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Jean Iau

Recent arrests in Singapore of young people who succumbed to extremist ideologies and planned attacks, including school stabbings, have sent a chill across the city state, with authorities noting that the speed of radicalisation has doubled.
Over three months this year, three teenagers have been detained, sparking public discussion on school security and whether more can be done to protect students or encourage critical thinking.
Last Monday, the Internal Security Department (ISD) said three youths, aged 14, 15 and 19, who were each detained between April and June, were radicalised by groups including Islamic State (Isis), Hamas and far-right extremist ideologies.
The 19-year-old, Tan Jun Jie, planned knife attacks against Singapore Armed Forces personnel at Sembawang Air Base and LGBTQ students at his school. The 14-year-old was arrested a month before his planned stabbing attack at his secondary school during the June school holidays.
On whether security measures at schools would be stepped up, Senior Minister K Shanmugam, who is also coordinating minister for national security, said last Monday: “You can’t turn every school into a garrison or a cantonment, then it won’t feel like a school.”
Education Minister Desmond Lee said on the same day that schools had multiple layers of vigilance, training and contingency planning in place, along with measures such as security staff, closed-circuit cameras, and selective bag checks when necessary.
“But schools are places where people learn. They spark the joy of learning. They are places where people must feel comfortable learning,” Lee said.

Under Singapore’s Internal Security Act, the ISD can detain individuals deemed a threat to national security without trial.
In recent years these detainees have increasingly come from Singapore’s youth aged 20 and below, with the ISD telling This Week in Asia that social media and online platforms have accelerated the time between an individual’s first encounter with extremist elements and their subscription to such ideologies.
In the last 10 years, 23 young people aged between 14 and 20 have been dealt with under the ISA, compared with one before 2015, according to the ISD and then senior minister Teo Chee Hean in 2024.
In forum letters in Singapore’s newspaper The Straits Times last week, members of the public debated whether schools should offer more religious knowledge and critical thinking modules to counter radicalisation.
Lee noted last Monday that schools had Character and Citizenship Education to help students discern and reject harmful online content, including extremist ideologies, and the ministry would look at how to further strengthen it.
The education ministry also worked with the ISD to run counter-radicalisation outreach activities for school staff and student welfare officers, enabling them to spot warning signs in their students early, Lee added.
Down the rabbit hole
The ISD said algorithms on social media and video-sharing platforms recommended more extremist material to individuals once they viewed such content, resulting in a “rabbit-hole” syndrome. Online communities also became echo chambers.
“Over the past decade, the time taken for self-radicalisation for ISA cases has essentially halved – from an average of 24 months before 2015, to an average of 12 months between 2021 and 2025,” the ISD said.
The department noted that young people, as digital natives, were more susceptible to exposure and engagement with extremist materials online. It cited the case of a 15-year-old pro-Isis girl who was issued a restriction order in February 2025 after she was radicalised in weeks.
When asked if the Israel-Gaza conflict was a trigger for more young people to become radicalised, the ISD said the conflict was an emotive issue, with Singaporeans deeply concerned about the dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and rightly so.
“However, Singapore draws the line at the importation, support and promotion of extremist narratives which leverage on the conflict to promote hatred and violence,” it said.


Shashi Jayakumar, executive director of SJK Geostrategic Advisory, noted that some critical faculties might not have fully formed in young people, making them more susceptible to online echo chambers.
“In this process, one meets like-minded people who seem to be validating one’s own predilections. The same process in many cases is conducive to the formation (in one’s perception) of an ‘out group’ – the enemy,” Jayakumar said.
“The lack of critical faculties means in many cases an inability to see opposing points of view, or to accept counter-narratives.”
Jayakumar noted that in some of these cases, what might be needed was not simply “deradicalisation” but counselling or psychological interventions to “disengage” the individual from a negative or violent pathway.
He said “mentoring” had been cited as part of counselling efforts in Singapore recently.
“This is precisely what has been tried elsewhere, including in the West, and has been shown to hold some promise,” Jayakumar said.
Salim Mohamed Nasir, a member of the Religious Rehabilitation Group which mentors radicalised youth, told This Week in Asia that Singapore’s response could not simply be to block or restrict young people’s access to information since they should be encouraged to care about global issues and humanitarian suffering.
“The more important task is to help them engage with these issues thoughtfully, critically and compassionately. We want them to ask questions, seek different perspectives, verify information, and understand that caring deeply about injustice should never be manipulated into believing that hatred or violence is the only answer,” Salim said.
“By strengthening critical thinking, digital literacy, emotional resilience and trusted relationships with parents, teachers and mentors, we can better equip young people to reject extremist narratives before they take root and to channel their convictions into peaceful, constructive and lawful action.”

Salim said the most effective safeguard was building stronger relationships so that students felt they belonged and had trusted adults who cared about them, since this would make them less likely to become isolated or vulnerable to extremist influences.
Schools could continue to strengthen professional learning for educators in areas including digital radicalisation, online influence, media literacy and conducting respectful conversations on sensitive issues, he added.
“When young people feel connected to their schools, supported by their families, guided by their communities and confident that they can ask difficult questions without fear or judgment, they are far less likely to be drawn towards violent extremist narratives,” Salim said.
Singapore is not the only country in the region grappling with its young people becoming radicalised by extremist ideology.
In the Philippines, two boys, aged 14 and 15, opened fire on their schoolmates in June, killing three and wounding 20. Investigators and cybersecurity experts said during a Senate hearing on July 1 that their attack might have been linked to a global online extremist network that recruited and radicalised vulnerable children through popular video games.
In February, Malaysian police arrested six people aged 16 to 21 during coordinated counterterrorism raids across the country. Three of the suspects were under 18. The group was charged with pledging allegiance to Isis, distributing extremist propaganda, and planning local attacks.


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Observers say boosting relationships, digital literacy and emotional resilience can help young people better reject violent ideologies


Observers say boosting relationships, digital literacy and emotional resilience can help young people better reject violent ideologies.


Singapore battles speed of youth radicalisation as concerns mount

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Observers say boosting relationships, digital literacy and emotional resilience can help young people better reject violent ideologies

Observers say boosting relationships, digital literacy and emotional resilience can help young people better reject violent ideologies