Guide for Counsellors Dealing with Radicalised Youth

The Straits Times

10 June 2015

ON FACEBOOK pages and Twitter posts, in blogs and YouTube videos, members of terror group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and its supporters argue that it is a religious obligation for Muslims to take up arms and live in a caliphate.

These views, however, are a distortion of Islamic teachings, a point that is being emphasised in a new guidebook for Muslim religious leaders to use to debunk ISIS’ propaganda.

The 130-page manual is put together by the Religious Rehabilitation Group (RRG), a group of Singaporean Muslim scholars who counsel terror detainees and radicalised individuals.

It contains material that counsellors can draw on when they deal with radicalised youth.

… “The counter-narrative we provide is that we have a rich tradition of co-existence between Muslims and non-Muslims in this region, not just in the last 10 or 15 years, but for more than 500 years,” said RRG counsellor, Ustaz Ahmad Saiful Rijal Hassan, a senior research analyst with the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

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