An education espousing the ideas of tolerance and critical thinking are the core ingredients in countering the influence of radical ideas that could translate to future acts of terrorism, a minister says.
National Education Minister Muhammad Nuh said teachers played a critical role in instilling ideas of tolerance that would make the young less vulnerable to violent and radical tendencies.
He suggested teachers of all subjects spend five to seven minutes delivering messages of tolerance and peaceful harmony and underlining the importance of valuing and respecting others.
“This method is an effective subconscious mechanism in forming the students’ mindset and personality,” he said, adding that extra attention had to be given to extracurricular activities to ensure that they were beneficial and not harmful.
Nuh added that schools were critical places to counter radicalization as the majority of people were strongly influenced by their experiences in school.
The role of schools in engendering tolerance would significantly reinforce the already existing positive education parents provided for their children at home, thus further protecting them from radical external influences, he added.
Counterterrorism expert Kumar Ramakrishna from the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore said a solid religious education would develop people’s critical thinking, which would empower them to make distinctions between right and wrong ideologies.
“A good quality religious education [is important] in building what I call an ideological and theological firewall against violent extremist ideology,” he said, adding that scholars should “engage in strategic influence campaigns to protect the community”.
This firewall was essential, he said, as radical messages abound in the media, ranging from the Internet, books and magazines. He added that with the presence of messages in the media, people could become self-radicalized.
Ramakrishna said that beyond people’s educational level, open-mindedness was a key factor in deciding whether a person would adopt radical views, including the person’s psychological and emotional aptitude.
The Malaysian terrorist responsible for the 2003 JW Marriott bombings, Dr. Azahari, for example, held a bachelor’s degree in engineering while al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was a student at King Abdul-aziz University in Jeddah.
“That persons’s state of mind at that particular time is what makes the core issue of radicalization and terrorism very complicated,” he said.
He also suggested that people who formerly held radical ideas could help stop young people on the brink of becoming radicalized from furthering their beliefs.
For example, Ramakrishna said, former Hizbut Tahrir members in the UK Maajid Nawaz and Ed Husain formed the Quilliam Foundation as the “world’s first counterterrorism think tank” to prevent “violent radical ideas from circulating in the community”.
Apart from education, economic prowess was not a guarantee against radicalization. International Crisis Group Asia program senior adviser Sidney Jones said a person’s poverty failed to provide sufficient explanation on why one became recruited.
“If there were a real correlation we would see a lot of urban poor involved in terrorist organizations, but we don’t,” she said. (gzl)