ISLAMIC PRAYERS AND COLD BATHS OFFER HOPE FOR INDONESIAN DRUG ADDICTS

CIBEUREUM, Indonesia -- Shivering in the early morning mist, recovering
heroin addict Slamet prepares to start another day of Islamic prayer and
meditation. The 28-year-old man used to spend most of his time stealing and
shooting up. Now, after eight months in an Islamic drug rehabilitation
center high in the hills of west Java, he is becoming a rare success story
in Indonesia's often feeble war on drugs.

"Before, people used to look at me like I was trash. All I could think
about was heroin. Now, I can eat, sleep and pray like a normal person. I
feel good," he says.

Indonesia is undergoing an explosion of illicit drug use and some social
activists believe the solution lies in Islam, the faith which some 90
percent of Indonesia's 210 million people adhere to. Slamet, along with 30
other ex-addicts, receives no specialized counseling or detoxification
treatment at the center -- just a steady diet of religious devotion. In the
end, the center claims a higher success rate than conventional clinics
trying to combat the drug crisis.

The center is run by a nearby Islamic boarding school, or pesantren, named
Suryalaya. There are hundreds of thousands of similar schools across
Indonesia. Most teach a mixture of religious and secular subjects and are
rarely inspected by state officials.

Fears that Indonesia is leaning toward Islamic extremism have been fanned
by reports of pesantren where students are indoctrinated with hardline
anti-Western teachings. Some pesantren have been accused of having links to
regional terrorists groups. But Suryalaya specializes in the study of
Sufism, the mystical form of Islam that stresses devotion to God and
religious tolerance. Its 90-year-old leader is revered as a holy man who,
according to tradition, can trace his teaching in a direct line back to
Islam's prophet, Muhammad.

Suryalaya's 30 drug rehab centers revolve around three Islamic principles:
communal prayer, the chanting of God's name and ritual bathing. The day
starts at 2 a.m. with a cold shower. The first prayer of the day is then
performed in the mosque followed by Arabic chanting of the phrase "There is
no god but God" -- part of the Muslim profession of faith -- at least 700
times. The recovering addicts then drink a cup of coffee before saying the
dawn prayer, followed by more chanting. Apart from meal breaks and a couple
of hours of rest or sport in the midmorning and afternoon, this combination
is continued until bedtime early in the evening.

Anang Syah, the religious teacher who heads the complex in Cibeureum, says
faith alone is enough to break an addict's habit: "We don't heal them, we
don't even treat them. All we do is make them aware that they belong to God."

The centers' wealthy clients, who have included the children of high-
ranking politicians and police and army officers, subsidize those from
poorer families. No one is turned away, Syah said.

The clinic's founders say that around 40 percent of the addicts they treat
go back to drugs when they leave, normally after about a year. No
statistics are available to back up their contention. Skeptics doubt the
claim, and point out that conventional detoxification and counseling
centers admit to relapse rates of around 85 percent.

Indonesia has approximately 4 million addicts. Cheap heroin accounts for
many of them, though the country has been awash with cheap Ecstasy and
amphetamines since the 1990s. Thousands of nightclubs function as little
more than drug dens, allegedly with the backing of corrupt security forces.