A Malaysian deputy of a militant cell implicated in the Bali bombing? Fifth Jemaah Islamiah operative detained under the ISA, bringing to 72 the total detained since November? Before the dust has settled in Bali, 10 died and more than 100 wounded in separate bombings in the Philippines city of Zamboanga and Manila?

These news headlines give a glimpse of the growing problem of religious terrorism and militancy in Southeast Asia.

The developments have dire consequences for Malaysia's economic and tourist prospects, especially since it has been included in the blacklist of the United States Immigration and Naturalisation Service.

Even locals are avoiding places in the capital frequented by westerners such as the Beach Club area in Jalan P Ramlee, Kuala Lumpur. Sentiments of gloom are reflected in the KLSE slide with adverse effect on efforts by distressed corporations to restructure their debts.

The indications are that these trends will continue in this region, aggravated by outside factors beyond the region's government control.

One of these factors is the Bush administration's misguided stance that has aggravated this problem of extremism and terrorism.

While the US has some legitimacy to attack the al-Qaeda network and its Taliban patron based on self-defence in the wake of the Sept 11 attacks, the Bush administration appears to have lost its focus when it together with Tony Blair's government elected to launch an unilateralist campaign to topple Saddam Hussein ostensibly on grounds of 'terrorism', but possibly on geopolitical strategic oil and imperialist considerations.

All the talk on war does little to help the world's economy or equity markets.

The situation is confusing because 'terrorism' now includes everything from Islamic militancy that motivated the Sept 11 attacks to amassing of biological and chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein that has nothing to do with al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, whatever the official spin.

Bush policies have created a negative impact as militant Muslims worldwide have interpreted them to be an attack by the US and the West against Islam. This probably led to the indiscriminate bombing of westerners (mainly Australians) in Bali.

In turn, this will lead neo-conservative rightist public opinion leaders in the West like Reverend Jerry Falwell and Franklin Graham to link Islam with violence. (See Bali attacks push moderate Muslims to speak up by Marwaan Macan-Markar )

More Westerners may be influenced to think in time to come, in the drift of what Marwaan said, that increasingly those who are extremist among the Muslim faith who could not cope up with modernity and western secular values will, as a defence mechanism, try to pre-emptively strike at random at anything western and destroy the Western secular civilisation so as to build an Islamic civilisation on its ruins.

This will lead to an unending cycle of mutual suspicion and conflict taking shape as Samuel Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilization .

These trends do not portend well for us in this region with its predominantly Muslim population if bombings like those in Bali recur.

Besides adverse economic consequences, the repercussions on political power equations like that between parties like Pas and Umno have yet to be fully understood.

I do agree with Marwaan that now, more than ever, moderate Muslims should speak up against extremism.

Extremism is not confined to random acts of violence against innocents — this is obvious enough — but the attitudes and values behind implementation of hudud, sex segregation in supermarkets, guided tours, etc. taking shape in Pas-controlled states.