Jakarta – A recent survey measuring Indonesia's radicalism index has put Aceh at the top of the list of provinces, with the highest number of radical believers.

National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT) chief Arsyad Mbai said, however, that the radical tendency barely materialized as it was channeled through the alleged radicals' participation in the former rebel group, the Free Aceh Movement (GAM).

"Aceh has a high level of radicalization, but it's been channeled through GAM. We've seen, on the other hand, that West Java has been home to most of the suicide bombers," Arsyad said during a forum discussing the results of the survey conducted by NGO Lazuardi Birru in Jakarta on Wednesday.

The survey says that radicalism in Indonesia is wavering, with the national radicalism index showing a slight decline from 24.7 percent last year down to 20 percent this year.

Lazuardi also found in the survey that the percentage of Indonesian Muslims willing to become, or having been, involved in what the NGO defines as acts of radicalism, such as attacks on brothels and houses of worship of different faiths, dropped from 13.1 percent last year to 9.2 percent this year.

The survey involved 1,240 respondents in nine provinces, 86.3 percent of whom were Muslim, 11.1 percent Christian and 2.6 percent followers of other religions, tribunnews.com reported.