Long cited as a model of harmonious cohabitation between different religions, the most populous Muslim country in the world until recently occupied a special place in the Western imagination. Indonesia, home to a peaceful version of Islam, offered a reassuring counter-model to a rowdy and accusatory Arab Islam. Since 1999, however, confrontations between Christians and Muslims in the Moluccas, excesses of vigilantism in Sulawesi, and espcially the Bali and Jakarta bombings have shattered these simplistic stereotypes. For many terrorism experts - often self-proclaimed - Indonesia's mutation confirmed the hackneyed thesis that equated obscurantism with Islam, and saw violent outbreaks as an inevitable consequence.

The End of Innocence is far removed from the hollow analyses underlying this essentialist thesis. The book positions the evolution of Indonesian Islam in the broader context of the recent history of the archipelago, and provides a rigorous analysis of the origins and causes of the 'radical temptation,' deciphering its simplistic ideology and showing how it has been nourished by political manipulation. The authors, both historians specializing in Indonesian Islam, describe the hold of religious extremism as well as the strong resistance it has provoked in a country that has quickly become one of the key spots in the upheavals occuring throughout the Muslim world