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.