Today-Feb 26
Recent cases of young people who had taken the path of radicalization 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 Program, 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-radicalized 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-radicalized 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. 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. Read more at: https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/self-radicalised-teens-isd-halimah-yacob-2117156
