Nightclub workers have rallied against a hardline Muslim group that attacked entertainment spots in Indonesia's capital last weekend.

About 700 people, one-third of them female nightclub workers, demonstrated Wednesday in the parking lot of the Jakarta police headquarters.

Police said they would prosecute eight of the 13 members of the Front for the Defenders of Islam (FPI) detained after a weekend vandalism spree. They were to question the FPI's general chairman, Rizieq, as a suspect in the violence, but the questioning has been postponed.

The FPI has been vandalizing Jakarta discotheques, billiard halls and other entertainment spots for two years, but these are the first known arrests. Analysts suspect the FPI is open to manipulation by political and military elements and have said their actions couldbe linked to a struggle for lucrative protection money from nightclubs.

The police and their military rivals are widely believed to back illegal enterprises such as drug dealing and prostitution linked to nightspots.

During Wednesday's anti-FPI protest, the female nightclub workers joined members of a security force from Indonesia's largest mainstream Muslim organization, Nahdlatul Ulama, as well as representatives of native Jakartans. "We hate and are revolted to see FPI strike the powerless little people," one of their signs said.

FPI activities usually intensify around the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins this year in early November. Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim-populated state but is mostly moderate in its observance of Islam.