Efforts by religious organisations help Singaporeans navigate online religious content

Question

Dr Wan Rizal: To ask the Minister for Culture, Community and Youth as more globally produced religious content are made available online during this COVID-19 period, whether religious organisations will consider providing guidelines for Singaporeans to navigate and consume online religious content that are in line with Singapore's secular and multi-religious-racial landscape.

Response

Mr Edwin Tong, Minister for Culture, Community and Youth & Second Minister for Law:

1. Many of our religious organisations provide their followers guidance when seeking out religious content online. They emphasise the need for viewers of such content to be discerning and sensitive, and to unequivocally reject content laced with hate and that causes enmity with others. In addition, ROs also put out original, online content that promotes inter-faith understanding and is contextualised to our multi-religious society in Singapore. This is important to counter extremist and exclusivist views that can sometimes be found online.

   a. For example, Muis strongly encourages the Muslim community to seek religious guidance only from religious teachers accredited under the Asatizah Recognition Scheme¹. Muis also launched SalamSG TV last year as an online platform for Islamic content and religious guidance for Muslims in Singapore.

   b. The Catholic Archdiocese consistently emphasize the need to maintain religious harmony and respect towards other religion and races, and highlight to their young the potential pitfalls of consuming unverified online sources of information related to the faith.

   c. The Inter-Religious Organisation regularly works directly with faith groups to strengthen their digital presence and promote inter-religious knowledge. It also launched a digital initiative in 2019 called We The People of Singapore that provides a platform for Singaporeans to talk about each other’s religion to gain a deeper understanding.

2. Government will continue to ensure that extremist content which is inimical to our common space and social harmony does not proliferate online. But, with the internet being what it is, it would not be possible to eradicate all such content, we will have to adopt a whole-of-society approach to helping Singaporeans navigate a vast body of online religious content, while working with the ROs, so that we can safeguard and promote religious harmony in Singapore, and ensure that hate speech and misinformation does not take root here.

3. We will also continue to work with our religious organisations, schools and community groups to proactively build trust and mutual understanding among Singaporeans, across religions and races. For instance, our Inter-Racial and Religious Confidence Circles (IRCC) work closely with religious and grassroots organisations to foster interaction across different religious and ethnic communities, and promote inter-faith dialogue and collaboration. We can and will work together to build a more cohesive society.

¹ The ARS is a community-driven accreditation scheme for Muslim religious teachers, to ensure minimum standards of qualification. All Muslim religious teachers must be recognised by the ARS in order to teach Islam or Quranic studies in Singapore. ARS-recognised asatizah also have to abide by a strict Code of Ethics.