Here in the world's largest Muslim country a war of ideas within Islam is playing out on an unlikely stage: a bohemian arts community in a crowded Jakarta side street. The patrons of the Utan Kayu Theater, including some of Indonesia's leading novelists and writers, normally gather to discuss such topics as avant-garde art or prewar Russian cinema.
But in recent weeks, a fierce debate over how Muslims should be allowed to worship, marry, and even think has caught the theater in its crossfire. Hard-line Muslim groups have been threatening to evict the Liberal Islam Network, a small group of intellectuals known as JIL, from their offices in the theater complex by the beginning of the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan - Wednesday.