Saudis Quietly Promote Strict Islam in Indonesia

Mr. Arofiq, 25, entered the Educational Institution of Indonesia-Saudi Arabia, housed in a gleaming building on a main thoroughfare. He lasted in the austere environment for two years.

"There were too many forbidden things," he said of the school where the Arabic language, taught by teachers from Saudi Arabia, is the focus of the curriculum. "You were not allowed to join any other student organization. Jeans were out, and they preferred that you wear a beard and long Arabic clothes."

Mr. Arofiq did not feel at home at the Saudi-run school, where he said the strict Wahhabi form of Islam was the basis of the teaching. But he was the exception. Most students persevered for the full five years, he said. From the financing of educational institutions to giving money for militant Islamic groups, the influence of Saudi Arabia, and Saudi charities, has been growing steadily here in the world's most populous Muslim country.

Until recently, Indonesia has been famously relaxed about its religion. But slowly Indonesians are becoming more devout and in the battle for the soul of Islam here the Saudis are playing an important though stealthy role, Indonesian scholars say.

The Saudi money has come in two forms, Indonesian and Western officials said: above-board funds for religious and educational purposes, and quietly disbursed funds for militant Islamic groups. The Saudi money has had a profound effect on extremist groups, allowing some to keep going and inspiring others to start recruiting, the officials said.

A Saudi charity, Al Haramain, provides a good example of this dual role. Three years ago it signed a formal memorandum of understanding with the Indonesian Ministry of Religion that allowed it to finance educational institutions.

But Al Haramain also appears to have served as a conduit for money to Jemaah Islamiyah, a Southeast Asian terrorist organization that aims to build Islamic states in the region. A senior member of Jemaah Islamiyah, Umar Faruq, who was arrested last year and is now in American custody, told the Central Intelligence Agency that Al Haramain provided money to his group.

Earlier this year, under pressure from Washington, Saudi government officials announced that Al Haramain had been asked to close down in all the Muslim countries where it was operating.

The large two-story house that Al Haramain used as its headquarters in a remote suburb of Jakarta was put up for rent last month. But the offices moved to a smaller house down the block and a Haramain official continues to oversee the completion of the charity's expensive new religious boarding school on the outskirts of Jakarta.

Meanwhile, the Saudi influence in Indonesia's religious boarding schools, known as pesantren, is by no means dominant, but it is allowing stricter interpretations of Islam to gain favor, said Alwi Shihab, an Islamic scholar and a former minister of foreign affairs.

"I told Condoleezza Rice last year that you are going to see the consequences of all this rigid interpretation because of all the money being poured in here," Mr. Shihab said.

The Saudis spread their largess broadly - from a rundown pesantren called Darul Istiqamah al Haramain in Makassar, a city in southern Sulawesi, to a prosperous one, Al Irsyad, in the town of Salatiga in central Java. Exactly how much money the Saudis give is unclear.

At the school in Makassar, 8-year-old girls wear jilbabs, the head coverings worn by some Indonesian Muslim women. Seven mosques, several financed with Saudi money, are scattered around the campus. At Al Irsyad, the daily newspapers are displayed on a notice board with all photographs of human faces scratched out - an effort to present the news to the male students without the distraction of pictures, a teacher said.

The new Haramain pesantren built on acres of land at Bekasi, just outside Jakarta, is set to open in August. Its spacious grounds and clean, cream-colored buildings contrast with the cramped conditions in most Indonesian pesantren.

The Saudi influence here is relatively new. As part of an effort to cultivate Islamic leaders, the former authoritarian ruler, President Suharto, encouraged a Saudi presence in Indonesia in the decade before he was toppled in 1998.

For years, more than 200,000 Indonesians have made the annual hajj, the pilgrimage to Islam's holy sites in Saudi Arabia. Many others have taken charter flights to Riyadh, the Saudi capital, to find work as maids and laborers. But after returning home, most Indonesians continued with their inclusive brand of Islam, which tolerates a smattering of Sufism here and a touch of Buddhism there.

But as the Indonesian state has become increasingly unable to look after basic needs - the unemployment rate is about 20 percent - growing numbers of Indonesians are finding some of the stricter tenets of Saudi Arabia's Islam more attractive.

Last month, the Pew Global Attitudes Project, an international poll conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, showed striking support among Indonesians for the Saudi leader, Crown Prince Abdullah, whom Indonesians rated as one of the three leaders they trusted the most, and a huge drop in support for the United States.

In 2000, 75 percent of Indonesians said they had a favorable opinion of the United States. This year, 83 percent said they had an unfavorable opinion.

Meanwhile, the Saudi government's charitable financing continues apace. The libraries of many pesantren - including the prestigious Gontor pesantren in East Java - are filled with books from Saudi Arabia. (Gontor's newest building, the Saudi building, is also a gift from Saudi Arabia.) Few pesantren libraries hold any recent books by Western authors.

The Saudi religious affairs office in Jakarta churns out translations from Arabic to Indonesian - about one million books a year, an official there said. The titles include "Questions and Answers about Islamic Principles," by Bin Baaz, one of Saudi Arabia's most venerated interpreters of Islam.

The religious affairs attaché also offers scholarships for study to Saudi Arabian universities, and the students who receive them are increasingly those with a conservative religious bent, Indonesian officials said.

Students affiliated with Nahdlatul Ulama, the largest, oldest and most inclusive Islamic organization in Indonesia, said they had been excluded from scholarships to study in Saudi Arabia because they refused, in interviews with Saudi education officials, to cut their ties with the group.

Mr. Shihab, the former government minister, said that in principle he had no quarrel with the Saudis trying to influence Islam in Indonesia. "The Saudis have noble intentions for their religion," he said. "They see that Christianity, Sufism, the Shiites, should be guarded against in order not to pollute Islam. I don't accuse them of being terrorist extremists. They want to expand their form of Islam, the rigid understanding of Islam."