The upshot of it all was a series of round-table meetings and study trips under a network called the "Southeast Asian Muslims for Freedom and Enlightenment" (Seamus). Comprising eminent Muslim activists and scholars, the network hailed itself as a historic "reform-oriented" movement; its purpose, to promote human rights, gender equality, pluralism, peaceful conflict resolutions and civil society, among Muslim communities across the region.

But as the meetings progressed, they threw open a whole new gamut of concerns, with the representatives confronting commonalities so identical and urgent. Chief among these, they found, was an overarching concern about their indigenous Southeast Asian cultures in the face of heightened fundamentalism in the Muslim world.

"In all our discussions, one issue that the participants brought to the table was of Middle-Eastern interpretation and its negative impact on local culture," said Amina Rasul, a convenor for the Philippines Council for Islam and Democracy. "In Southeast Asia, we did not have this kind of situation before. But now more and more, year by year, people are donning Arab garb to show they are Muslim."

"And as this goes on, the trend is going to impact the songs we sing, the traditional dances we have," added Amina who hails from Mindanao and is a former presidential adviser in the cabinet of Fidel Ramos.

"And so we said we should be wary of Arabic interpretations. We should differentiate our cultures from Arab customs."

And when the network recently held an unpublicised meeting in Penang, the delegates who had converged here found the mutual concern about their Southeast Asian identities become even more articulated. The meeting was co-organised with the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung.

According to Raja Juli Antoni, executive director of the Jakarta-based Maarif Institute, the adoption of Islam had for centuries never unduly affected the rich local traditions of the Southeast Asians. Because Islam entered the region peacefully, not through war or conquest, it seeped into peoples’ lives without disturbing their cultures, integrating side-by-side with local "Malayness", he says.

But increasingly, just over the last decade or two, there has been a growing tendency to abandon locally evolved traditions, fearing that they are "un-Islamic".

"We cannot deny that the Quran and the Hadith are written in Arabic, but we have to make a distinction between Islamic values and Arab traditions," he says.

His countryman, Luthfi Assyaukanie, chairman of the Liberal Islam Network, finds it ironic that it was the very democracy introduced in Indonesia after the fall of Suharto that allowed radical Islamic groups to grow over the last ten years.

"There is a contest of ideas between liberals and radicals ... And the conservatives are using this freedom to impose Islamic agenda.

"If the agenda is good, that it deals with poverty, the environment, with quality of human life, and so on, then it’s fine. But if your agenda is going to discriminate people, humiliate particular groups, then it needs to be looked at.

"In the past we were wiser ... But it’s the same problem in the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia and south Thailand," Luthfi says.

Malaysian Institute for Policy Research executive director Khalid Jaafar insists that a powerful reconciliation between the two worlds – the traditions of Southeast Asia and the values of Islam – can be attained.

And it can be found in many of the ancient Islamic texts themselves. "The intellectual foundations are there," he says, stressing that the religion accommodates diversity while embracing different cultures. "What we want to do is to first understand the rich resources available within the spectrum of Islamic thought that have emerged historically.

"We need to be aware of the contemporary challenges faced by Islam, and look at how the deep spiritual resources can help to deal with the challenges."

And the intellectuals maintain there is hope for another dawn of Islam in Southeast Asia. "There has got to be a point where we see that we are in fact Malay, Indonesian, Thai or Bangsa Moro," says Amina Rasul. "And that we see to it that our cultures are not erased, even as we follow our Islamic faith."