If US Secretary of State Colin Powell was hoping to use his passage through Southeast Asia this week to gauge how widespread Washington's latest bogey

Islamic extremism is, then he should take comfort in the moderate voices coming from Indonesia and countries around it.

On Sunday, the eve of Powell's six-nation journey through this region, Indonesia's largest Muslim organisation, the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), affirmed its long-held commitment to moderate Islam on the last day of its four-day national congress.

The NU is ''striving to sustain and promote moderate thinking and a pluralist and tolerant attitude among the younger generation,'' the English-language daily Jakarta Post reported Monday.

According to the religious leaders and Islamic scholars of NU, which claims to have a 40 million-strong membership, Indonesia needs a ''moderate path in developing Islamic thought,'' the paper reported. ''Islamic fanaticism, extremism or fundamentalism is not a popular stance among most NU members.''

Neighbouring Malaysia also offers a message that should, although not as stark as Indonesia, please Washington's top diplomat. Two by-elections on July 18 in Malaysia's northern state of Kedah revealed that the country's Islamic extremists have still to command a wide political base.

PAS lost one seat

At that poll, the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), which controls two of Malaysia's 13 states, lost the tussle for one parliamentary seat that had been held by PAS president Fadzil Noor, whose death in June prompted the poll.

The victor was a candidate for the ruling Barisan Nasional (National Front) coalition, which has been trying to project a more moderate Muslim face in an ongoing contest in the country to use Islam as a political instrument.

Often, however, signs of moderate Islam are overshadowed by the headline-grabbing activities of extremists in these two predominantly Muslim countries. Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world, with 170.3 million Muslims out of some 220 million, while Malaysia has some10.8 million Muslims out of 22 million people.

It is likewise the case in some of the other South-east Asian countries with an Islamic presence, although as a minority community. The Philippines has 3.9 million Muslims, nearly four percent of the population, Thailand has 3.3 million Muslims, also four percent, and Singapore has 500,000 Muslims, about 16 percent of the population.

The reports about the activities of Islamic extremists creates the perception that their advocacy of extremism or calling for a more militant brand of Islam in this region is attracting a larger following.

The groups that have gained attention under this trend are those like PAS, whose proposals for hudud (Islamic criminal law) have created worries along many Malaysians, and the Justice Party in Indonesia, which is reportedly gaining young professionals as members.

Rise in violence

Then there are the groups that are perceived to be more significant and powerful than their actual numbers — such as Laskar Jihad and Laskar Mujahiddin in Indonesia, linked to communal problems in different parts of the country.

Even Thailand has acquired notoriety due to a rise in violence in the country's south, home to a majority of Thai Muslims.

While some in the international media have portrayed the attacks on Thai authorities as the work of Muslim separatist groups, local independent investigators are still to be convinced of that view. They think it is a turf battle over drugs, gambling and arms trafficking, and that groups behind them may simply be exploiting the Islamic angle.

In the Philippines, where US forces have been involved, albeit on the sidelines, to control a group of armed Muslim rebels considered little more than bandits, the forces of moderation in the Muslim community are dominant.

Over the weekend, a group of ulamas' meeting in the southern Philippines said it is time to address the misperceptions about the religion and the linkage of ''terrorism'' with Islam after the Sept 11 attacks.

In short, there is no shift away from South-east Asia's reputation as having the moderate face of Islam, says Maznah Mohamed, a social scientistworking on Islam and human rights at the University of Science, Malaysia.

''It's just that the global public is more aware about the existence of these groups, who have been around for a long time. If anything, Sept 11 gave their causes more publicity than before,'' adds Mohamed.

According to another scholar of South-east Asian Islam, the visible presence of political Islam in the region is no reason for undue worry. ''Such incidents have always been taking place on the sidelines,'' says this academic, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Emotional, not ideological

For him, whatever support the groups in the vanguard of Islamic extremism have received since the Sept 11 acts of terror in the United States is ''mostly emotional'' than ideological.

The US-led assault in Afghanistan to drive out the ruling Taliban last year did provide the region's extremists with a window of opportunity to state their case. Radical Muslim groups in Indonesia and Malaysia called for a jihad (or holy war) against the United States.

That was followed by revelations of a network of Islamic extremists, spanning the region, that had been planning to attack US embassies and businesses in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. Among the plotters were Riduan Isamuddin and Abu Bakar Baasyir, two Muslim clerics from Indonesia.

Nevertheless, as the Islamic experts observe, while Islamic extremism in whatever shape or form has been in the spotlight, it has still to dislodge the largely moderate tendencies that prevail in the region.

In truth, the hard-liners will not find it easy to dominate the political order, since the moderate Muslims are conscious of their efforts, says Dede Oetomo, an anthropologist at Airlangga University, in Surabaya, a city east of the Indonesian capital, Jakarta.

For one, he says, ''The moderates don't want to lose leverage among the Muslim populace in future elections.''

The moderates would also take comfort in the tough stance taken by the Nahdlatul Ulama at its just-finished convention in Jakarta — a move endorsed by the second largest Islamic group Muhammadiyah — to stall efforts by the religious hard-liners to amend the country's 47-year-old constitution in order to include Islamic Shariah law.

''While other Islamic organisations and political parties are fighting to insert the word 'Islam' into Article 29 of the 1945 Constitution, NU clerics and scholars have bluntly expressed opposition to moves to amend the article, which stipulates that 'the state is based on one God','' the Jakarta Post noted. — IPS