Terror Islands.(Muslim terrorists in Spice Islands)

Until recently Thomas Pury, 45, grew nutmeg and cloves on his four-acre farm on a remote island in the Moluccas, once called the Spice Islands. Like their parents before them, Thomas and his wife were Roman Catholics; so was virtually their entire village of 100 on the island of Kesui. They had lived in peace with Muslim neighbors for years, but all that changed in late November, when a group of Muslims from two nearby islands came to Kesui dressed in white and carrying swords. They demanded that the Catholics convert to Islam--or else risk an attack on their villages.

With dozens of others, Thomas felt compelled to become a Muslim. But he wasn't ready for what came next. On Dec. 5, some Muslim women came to his home and circumcised his 6-year-old daughter, Emiliana. "It was so painful for her," he recalls. Four days later it was Thomas's turn. After the procedure, he developed such a bad infection he couldn't bear to wear trousers. Thomas's incision had begun to fester, he says, because "the razor was too dull and they had to cut me two or three times." In mid-December Thomas fled to the island of Ambon with 69 other Catholic refugees from Kesui--63 of whom had been forcibly circumcised.

Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid has a lot of problems on his hands these days, and one of the biggest is keeping a lid on sectarian violence in the Moluccas. Not long ago Ambon was a thriving city and resort hub for the Spice Islands. Tourists flocked to the island to bask in the sun and enjoy the stunning natural scenery. But beyond the pretty beaches, there was simmering discord. Former president Suharto had encouraged Muslims to migrate to the Moluccas from other islands. The newcomers began to compete economically with the established Christians, and violence soon broke out. Two years ago Ambon (population: 270,000) erupted in Christian-Muslim bloodletting of an almost medieval intensity. Some 8,000 people have since been killed, and half a million people were left homeless in the Moluccas. Sociologist Thamrin Tomagola of the University of Indonesia calls it "the most terrible civil war in the world," with more deaths per capita than in Bosnia.

The worst fighting has subsided, but atrocities such as those on Kesui are still taking place. Muslims and Christians, who had once lived together amiably, now regard each other with suspicion and paranoia. Ambon, the Moluccan capital, is now a totally segregated city reminiscent of Beirut. Just two weeks ago nearly a dozen people died in a shoot-out between a special-forces unit and renegade soldiers and police in Ambon. Both sides are battling for religious converts. Often, a majority community on one of the archipelago's more than 1,000 islands will persecute the minority, forcing it to renounce its religion or flee. Those who do not cooperate are sometimes killed, and their homes go up in flames.

Muslims felt defensive until last year, when some 3,000 Muslim fighters arrived in the Moluccas to defend their Islamic brethren. Many of the "holy warriors" belonged to the Laskar Jihad, whose members dress in white and follow an extremely devout form of Islam. "The Laskar Jihad came and taught us to be good Muslims," says Udin Aji, 32, who lost his left hand and part of his right one during a Christian attack on a Muslim village last July. "Without them, we Muslims might be losing the war." (A Laskar Jihad spokesman says its members are engaged in humanitarian works in the Moluccas, and are not extremists.) These days Udin Aji lives in a Muslim refugee camp in Ambon, having been driven from his village in the early days of ...