“My Friend the Fanatic: Travels With a Radical Islamist” by Sadanand Dhume (Skyhorse Publishing, 273 pgs., $24.95)

There are more Muslims in Indonesia — more than 200 million of them — than in any country of the world. They’ve long been known for moderation.

A book by an experienced Asian reporter includes some cautious sympathy with the strongest of Indonesian Muslim groups, the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS). It wants the country to adopt sharia — Muslim law — but has been emphasizing its opposition to corruption instead.

In “My Friend the Fanatic,” author Sadanand Dhume overflows with little-known facts and striking anecdotes about Indonesia, where he has spent four years. It includes an interview with a party leader explaining that he doesn’t think the country is ready for sharia.

“I can’t say, ‘Cut off a thief’s hand’ if people are poor and there is no food,” says Anis Matta, its secretary general.

A recent article by Dhume in Wall Street Journal Asia makes clear his satisfaction that PKS held its ground when Indonesia elected a new parliament in April and other Islamic groups lost sharply. It’s now the country’s fourth strongest party and may claim additional cabinet posts in the Indonesian coalition government, now led by seculars.

Indonesian moderation can tolerate plenty of religious violence. Dhume describes the two-year exploits of one Muslim group, the Laskar Jihad, in the Molucca islands of northern Indonesia:

“Here and there they converted Christian villages by force,” he writes. “They stoned to death a ‘volunteer’ who confessed to adultery.”

The book also includes a prison interview with Abu Bakr Bashir, convicted of conspiracy in the 2002 bombing on the Indonesian island of Bali. It killed 202 people, many of them young Australian tourists.

“Osama bin Laden is a soldier of Allah,” he quotes Bashir as saying. “His bombings are not action, but reaction.”

Bashir, now released, is widely believed to head Jemaah Islamiyah, an extremist Muslim organization, but he maintains it doesn’t exist. Dhume got that interview with the help of Herry Nurdi, managing editor of a fundamentalist Islamic newspaper. He hired Nurdi to help him travel in Muslim activist areas, and a friendship developed. Their trips were eased by the fact that both men wear beards, standard among devout Muslims. Dhume, born into Hinduism, is now an atheist.

Nurdi as a pious Muslim had fought Christians in the Moluccas. Now he was looking for an additional wife and had given up music he loved because fundamentalists disapproved. The 27-year-old “fanatic” taught himself English, enjoys Western films and books and doesn’t come across as a ruthless fighter. But when Dhude wickedly introduces him as someone who thinks Osama bin Laden can solve the world’s problems, Nurdi just comments:

“I am not embarrassed.”