The leaders of Indonesia's two largest Islamic groups have called for an end to efforts to get Islamic Sharia law enforced in the country, the world's largest Muslim nation.

"There is no need to press ahead with the struggle for Sharia," Ahmad Syafii Maarif, chairman of the Muhammadiyah group, told The Jakarta Post daily.

"We should take the substance of Islamic values and implement them in Indonesia, not the symbols," said Maarif, whose organisation has some 30 million adherents.

He said that if Muslims pressed on with religious formalities such as Sharia or the establishment of an Islamic state, they would collide with other religious communities in this sprawling pluralistic nation.

Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) chairman Hasyim Muzadi said: "Struggling for Sharia to be enforced in Indonesia is not realistic. What we need is to develop universal values for people's prosperity." Muzadi, at the helm of an organisation of some 40 million supporters, said that Muslims as well as followers of the other faiths should promote religious values that were compatible with national interests.

There have been several attempts to get harsh Sharia law imposed in the country since the 1950s but support from the Muslim community has been dismal. More than 80 percent of Indonesia's 214 million people follow Islam, although most of them are moderate Muslims.

An autonomy law that took effect at the beginning of 2001 allows the province of Aceh to implement partial Islamic law. Regulations are in force requiring women to cover their heads, prayer times to be respected, and for the sexes to be segregated. However, enforcement remains lax.

The struggle to implement Islamic law throughout the country was ruthlessly quashed during the iron-fisted government of former president Suharto but it re-emerged with the openness and reforms that accompanied the post-Suharto governments over the past four years.

Radical Muslims belonging or sympathising with groups advocating the enforcement of Sharia or the establishment of an Islamic state in Indonesia have been suspected of involvement in a string of terrorist attacks in Indonesia in the past years.

In 2001, the now-disbanded Laskar Jihad militant Islamic group stoned to death one of its own followers for adultery, claiming the practice was consistent with Sharia.

Some Indonesian Islamic scholars say such practices should not be part of Sharia in the modern era.