MAKMUN Effendi Nur, 49, looked serious. A book with a dark gray cover lay before him. Bound like a thesis, the book contained dark-brown quarto-sized pages displaying neatly typed sentences. The dust it had collected and its musty smell made Nur cough.

Nur was in the police detective room at Central Java provincial police headquarters. An expert in Arabic and a post-graduate lecturer at Semarang-based Walisongo Government Institute for Islam