Jakarta – Academics agree that negligence by the older generation and widespread disappointment over the government's failure to provide economic, social and political justice were the main reasons for the younger generation's turn to radical ideologies.
"This disappointment, which can easily lead to anxiety and outrage, is radical groups' key instrument to spread speeches of hatred against the state and to offer these people a target to express their frustration and anger," Ismail Hasani, a professor of law at Jakarta's Islamic State University, told The Jakarta Post.
Ismail, who also served as a researcher at the pluralism think tank the Setara Institute, said that a low level of understanding of religious teachings could also contribute to a person's susceptibility to doctrines of intolerance.
Another factor that might lead to radicalism was a combination of the increasing cost of living and the decreasing number of available jobs in the country.
"These disgruntled youths blame the government for these conditions and – being fed various corrupted sociopolitical theories and religious dogma by radical groups – come to the conclusion that the so-called 'corrupt' system should be overthrown by any means necessary," University of Indonesia sociologist Thamrin Amal Tomagola said.
Opik Haswari, who teaches Islamic religion at SMAN 78 senior high school in Kemanggisan, West Jakarta, said teenagers were more prone to radical indoctrination because most had yet to develop their own self-identity.
"This is why the older generation, especially parents and teachers, must support this identity-searching process," he said.
These speakers were all responding to the current situation in the country in which several students were allegedly brainwashed and recruited by the Indonesian Islamic State (NII) movement.
Opik said many parents might neglect to rear their children properly because they have to spend so much time at the office.
"I don't blame them. The financial pressures of today's world force them to do that," he said. "However, they must make efforts to utilize what little time they have at home to communicate and have discussions with their kids so that the parent-child relationship remains strong."
On the other hand, Thamrin said that parents should not be too overbearing because too much control could also lead to dangerous results.
"Teenagers feel at home the most when they spend time together with friends of a similar age or with similar ways of thinking," he said, adding that overbearing adults did not fit in any of those two categories.
According to Thamrin, radical groups could exploit frustrated innocent teenagers who complained about their overbearing parents by providing them with solace and a seemingly wonderful refuge, brimming with mutinous views disguised as ideas of freedom and of fighting back against so-called "oppression".
Regarding the most effective solution to tackling this issue, Ismail cited a continuous lecture-based dissemination of anti-radical perspectives.
"Lecturers play a great role in spreading national awareness among their students in order to help curb the growth of terrorism," he said. "Islam teaches that your home is your heaven," Opik said, adding that schools, as a second home, should also be a heaven for their students.
"It should be the responsibility of parents and teachers to create a 'heavenly' environment both at home and at school so that teenagers would not even think of searching for fake heavens that offer deviant ideologies," he said. (mim)