Mapping Students’ Understanding of Radicalism in Riau Province

Riau has a motto “Bumi Bertuah Negeri Beradat”. Bumi bertuah means a land that is said to be the Emerald of the Equator. However, lately, bad news related to terrorism issue has been blown in the province. Furthermore, an explosion had occurred in a campus area in Riau. For this reason, the researchers would like to map student understanding of radicalism. This research is a survey that was aimed to map student understanding regarding radicalism at several universities in Riau. A total of 250 respondents participated in this study. They are from UPP (Rohul), UIN SUSKA (Pekanbaru) and UNILAK (Pekanbaru). The research instrument was developed and adapted from Wahid Foundation report in 2016. The results of this study showed that students get their religious knowledge from campus (30.8%), islamic learning forum (28.2%), religious teacher (13.2%), parents (8.8%), and books (5.2%), while the rest 5% get it from other sources. In addition, they also learned it from social media such as Instagram, WhatsApp and Tweeter apart from YouTube and Facebook. From the data obtained, it is also known that 179 students (71.6%) idolized Ustadz Abdul Somad, followed by Mamah Dedeh (5.6%), Abu Bakar Baasyr (4.8%), while the other 15 students (6.0%) did not stated their idols. The students showed similar response regarding ulama’s fatwa. This needs to be noticed because there are some students admire Abu Bakar Baasyr and some students did not tell the researchers about their idol. For this reason, the role of the government, educational institutions and media is needed to involve students to provide correct understanding of Islam, Hoax, and radicalism that can threaten the unity of the Republic of Indonesia (NKRI).