A Political Football.(Islamic extremism)

The worshipers brought offerings of food and flowers to appease the souls of the dead. Then Balinese Hindu priests sprinkled holy water to purify the charred remains marking the site of the world's worst terrorist attack since 9-11. The size of last Friday's ancient Tawur Agung ceremonies were unprecedented for the Indonesian resort island of Bali. Indeed, the priests were busier than ever before, cleansing--as the Balinese believe--the ghosts of more than 190 bombing victims hovering over the island's popular Kuta tourist district. "In this ceremony we're taking on our enemies and also forgiving them," says ceremony organizer Ngurah Gede.

The Indonesian government doesn't have the luxury of forgiving. The world's largest Muslim nation is on a near-war footing, trying to track down all those involved in the Oct. 12 Bali bombing while simultaneously fighting radical Islam for the country's soul. This two- front war is looming large over the ongoing investigation into the blasts. Indonesian police, assisted by foreign law-enforcement agencies, have thus far conducted a textbook investigation, say Western diplomats. Their big break came two weeks ago when they arrested a Javanese man named Amrozi, who reportedly confessed to being part of the bomb plot and knowing members of Jemaah Islamiyah, a regional terrorist group with ties to Al Qaeda. But police have yet to win the hearts and minds of the Indonesian public, who for decades saw opponents of former dictators Sukarno and Suharto jailed on trumped-up charges. "There's this tendency to see a conspiracy behind all these things," says Marzuki Darusman, the country's former attorney general.

Indonesia's radical Islamic minority is playing on these fears, claiming that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency planted the Bali bombs to discredit Islam and accusing Jakarta of now doing Washington's bidding. The vast majority of Indonesia's 190 million Muslims are political moderates, but their community leaders--let alone the government--have remained surprisingly quiet in the face of these radicals. "I think the moderates are confused," says Ulil Abshar- Abdalla, director of the Liberal Islam Network. "People fear that if they are critical of this kind of thing, they will be branded as anti- Muslim."

President Megawati Sukarnoputri is safe from that charge. Since the Bali blasts, she's been virtually speechless, doing far less than many ...