Candra Malik – Hard-line preacher Abu Bakar Bashir was reportedly barred by police on Tuesday from delivering a sermon in Malang, East Java, after complaints from local residents marked the second major public rejection of Bashir's hard-line push for an Islamic state.

Wahyudin, the director of the Al Mukmin Islamic Boarding School, known as Ngruki, in Central Java, said that he regretted the police decision to prevent Bashir, the school's founder, from spreading his message.

The ban was announced after residents of the second-largest city in the province reportedly said Bashir was a threat to Islamic unity.

It is unclear if the decision was in response to Friday's terrorist attacks in Jakarta and the complete rejection of violence by most religious organizations, or if the Malang decision was part of a wider police effort to muzzle Bashir, at least in the immediate aftermath of the Jakarta attacks.

"The police action is baseless," Wahyudin said. "It shows how the government apparently dislikes what [Abu Bakar Bashir] is doing to implement Shariah law correctly." In 2003, Bashir was jailed for involvement in the 2002 Bali bombing conspiracy, which claimed the lives of 202 people, but the conviction was overturned in 2006.

Bashir once headed the Indonesian Mujahideen Council, an organization advocating the implementation of Shariah law in Indonesia. He resigned last year, however, following a disagreement with rivals in the group.

He has also been accused of serving as the spiritual leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist network, though he denies that the group exists. He has been reported as saying that if Westerners want peace, they must accept Islam.

In June, residents of one Surabaya neighborhood – in what was described at the time as an indication that Indonesians had become tired of hard-line Islamic views – barred the doors of a mosque that they believed was being used to promote hard-line Islamist teachings, including regular speeches by Bashir.

Residents of Jalan Sidotopo IV in the city shut down the Al Ihsan Sabilillah Mosque for three full days before agreeing to re-open it. The dispute came to an end only after a meeting with the head of the mosque and local authorities at the Sukolilo subdistrict office.