On the last Sunday of May, well over a million Muslim Indonesians gathered for an open-air prayer meeting in Surabaya. Peaceful and all in white, it was the largest gathering in that country in decades. For over three hours they pleaded for God's mercy in their distress.

As one famous ulama after another uttered his prayer in flowing Arabic, a kind of suppressed sobbing began to spread through the massive crowd. 'It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up', said one journalist. In between prayers, leaders urged people to plant food crops on whatever plot they could find. This was the sobbing of the hungry poor, who have no one to turn to but Allah.

Indonesia's politics are becoming more Islamic. Suharto already sensed this when in his later years he became noticeably more pious. Now that he is gone, Indonesians are throwing off New Order shackles and asserting their identity through many new or invigorated older movements. Around the world, religion and ethnicity are as attractive as socialism was half a century ago. Most Indonesians are Muslim.

'We helped push start the New Order bus thirty years ago', says Islamic leader Cholil Bisri. 'But when it started, the driver and other passengers, far from offering us a place, spat on us'. Muslims don't want to be left behind again, he adds.

If democracy means providing a channel for popular aspirations, then a more Islamic politics in the world's largest Muslim nation should surely be welcomed rather than feared.

It is important to remember, in any case, that Indonesian Islamic opinion is diverse.

On the far right are a number of little-understood groups interested in violence. There were some bomb explosions in the 1980s. Human rights groups today are wondering who was behind the apparently organised rape and humiliation of over a hundred Chinese women during the ugly Jakarta riots of 13-14 May.

Other Islamic groups have not espoused violence, yet are as intolerant of difference. They hate Jews, Chinese, Christians, and even pre-Islamic Javanese culture. Many Indonesians worry that the best-known among them, Kisdi, has gained more exposure in recent weeks.

However, at the opposite end of the spectrum is a widely admired Islamic intellectual like Nurcholish Madjid. He believes that an election fought on religious issues would be disastrous for national unity. People of all persuasions ought to focus on the 'real issues' of justice and eradicating poverty, he says.

In the great middle, Islam is increasingly important. Habibie's cabinet is so strong on religious figures that some sections of the opposition movement have come around to support him. The Islamic daily Republika treats Habibie's government in a confident business-as-usual fashion. Most remarkably, Amien Rais, yesterday the most outspoken Suharto opponent, today wants to give Habibie a chance. He even says attempts to unseat Habibie are 'cheap political tricks'.

Baseline for Islamic party politics today is still the pattern of the 1950s, the last time parties were completely free. There were two main Islamic parties, each backed by a religious organisation.

Under Suharto's hostility to popular politics, the parties withered. But the two religious organisations behind them remain strong. Muhammadiyah and Nahdatul Ulama each claim tens of millions of members. Although their leaders deny the two organisations will themselves becomes parties, activists within them are networking furiously to create one or more new parties ahead of elections next year.

Muhammadiyah, led by Amien Rais, is often called 'modernist'. Broadly, it is urban and middle class. Like suburban Christian fundamentalists, they take their religion straight from the holy book. They also tend to fear the 'anarchy' of the poor, and look for allies in the halls of power.

The more rural Nahdatul Ulama (NU), led by Abdurrahman Wahid, is called 'traditionalist' because it is closer to Javanese mysticism. Curiously however, NU today has more progressives in its ranks than does Muhammadiyah.

Through a network of religious schools throughout the country, young NU radicals encourage a new theology that puts the poor first. Their role models are several liberal intellectuals from the Islamic Middle East and North Africa.

The differences between these two groups are deep. They are social, and not merely doctrinal. They pit urban against rural, better-off against worse-off, and perhaps even the outer islands against Java.

Even ignoring competition from equally vibrant non-Islamic movements, this rivalry will itself ensure no Iranian Revolution can occur in Indonesia. Moreover, no Jakarta government will want to sacrifice relations with the West in favour of an Islamic bloc. Nor would the largely Christian eastern part of the country stand for determined Islamicisation in Jakarta.

However the Islamic community has enough in common to press its demands vigorously. Among them these three:

No government, especially a weak one like Habibie's, can afford to ignore these demands the way Suharto did.

Gerry van Klinken, editor, 'Inside Indonesia' magazine.