Jakarta (ANTARA) - Director of prevention at the National Counter-Terrorism Agency (BNPT), Brigadier General Ahmad Nurwakhid, in a press statement released on Saturday, outlined several characteristics of radical preachers based on the ideologies and agendas they propagate.

First, they teach anti-Pancasila and pro-transnational “caliphate” (Islamic rule) ideologies, he said.

Second, they preach an ideology that antagonizes parties that have a different understanding or religious belief, he added.

Third, they cultivate anti-legitimate authority behavior by building the public's distrust toward the government or the nation through slander, hate speech, hoaxes, and divisive rhetoric, he said.

Fourth, they have an exclusive attitude toward change and exhibit intolerance toward differences and plurality, he added.

Last, they usually have an anti-local culture viewpoint, he said.

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Radical preachers cannot be identified by appearance, rather they can be singled out by observing their preaching materials and their worldview, Nurwakhid clarified.

Moreover, radical groups are truly aiming to destroy Indonesia through various strategies by planting their doctrine and teaching into the public's mind, he said.

There are three strategies that radical groups use for the sake of their goal, he highlighted.

"Their first strategy is to obscure, remove, and even falsify the nation's history. Their second strategy involves destroying Indonesia's culture," he said.

Third, they sow division and conflict between the nation's population through intolerant and discriminatory sentiment based on race, religion, tribe, and ethnicity, he added.

These strategies are carried out by politicizing religion and pitting religion with nationalism and the nation's cultural inheritance, he expounded.

This process is carried out on a massive scale in various sectors of society, including through radical preachers, he said.

"This should be our collective concern and, from the start, one of the methods to destroy this spread of radicalism infiltration is by not inviting radical preachers to religious education spaces," Nurwakhid added.
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Translator: M Arief I, Fadhli Ruhman
Editor: Suharto
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