SINGAPORE — Muslim scholars in Singapore would welcome the opportunity to cooperate with Saudi Arabia's Prince Muhammad Bin Naif Counseling and Care Center, the city-state's minister of communication and information told Saudi Gazette in an exclusive interview.
Dr. Yaacob Ibrahim, talking during the 8th Middle East Journalist Visit Program in his country, said he wanted to learn from the Saudi experience in reintegrating reformed extremists into society and also offer Singaporean experiences in this field.
He said Singapore is concerned about what is happening in the Middle East.
“We are watching closely; we are concerned about young Muslims being distracted by the terror ideologies of (the self-proclaimed) Islamic State.
We make it very clear this is not about Islam but about a group of people who are working against Islam.
“We have a group of scholars who formed a group called RRG, the Religious Rehabilitation Group, to deal with these people who wanted to do jihad.
“RRG counsels them and hope to change their mind; they have been successful so far.”
The minister said the biggest challenge in this ministry is technology because it is changing every year.
Rules have to be changed in order to keep pace with technology and this is one of the things his ministry looks at, whether Singapore's regulatory framework is compatible with technological change.
One of the ministry's responsibilities is the libraries, because they are an important resource.
Ibrahim said: “We do not provide books only but we run programs, educate people about reading, and many other things.
“Another responsibility I have is to make sure that the infrastructure of our telecoms is up to date.”
The minister is also in charge of Muslim affairs.
Because he is a Muslim minister in his country's cabinet, he was considered a good fit for the job.
Part of his portfolio is to make sure the Muslim community is well integrated in society.
He said this was very much the case after 50 years of national efforts. “We recognize multiracialism as a pillar of Singapore. Everyone here, be it any religion, have the right to be here in Singapore. We all share a common space and the common space we share is what it is about to be a Singaporean.”
Saudi Gazette asked the minister if there was any joint effort between RRG and the Prince Muhammad Bin Naif center since both were working in the same field.
He said: “I think on an agency level, there is some relationship between the security agency here in Singapore and the security agency in Saudi. “On the RRG level, I believe that we went over there in Saudi and discussed but I do not think that there are any form of relationships, but we are happy to do so.
“We can share and learn from your experience because Saudi Arabia is right at the border. I think we can find a way in which we can collaborate and learn from each other.”
The minister said according to data presented by his parliament, two Singaporeans joined Islamic State.
“One was an Indian national who became a Singaporean and the other one was a Muslim woman and she was in Malaysia and joined her Malaysian husband.
“But we are keeping track of all the movement and we want to tackle the issue early. If we find someone who has the intention to fly to Syria, we call them in, and help him talk to the Mufti (Islamic leader). This is an ongoing process. We set up YouTube channels to allow the Mufti to reach out to younger people and have talks.”
When asked how his ministry is dealing with the online recruiting group that engages with people directly, he said: “Singaporeans have access to all websites. We have to counter that. The best way to go about it is to educate people, to tell our young people that, if they came to such a website, to ask the question if this is the right thing to do. We encourage them to talk to the Mufti and there is a line they can call.
“We really have to educate our young because if we keep shutting down websites we will be slowing down the Internet. “Since 1996, we only shut down 26 sites, of which 24 were child pornography.”
The minister talked about how Singapore succeeded in bringing down divorce rates by introducing family counseling.
“If the man enters the court with the intention to get a divorce, the court asks him to see a counselor. Through counseling, we managed to reduce the divorce rate by 50 percent. When a person wants to divorce his wife, he must do that at court in front of the judge because it is not fair to the woman. The reason is that we want to make sure that he thinks carefully.
“Children and family are affected. The reason we divert him first to the counselor is to make him calm down.”
He spoke about how the Singaporean Muslims are privileged and receive government support through programs.
He said: “Every Muslim in Singapore gets a portion of salary deducted that goes into a special fund called ‘The Mosque Building Fund'.
“This is a government system and every year I collect 20 million Singaporean dollars and through this fund since 1976 I was able to build 23 new mosques.
“This is a good system because if we do not have this system and we asked people to donate, no one will be able to donate.
“Deduction of the salary depends on the salary scale.
“If a salary is high, then the deduction will be higher and it will be lower if the salary is low.”
