SOLO (CENTRAL JAVA): The last militant linked to the infamous Pondok Pesantren Al Mukmin graduated over a decade ago, but whenever there is a bombing in Indonesia, the past returns to haunt it.
The spotlight has once again fallen on Al Mukmin, following the July 17 twin suicide bombings at two of Jakarta's most luxurious hotels - the Marriott and Ritz-Carlton - which killed nine, including two unidentified bombers.
There are around 15,000 Islamic boarding schools known as 'pesantren' in Indonesia, most of them in remote Java villages, but Al Mukmin in Ngruki, Central Java, is among the most infamous.
Police visited the school four days after the bombings and were told their main suspect in the JW Marriott bombing is a former student.
The school was co-founded in 1972 by Indonesian clerics and founders of regional terror network Jemaah Islamiah (JI), Abu Bakar Bashir and Abdullah Sungkar. Sungkar died in 1999.
Since it was set up, at least 15 of its graduates have committed acts of terror across region, among them two of the Bali bombers executed last year for the 2002 attack that killed 202 people.
Now police are looking for former student Nur Hasbi - who goes by many aliases including Nur Said and Nurdin Aziz - in connection with the Marriott bombing.
He is the classmate of Asmar Latin Sani, who died carrying out the 2003 attack on the Marriott.
Both graduated from the school in 1995 along with Muhammad Rais, who was jailed over the first Marriott attack and whose sister is the first wife of fugitive terrorist Noordin Top.
Another Central Java school, Pesantren Al Muaddib in Binungan, Cilacap, is also under scrutiny.
Its founder Bahrudin Latif, who is now on the run, is wanted by the police for allegedly harbouring Noordin Top, who yesterday claimed responsibility for the latest bombings.
Police found explosives similar to the ones used in the Marriott and Ritz-Carlton attacks buried in Bahrudin's backyard.
A police crackdown in recent years has sent hundreds of terrorists to jail, severely weakened the JI and cut off its links to foreign funds.
But as the latest attacks illustrate, there is a long way to go before the authorities are able to uproot the scourge of terrorism.
Increasingly, terrorism experts, especially those outside Indonesia, are asking if the time has come to go after the radical Islamic schools, extremist clerics and publishing houses that print hardline religious books.
'The most common link between participants in the terrorist movement in Indonesia in the past 10 years has been attendance at those schools,' said senior analyst Ken Ward.
And International Crisis Group analyst Sidney Jones says around 50 JI-linked pesantren 'remain nodes of communication that are critical to keeping the network alive'.
'Everybody knows where these schools are, but there has been a sensitivity in dealing with them because people do not want to see Islamic education stigmatised,' she was quoted as saying by the New York Times.
Mr Ward also says the government has been slow to take on the militant schools because it fears a political backlash.
The Islamic boarding school is the oldest system of learning in the country, and they are viewed by parents as places which give their children a solid religious foundation.
Ms Lily Zakiyah Munir, director of the Jakarta-based Centre for Pesantren and Democratic Studies, said: 'It is too simplistic to suggest the government should close down such pesantren. Many are doing very good work to educate our Muslim children.'
But the biggest obstacle in the country's anti-terror campaign is that even the authorities seem unable to decide what constitutes radical Islam.
'I think it is a big problem with confronting the JI ideology. A lot of Indonesians can't agree on what is undesirable about it, except that they reject bombing,' The Australian newspaper quoted Mr Ward as saying.
Mr Mohamed Sholeh Ibrahim, the deputy director of the Ngruki school, also pointed out to The Straits Times that his school's curriculum has been vetted by the government.
'Our curriculum is reviewed every five years, and the government approves it each time,' he said.
'It is not fair to tie us to terrorism. We are not responsible for what our alumni do.'
Ms Jones noted that the JI members who studied there and went on to commit terrorist attacks all attended the school before 1996.
'In the last 10 years, Ngruki has not produced major participants in terrorist operations. It is a mistake to look at Ngruki now as the source of the ongoing threat,' she told The Straits Times.
And the issue, she pointed out, is not the school curriculum, but the 'extracurricular activities' that took place there.
Some students were picked by teachers for 'special religious study circles', she said.
Radical cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, a co-founder of the school, claims it turned down American donations because of a demand that it should stop teaching jihad in the curriculum.
'Our teaching of jihad is all based on the Quran and Hadith, and the authorities do not find anything wrong with it,' he said.
Meanwhile, five students whom The Straits Times met during their break said they were disappointed with media reports pointing the finger at their school of 1,700 students each time a bomb goes off.
'Our school is not a terrorist school. We are here to get religious education. The school does not teach us to use violence,' said 16- year-old Budi, as his friends nodded their heads in agreement.
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