Militant ideas afflicting varsities
One in five students condone terrorist strategies for ideological goals
PETALING JAYA: One in five university students in the country (21%) believe terrorism can effectively achieve an ideal, a survey found.
Similar figures were found in a survey among Indonesian, Filipino, Singaporean and Thai students – with 24.24%, 23.78%, 30.95% and 31.81% respectively agreeing that terrorism was effective in achieving their objectives.
The findings were published in a 274page paper titled “Under graduate Radicalisation in Selected Countries in SouthEast Asia” by the SouthEast Asia Regional Centre for CounterTerrorism, which comes under the Foreign Ministry.
“This could possibly be attributed to the rhetoric and propaganda of groups like Daesh (Islamic State).
“This serves as a wakeup call for authorities in Malaysia to realise some undergraduates hold to dangerous beliefs,” said Thomas Koruth Samuel, author of the paper, which was released last week.
Almost 2,000 undergraduates from Universiti Malaysia Kelantan (UMK), Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Universiti Tenaga Malaysia (Uniten), Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) and Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas) were involved in the survey, conducted over a span of oneandahalf years from 2016.
About 7% of Malaysian students surveyed felt that terrorism, even when defined as taking the lives of civilians, was still ethical.
“While the figure remains small, it is important to note that the number of undergraduates in the country continues to grow, and that 7% of that growing number could pose a challenge,” said Samuel.
On whether terrorism was illegal – 8.22%, 9.64%, 10.52% and 7.68% of Indonesian, Filipino, Singaporean and Thai students agreed.
The majority of Malaysian undergraduates (65.34%) believed that they were targets for extremist teachings while 52.41% of them felt that it was possible for them to develop violent radical ideas.
More than half (51.87%) of the undergraduates felt that it was possible for them to move from having such violent radical ideas to actually conducting violent acts.