DAVID McNEILL BALI LETTEROf ALL the places sucked violently into the post-9/11 maelstrom, few are as unlikely or as undeserving as Bali.
A sleepy tropical paradise anointed in balmy Pacific sun, Bali has long been a beloved haunt of backpackers and surfers from nearby Australia. The Indonesian island - smaller than Co Cork - has one of the richest artistic and cultural heritages in southeast Asia along with some of its most wonderful scenery.
It was young Australians who died in largest numbers when two bombs ripped through Paddy's Bar and the Sari nightclub in the easygoing city of Kuta on October 12th, 2002, killing 202 people. A third bomb, packed with excrement, detonated almost simultaneously outside the local American consulate.
Planted by radical Islamic group Jemaah Islamiyah, the bombs profoundly shocked Australians used to seeing themselves as far away from the world's problems. In the days that followed, the shock was compounded by the sight of Indonesians wearing Osama bin Laden T-shirts and Muslim students in Australia appearing on TV to justify the bombings. Today, Paddy's Bar is gone and a marble monument to the victims takes its place. But the political and religious tensions that fuelled that outrage, and the 2005 bombs in Kuta town square and the fishing village of Jimbaran that killed another 20 people, still resonate and may indeed have worsened.
Balinese long ago learned to live with if not love the boozy nightclub culture and hordes of skimpily clad foreigners that go with being one of Asia's key tourist spots. Most families have someone working in the tourist industry and few have been left untouched by the bombings, which initially frightened away about a third of foreign visitors.
But the island's hedonism offends many in Indonesia, which has the world's largest Muslim population: 88 per cent of 245 million people. While Indonesia is officially secular, some fear it is sliding toward Sharia or Islamic law, under pressure from conservatives.
Several areas have already effectively ceded from secular rule, and condoms, alcohol and pornography have been restricted. In March, the country banned all porn websites. Radical Islamic groups are working to outlaw bars from the capital, Jakarta.
The strain between Indonesia and Bali is partly religious: 93 per cent of Balinese are Hindu and just 5 per cent are Muslim. For Imam Samudra, the man convicted of helping to plot the 2002 bombs, the island's status as apostate from Islam was bad enough, but he was also motivated by what he called the "disgusting adulterous" behaviour of the foreigners there.
Imam Samudra is an Islamic-fascist villain straight from the handbook of Christopher Hitchens. In an interview this year for the London Times, he declined to offer any consolation for the non-Muslim victims, who are non-people, "unbelievers" destined for hell. But like bin Laden and radical Islam in general, it seems clear that his project is motivated as much by politics as God.
Explaining that his target was only "anti-Muslims," especially from the US, Australia and other members of the "Crusader army", Imam Samudra said his plot had helped weaken the influence of America. "Before the action Indonesia was still under the control of the USA . . . So, basically, it drove back the USA alliance."
Perhaps he is right, but you would never know it in Kuta, where the hated icons of American capitalism are everywhere: Pizza Hut, Starbucks, McDonalds and Visa. The half-naked foreign tourists are back on the beaches, along with local Muslim women paddling fully clothed in the shallow water, thanks to Islamic rules that forbid bathing. The nightclubs are still open, but now guarded by security police armed with submachine guns and bomb-detectors.
Bali works hard at living up to its carefree reputation, but the fear of another outrage is palpable. Whatever the objections of radical Islam, the island's economy is chained for survival to its foreign guests. Indonesia, meanwhile, deals uneasily with the demands of the globalised, US-led world, responding with poverty, corruption, rising food prices and some of the widest income disparities in Asia.
Religious conservatives campaigning for a return to an idealised, pre-modern past seem certain to thrive in these conditions. As Jason Burke gloomily concluded in his seminal book Al-Qaeda, bin Laden's concept of cosmic struggle has now spread among tens of millions around the world, "particularly the young and angry".
What then for this tiny, epicurean speck in the Pacific? Conservative Indonesian politicians joke that they might give Bali to the Australians. But the punchline belongs to the Balinese, who would probably welcome such a move.