FRIDAY prayers were not over yet, when at the Al-Hayat mosque of the Al-Zaytun pesantren (Islamic boarding school), Sheik Abdus Salam Panji Gumilang addressed his students. Wearing a black Muslim cap, dark glasses and a balck coat, he stood behind the altar and said, “ You should not worry about the news gathering out there. Let me face them,” to noisy applause.

That afternoon, Panji tried to calm down the thousands of his students. A