''I say Cambodia is safe,'' said Ahmad Yahya, one of the most prominent Muslims in the country, addressing fears that Islamic militants could find a niche in this unruly land.

''But who knows?''

With its porous borders, its corruption, its hide-and-seek legal system and its disorganized Muslim community, some analysts say, this small Southeast Asian country could easily become a refuge and a breeding ground for terrorists.

''I told the ambassador, don't worry about our people,'' Mr. Yahya said, referring to the American envoy. ''Our people I can guarantee. But the Bangladeshis, Afghanis, Pakistanis, Saudis and people like that who come here, I cannot guarantee.''

Those foreigners, and the mostly fundamentalist Islamic schools and mosques they are rapidly setting up, have already changed the face of Islam in Cambodia. The question is whether they are bringing radicalism and militancy with them.

It is a question that is also being asked in neighboring Thailand, another overwhelmingly Buddhist country, where officials now concede that members of the terrorist group Al Qaeda have held meetings. Militancy has also grown in other Southeast Asian countries with Muslim populations -- Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines.

For Cambodian Muslims, this is a time of internal turmoil and uncertainty as the religion seeks to redefine itself after a period of repression that almost destroyed it.

Like most others in the country's Muslim minority, Mr. Yahya, a member of Parliament who heads a local Islamic foundation, is an ethnic Cham, descendant of a great empire that dominated much of the region early in the last millennium.

The communist Khmer Rouge, which ruled Cambodia in the late 1970's, targeted the Cham for extermination and devastated their culture and their religious institutions.

Researchers say that more than half the small Muslim population may have died from 1975 to 1979. Still a small minority, Muslims now make up 5 percent or less of Cambodia's population of 12.5 million.

As they rebuild their religion, many Muslims are moving away from the magic and mysticism that their fathers mixed with the teachings of the Koran, trying to adapt their religion to a more modern world.

''This country is ripe for Muslim missionaries,'' said Bjorn Blengsli, a Norwegian anthropologist who is studying Cambodian Islam. ''They had to start all over again. They had no religious leaders, nothing. They lost almost everything -- their script, their rituals, almost all their written material. They were left with a couple of myths.''

He added, ''That's why today a purification movement is so easy. They are very vulnerable, and a lot of people are coming into Cambodia and telling them how to change.''

But he said that ''being fundamentalist does not mean being a terrorist.''

''If you have radical, militant Muslims living in Cambodia, I have not seen any proof,'' he added.

Over the past decade, foreign Islamic groups, including the fundamentalist Wahhabis from Saudi Arabia, have been financing mosques and opening religious schools throughout the country.

The number of mosques has risen to more than 150 from about 20, Mr. Blegsli said, and there are many smaller places of worship.

Money has flowed in from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Malaysia and Indonesia, and scores of new Islamic boarding schools are staffed in part by teachers from other Muslim nations.

Every year, Muslim officials say, about 80 Cambodian students travel abroad to study in Wahhabi schools. Another 400 travel to Malaysia, where a fundamentalist movement called Dakwah is widespread.

''There do seem to be growing links with the Middle East,'' an American diplomat said. ''It does actually make us a little nervous that this is happening, that these links are being formed.''

Although he said there was no evidence now of radical activity here, ''This is a great place to disappear and re-emerge with a new identity, a great place to get weapons and explosives.''

In an annual review at the end of November, the Cambodian Defense Ministry raised its own warning. ''Terrorist groups could choose Cambodia as a place for trafficking their resources,'' the review said. ''Border areas, both land and sea, could be the main targets for such infiltration. Cambodia is concerned about its defense effectiveness because the skills and techniques of the border defense units are inadequate.''

A Cambodian intelligence official said in an interview that some Islamic militants, possibly traveling on forged passports, appeared to have met with foreign Muslim clerics who are based here. ''Everything is easy because this is a corrupt country,'' he said.

The official said it was possible that some Cambodian Muslims who had gone to study in Malaysia or Saudi Arabia had also visited Afghanistan during the rule of the fundamentalist Taliban.

If so, they would still be an anomaly among the poor, dispersed Cham villagers, who are mostly known as skilled fishermen along the Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers.

Whether or not they turn toward militancy, Cambodia's Cham Muslims are working out a new, stronger sense of Islamic identity. More young men are studying the Koran and the Arabic language and more feel a connection with the Muslim world beyond their borders.

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