Recent cases of self-radicalised teens 'worrying', says President Halimah as she gives ideas on how to tackle trend

SINGAPORE — Recent cases of young people who had taken the path of radicalisation are worrying, said President Halimah Yacob as she gave suggestions on how to tackle the trend and also addressed concerns in the Muslim community.

Mdm Halimah was speaking at interfaith group Roses of Peace’s 10th anniversary celebration on Sunday (Feb 26) as the group’s patron.

She also launched the Harmony Champions Programme, a collaboration between the group and Temasek Foundation to encourage and nurture more youths to be advocates of interracial and interreligious harmony.

Her comments came after a spate of announcements by the Internal Security Department (ISD) in recent weeks regarding the detention of self-radicalised youths.

On Feb 21, ISD said it had detained a 15-year-old student after it assessed that the teenager posed an imminent security threat that warranted preventive detention.

That same day, ISD also said it had also caught another self-radicalised teenager, 16, taking in propaganda from the terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis) and engaging in Isis-related discussions on various online platforms.

Earlier in February, ISD said it had detained a self-radicalised 18-year-old who not only supported Isis, but planned to set up an Islamic caliphate on Coney Island.

Describing such local examples of extremism as worrying, Mdm Halimah said Singapore needs continuous efforts to counter false narratives and to “explain why Isis does not represent Islam or Muslims”.

She noted that youths are curious and impressionable, and are easily seized by their perceptions of injustices or unfairness in other parts of the world.

“These feelings are easily exploited by groups bent on recruiting new followers to support their misguided causes,” she said.

Youths who are concerned about critical world events should be given safe spaces to discuss, ask questions and find out more from experienced and knowledgeable experts in the field, said Mdm Halimah.

That way, they can be provided with accurate facts and information to “counter the false and misleading social media narratives that confuse, obfuscate and mislead them”.

Roses of Peace and the relevant agencies it works with can help to fill this need, she said, since it is run by young people of all faiths who “share a common vision of creating a better, more peaceful society”.

The recent cases of radicalisation have also raised some concerns in the Muslim community who fear that this would negatively affect their relationship with non-Muslims and their employment prospects, according to Mdm Halimah.

“I personally have great confidence that Singaporeans know that Muslims here are thinking, rational, peace-loving people who contribute strongly to our economy and society,” she said.

She stressed that these few incidents do not define the Malay community.

“Ask a Muslim Singaporean that you meet overseas about his nationality, and he will reply proudly that he’s a Singaporean,” she said.

“The openness and space that Singapore has provided Muslims to practise their faith and to live as good Muslims co-exist and reside very well within their Singaporean identity.”

And while Singapore has come a long way since the race riots in the 1960s, Mdm Halimah said that the peace and harmony the country enjoys now cannot be taken for granted.

She urged ethnic and religious communities to continually resist “insular ways of thinking”, to engage with each other and learn to be comfortable with differences.

Said Mdm Halimah: “This is the bedrock of our harmonious coexistence. Rather than putting our differences aside, we address them, we learn to live with them, and we celebrate them.”