Mitigating radicalism amongst Islamic college students in Indonesia through religious nationalism

Abstract

Radicalism has the potential to become more widespread in a younger generation of Muslims who are too textual, exclusive, extreme and uncritical. Their ethos of struggle has created a momentum to contest radical ideologies of Islamic radicals. This study investigates the potential for the radicalisation of Islamic students in Indonesia and formulates an approach of integrating national and religious values to mitigate the potential for radicalism. A qualitative research approach is used, and data were collected by distributing questionnaires to Indonesian Islamic student activists. Interviews were also conducted with experts to strengthen secondary sources of information. The results show that the potential for Islamic student to be exposed to radical activists is high. Through categorisation, interpretation and analysis, it was found that the concepts and spread of radicalism were more influenced by religious interpretations than social tolerance factors. In addition, the religious nationalist approach is formulated based on religious terminology and religious narratives.Contribution: This research contributes by assisting colleges’ efforts in building a detection system and mitigating the risk of student radicalism through a religious nationalist approach.

Navigating Diversity and Tolerance in Higher Education and Insights from East Nusa Tenggara Province

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Youth religious moderation model and tolerance strengthening through intellectual humility

“…Thus, intellectual humility is easier to form and strengthens tolerance (Church & Samuelson 2016;Leary et al 2017). It is what can be offered because, from the research results, the potential for young people to be exposed to radicalism is also quite high (Nafi'a et al 2022). Nowadays, intellectual humility in religion is difficult to find, so what happens is that one feels self-righteous, which makes it easy to disbelieve in others and makes it challenging to dialogue with other religions.…”

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