Perhaps it might not last, but it seems to me that the strength of this unique and incredible innate tolerance has for now prevented militant Islam from winning the struggle for the hearts and minds of this, the world's biggest Muslim population.