SINGAPORE - Online radicalisation is a key factor in pushing the terror threat in Singapore today, said Minister for Law and Home Affairs K. Shanmugam on Saturday.

And when a complex issue is oversimplified on social media – sans proper background or context – people often get the wrong idea, said the minister, emphasising the critical role that community volunteers play to help young people get a better sense of what they see online.

Speaking at an annual Ministry of Home Affairs appreciation lunch for these community volunteers involved in helping detainees and their families, Mr Shanmugam added that more young people are getting exposed to radical views through social media.

He was addressing the volunteers in the audience, including members of the Religious Rehabilitation Group (RRG) and Inter-Agency Aftercare Group (ACG).

The RRG brings together Islamic scholars and teachers who voluntarily assist in the religious counselling of radicalised individuals, while the ACG provides assistance to detainees and their families.

Mr Shanmugam commended the RRG’s launch of its TikTok account in June, adding that it has put up around 20 videos since.

“Some of these include videos like, Is It Worth It To Be A Foreign Fighter’s Wife?, or public interviews on topics like what do people think of when they hear the term ‘jihad’,” he said.

“I think these are welcome initiatives and we have to push along these lines. It is a very good effort – and we will have to continue to work at this.”

While the mainstream media would gatekeep information that came into the public space in the past, information can now be shared and multiplied at a very fast and unprecedented scale, he said.

“If someone goes down the radicalisation path, he can very quickly gain access to hundreds – thousands – of articles, posts and videos.

“Once someone is caught in something, the social media algorithms are such that they keep feeding him more and more of the same.

“If he is interested in a certain type of negative approach, he will quickly link up with many others who think along the same lines, around the world, form connections – and their negative beliefs become self-reinforcing,” added the minister.

Mr Shanmugam said there are people who deliberately and maliciously mislead others with wrong information, adding that they play to xenophobia and distrust or lead others towards terrorism and radicalisation.

He said terrorists and extremists are targeting young people on social media, noting that out of the 49 self-radicalised individuals who were dealt with under the Internal Security Act (ISA) since 2015, 11 of them were below the age of 20.

Of the 11 young people, five of them made plans to carry out attacks in Singapore, he added.

In February, the Internal Security Department (ISD) said a 15-year-old self-radicalised student who thought about carrying out knife attacks and beheading non-Muslims in popular tourist areas here was detained under the ISA.

The Secondary 3 student is the youngest person to be detained under the ISA for terrorism-related activities.

Mr Shanmugam said the Government has laws and frameworks to take down and deal with these kinds of content, and that such cases are dealt with quickly.

“But everyone, together, will have to help our young people to make better sense of what they see online; a better understanding of religion, so that they won’t be easily influenced by false propaganda.

“We have to do this in the real world, in mosques, in families, but we also have to do this online,” he said.

“Since the radicalisation was based on their religious beliefs, the rehabilitation – the essential component – would have to be based on religious counselling. The social support would need to come from the community.

“The key part of it could not be done by the Government. You all stepped up and helped,” he told the volunteers.

Since 2002, out of the 95 Singaporeans who had been detained under the ISA for terrorism-related conduct, 82 of them made good progress in their rehabilitation and have been released and reintegrated into society, said the minister.

Citing an example, Mr Shanmugam said Hamzah (not his real name) was detained in 2015 when he was 18 years old.

“He wanted to go to Syria to fight for ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria). He had watched more than 500 videos online of extremist preachers and brutal killings by terrorists, and he thought this is what he should be doing too.

“He became convinced that joining ISIS was an obligation under Islam. When people tried to advise him, he resisted all the advice. But because of the continuing effort of his counsellors when he was in detention, he eventually accepted and understood that his beliefs were wrong,” the minister said.

Hamzah was released in 2017 and is now a polytechnic graduate.

“With financial help, religious counselling, community support, he has got a bright future, as opposed to fighting in Syria and dying,” said Mr Shanmugam.