A 'brutal attack' and 'un-Islamic' are just some of the words Indonesians are using to describe Tuesday's car bomb attack at the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, the latest incident that affirms to many the fact that such violence is likely to be around for some time to come.

Whichever group is behind the attack, it should not be seen as related to Islam, said officials from the Indonesian Ulama Council, the national organisation of Muslim clerics.

"Whoever the culprits are, they don't deserve to be called religious people," said Din Syamsuddin, chairperson of the council.

At a joint press conference yesterday, the two largest Islamic organisations in Indonesia said the whole country had suffered once again with the car bomb attack at the 33-storey Marriott Hotel that killed at least 15 people and injured nearly 150 people.

Hasyim Muzadi, head of the Nahdatul Ulama, said the perpetrators ''are not only the enemy of the security agencies but of the whole nation''.

"It is totally against Islamic values. It is against humanity. The culprits should get the death penalty," said Amien Rais, the chairperson of the People's Consultative Assembly and a respected figure in Muhammadiyah.

JI connection

Indonesian police have been pointing the finger at Jemaiah Islamiyah (JI), the militant organisation that seeks to create a pan-Islamic state in Southeast Asia. It has also been blamed for the Oct 12 bomb attacks in the island of Bali that killed 202 people.

Police claim they have some clues about the culprits and "they lead to Jemaiah Islamiyah", said Prasetyo, chief of the information bureau of the Jakarta police office.

The Singapore-based Straits Times newspaper reportedly quoted JI as claiming responsibility for the attack.

Investigators have also been telling the media about similarities between the combination of high and low grade explosives and methods used in the Bali blasts and the Marriott one.

But away from the bombed-out scene of the blast - the explosion shattered windows until the 21st floor and burn victims have been sent to Singapore for treatment - it is clear that the fear of violence coming when people least expect it is sinking in.

Last month, police seized more than 1,000 bomb detonators, 30 bags of potassium chlorate weighing 30kg each, and four boxes of TNT in central Java and Jakarta. Nine suspected members of JI were arrested at the time. Potassium chlorate was also used in the Bali attack.

''We are fighting rampant violence. We don't know when the criminals will stop destroying this country,'' said the Indonesian-language Media Indonesia newspaper yesterday.

''Once again, all of us who are seeking to prevent dehumanisation must vow to continue fighting these criminals.''

''I don't want to speculate and I won't buy any speculation,'' said Rifky, a student at the Bogor-based Agricultural University. "But what I do want is that the police to find the real perpetrators, take them to court and punish them," he added.

Court proceedings are in fact underway for those Indonesians accused in the Bali bombing, and the first verdict is expected today.

Ahead of that, some analysts have been saying that Indonesians have been coming to terms with the spectre of violent extremism in the world's most populous Muslim country, one noted for its moderate brand of the religion.

Both after Bali and the Marriott attacks, some Indonesians reacted by saying they were meant to discredit Islam and Indonesian Muslims.

Increase isolation

But analysts like Ed Aspinall, lecturer of Asian studies at the University of Sydney, said that one key consequence of the Bali attacks was to ''increase the isolation of hardline Islamist groups which advocate violence''.

After Bali, ''the police investigation initially reinforced suspicions about victimisation of Muslim groups, but the evidence it turned up eventually, it seems, convinced much of the public that an Islamist network was indeed responsible,'' Aspinall wrote in the current issue of Inside Indonesia magazine.

Indonesian leaders who once were seen meeting known militant figures were forced to distance themselves from these persons, he said.

In the wake of this realisation, the Indonesian government adopted new security laws after the Bali bombings - and officials have been quoted as saying that even tougher laws are coming up after the Marriott attack.

Indonesia's Coordinating Minister for Security Affairs Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is expected to announce a tough new policy aimed at overcoming and preventing terrorism.

But in an editorial yesterday, the Jakarta Post said: ''We have heard little or nothing of what the government has been doing on the anti-terrorism front'' since the post-Bali laws and slammed what it called the government's latest intelligence failure.

''The most immediate task for the government, and the police, is to catch the terrorists, and to catch them fast. Until they do so, all efforts at rebuilding confidence will be only be destroyed by the next terrorist attack,'' it argued.

Meantime, some say they just want life to continue on as before. "I called my daughter in Jakarta to make sure that she is just all right," sighed Mustafa Harun, a government employee. - IPS