Indonesia's success in dealing with Islamist terrorists is impressive, but there are other Islamist organisations that are of much more immediate concern. These are public organisations that share a commitment to enforce very conservative interpretations of orthodox Sunni Islam. Indonesians call them ''hardliners''.
Unlike the terrorists, the hardliners are adept at working within the official system and have a real capacity to influence policy. Like the terrorists, their ultimate aim is to replace the state or at least remake it, but they seek to do so from within the system.
They exploit the post-Suharto democratic state's more open political framework to gradually legislate much of what terrorists have sought unsuccessfully to achieve with bombs. [The Australian] Read more [via National Secular Society]
