Sporting a wispy beard, a white skullcap and with heavy glasses perched on his nose, the frail, 64-year-old Indonesian man speaks in a flat, low voice.

Christians and Jews are "infidels", Abu Bakar Bashir argues, and the United States and its allies are ''terrorists'' plotting evil deeds against Islam.

In no time, Bashir has gone from being an unknown rector at an Islamic boarding school in the Central Java city of Solo to a figure called a terrorist in the west and in South-east Asia.

Bashir was taken into custody Monday and is now in Jakarta, where authorities are waiting to question him about a series of bomb attacks in Indonesia and the Philippines.

Indonesian authorities said after the Oct12 car bomb attack in Bali that they would take him in, but that this was in connection with the South-east Asia attacks and not the Bali blasts.

'Unacceptable thinking'

But whatever it is that Bashir may be linked to, followers and teachers of Islam here say that majority of Muslims in Indonesia the world's most populous Muslim country do not like the fact that radical groups are hijacking their faith.

''Radical groups are nothing. A small bunch of people. Not more than 50,000 in a sea of more than 200 million Muslims,'' former Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid told the syndicated news service Global Viewpoint of the US-based Tribune Media Services International.

Wahid, former chairperson of Indonesia's largest Muslim organisation, the 30 million-strong Nahdlatul Ulama, says that Jakarta's reported reluctance to root out extremists due to its aversion to antagonising the country's Muslims was ''unacceptable thinking''.

"The moderate Muslim majority is in fact eager to have the suspects arrested, because they cannot do so themselves,'' he wrote in an article Wednesday in the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper in Australia.

In recent months, Southeast Asian governments have kept a watchful eye on Bashir and Jemaah Islamiah, the group he is suspected of heading that seeks to set up a pan-Islamic state covering Malaysia, Singapore, southern Thailand and the southern Philippines. The group has just been included in the UN list of terrorist organisations.

Jemaah Islamiah has also been linked to the al-Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden, but the frail man of Arabic descent denies all accusations.

''I don't know and have never met Osama bin Laden, but I support his struggle to uphold Islam. He is not a terrorist. The terrorists are America and Israel,'' he said.

He also called the Bali bombing a ''brutal act''.

''I am not linked to any terrorism. Jemaah Islamiah does not exist. All those accusations are made by the US government, the Jews, who are not willing to see Islam as an entity,'' he said in an interview with local television station Surya Citra Televisi Indonesia (SCTV).

Fled to Malaysia

Bashir was born in 1938 in Pekunden village of Jombang, East Java. He dropped out of high school for financial reasons and entered an Islamic boarding school, where he was exposed to popular Indonesian Muslim figures like Nurcholish Majid, Imam Zarkasyih and Hasan Basri.

He failed to complete his studies in Al-Irsyad University, due to his tight schedule as an activist and preacher. In 1969 he set up two radio stations, Al-Irsyad Broadcasting Commission and Radio Dakwah Surakarta.

It was not long before then Indonesian President Suharto closed down the stations for their criticism of his regime and for promoting Islamic law in the officially secular country.

Bashir was jailed in 1978 for trying to start an Islamic militia, and after his release, was later convicted for subversion.

He fled to Malaysia in 1985, then returned to Indonesia in 1999, when radical Islamists who had been suppressed under Suharto found more political space to operate.

It was during the time Bashir spent teaching Islam in Malaysia that he lent his support to the idea of setting up an Islamic state in Southeast Asia. He is suspected to have established Jemaah Islamiah during this period.

Bashir, the father of three children, sits on the executive of the Mujahideen Council, which was formed in Yogyakarta in 2000 as an umbrella group for people wanting to turn Indonesia into an Islamic state.

Islamic state

Bashir attributes all of Indonesia's problems to an unwillingness to uphold 'Shariah' or Islamic law.

''This country has always been controlled by secularists Sukarno, Suharto, (Bacharuddin Jusuf) Habibie, Abdurrahman Wahid and now Megawati. They separate Islam from state affairs, this is what secularism is all about,'' he said.

''That is a dangerous thought because Islam is about every aspect of life,'' said the man who describes himself as a simple preacher.

But Islamic experts here say that turning to the idea of an Islamic state as an overall solution is overly simplistic. It is in fact a setback, they say, because adherence to the faith does not mean giving it a political hue.

''Islam should be built on common sense and human conscience because Islam is for humanity,'' said Moeflich Hasbullah of the Sunan Gunung Djati Islamic University in Java.

''We all should fight for a clean, democratic, civilised society, a harmonious human life for all. It's not important to label something Islam.''

''You can become a true Muslim anywhere. And you can become a devil anywhere, even in an Islamic state,'' he pointed out.

Hasbullah says that the majority of Indonesian Muslims see Islam as a universal value system that provides humanity, freedom, comfort and harmony, rather than extremism, violence, bomb explosions and agony.

Meantime, Indonesian officials yesterday released the sketches of three suspects in the Bali attacks.

So far, Indonesian police say that they have not found a direct link between the Bali attacks and Jemaah Islamiah. But they say a possible suspect in the blasts, Hambali, was Bashir's student.

Speaking on local television after Bashir's arrest, his wife Aisyah Bahaja said that her husband knew Hambali as a vendor who occasionally came to their home to study Islam.

She described her husband's study gatherings as ordinary. ''We study the Quran, the teaching of the Prophet and some other Islamic literature,'' she said. IPS