Islamophobia would be destructive to the multi-racial and multi-religious community in Singapore and it is important that Singaporeans and the government recognise it as a risk and deal with it, said Minister for Home Affairs and Minister for Law Mr K Shanmugam.

The topic of Islamophobia was raised during a dialogue he had with 60 students across all the six local madrasahs at the Singapore Islamic Hub (MUIS) on 30 March 2016.

He said Islamophobia poses a significant risk to Singapore, noting that the number of attacks on Muslims in London and the United States went up threefold after the Paris attacks and shootings in California respectively.

Mr Shanmugam said that while Islamophobia in Singapore is “not yet a problem that manifests itself into violence”, he is concerned that the non-Muslim community will develop a set of attitudes internally in reaction to the terror attacks around the world.

“People will be too politically correct to express them but internally, they will start looking at Muslims differently at that is something that I think will be very destructive to the soul and spirit of Singapore that we have created— a multi-racial, multi-religious community where we embrace all races and live as one community,” he said.

Mr Shanmugam also pointed out that if non-Muslim Singaporeans develop Islamophobic attitudes, they “will be playing right into the hands of terrorists” who want Muslims marginalised in order to create fertile ground for the recruitment of terrorists.

He said Singaporeans should go beyond tolerance to understanding and working together and that while the different races practise their own faith, “we are all Singaporeans together, and that trumps everything else”.

“So that is something that we need to emphasise and we need to tell the 85 per cent (of the local population) who are non-Muslim that we have an obligation to reach out to the Muslim community and make sure the bonds are strong.”

On the dialogue with Mr Shanmugam, Afifah Shameemah Bte Mohd Yusof, a first-year pre-university student from Madrasah Al-Maarif said, “We discussed what we can do as madrasah students to eradicate this idea of Islamophobia in Singapore because we are a multi-racial country and we take pride in that.”

“One of the ways is for us madrasah students to educate ourselves more about our own religion and spread the word that Islam is not a religion that promotes terrorism.”

The 17-year-old also recounted an incident at a multi-racial camp two years ago in which a student made a terrorist joke about Muslims.

“At that point in time, I was thinking how I, as a Muslim student, could eradicate (such thoughts about Muslims) because it is so important that people know we are just normal people like them and we want to practise our religion without being viewed as a terrorist or a threat to people,” she said.