When Dani bin Misra was released from prison last week after serving just three months for smashing in the skull of a member of a Muslim sect, this conservative Indonesian town let out a triumphant cry.

“He’s a hero!” Rasna bin Wildan said of the teenage killer.

The ferociousness of the attack, captured on video and circulated widely on the Internet, guaranteed no one from the Ahmadiyah group would dare set foot in Cikeusik again, the 38-year-old farmer said as others nodded in agreement.
Their reaction is part of a wider wave of intolerance against religious minorities that is challenging Indonesia’s image as a beacon of how Islam and liberalism can coexist.

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Days after rumors spread across this industrial city that Christians were conducting a mass baptism, hard-line Islamic leaders called for local mosques to create a youth guard to act as moral police and put a quick stop to forced conversions.

They started training early Saturday morning, around 100 young men turning out in a field in Bekasi wearing martial arts uniforms. Leaders stressed that there was no plan to arm them, but they do not shy away from saying they’ll act essentially as thugs.

“We’re doing this because we want to strike fear in the hearts of Christians who behave in such a way,” said Murhali Barda, who heads the local chapter of the Islamic Defenders Front, which pushes for the implementation of Islamic-based laws in Bekasi and other parts of the archipelagic nation. “If they refuse to stop what they’re doing, we’re ready to fight.”

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Indonesia’s leading clerics are considering a religious edict against riding a motorbike without a crash helmet to promote safety on the chaotic and deadly roads of the world’s most populous Muslim country.

Such a fatwa would not carry a penalty for those who ignore it, but advocates said Sunday making road safety a moral issue could be more effective than the law.

Helmets have been compulsory in Indonesia since 1988, but a 2005 government study found that up to 30 percent of riders in cities still did not wear one. Even fewer riders wear them in rural areas.

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In the months ahead, as 30,000 additional heavily armed American soldiers and Marines surge into Afghanistan, a much smaller group of young Americans will ship out to the world’s most populous Muslim country: Indonesia.

Armed with little more than laptops and textbooks, shod not in combat boots but in sandals and sneakers, these 25 volunteers will be the first representatives of the Peace Corps to land in Indonesia since the organization was expelled in 1965. By agreeing to dispatch volunteers to live side-by-side with Indonesians, teaching English to their children and exchanging insights into each other’s cultures, the Obama administration is sending the clearest possible signal to the world’s Muslims: America’s fight is not with you, but with the terrorists at your fringes.

The move also reflects recognition by the administration and Congress that the Peace Corps is a critical component of a new “smart power” policy toward U.S. engagement abroad. Such an approach emphasizes public diplomacy and grassroots-level development assistance over military hard power. Acknowledging the need for this shift, Congress voted last month to raise Peace Corps funding by $60 million ”” the largest increase ever ”” to $400 million.

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Indonesia has received a lot of bad press in recent years: for bombings in Bali and at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in the capital, Jakarta ”” both the work of al-Qaida-linked militants ”” and for numerous attacks on Christian churches. But Indonesia overall is a far more tolerant place than these acts suggest, and it appears to be getting even more accepting.

Indonesia is home to more Muslims than any other nation. But in Jakarta, a $27 million Christian church that seats more than 4,500 people opened its doors last month. The Reformed Millennium Cathedral is the work of preacher Stephen Tong, a sprightly 67-year-old who waited 16 years to get permission to build his church.

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