The Roots and Dynamic of Radicalism among Students in Medan

This paper aims to explore intolerance or radicalism among students in the city of Medan. The phenomenon of radicalism of youth is an important phenomenon and attractive pattern of transnational, cross-cultural and cross-history. Moreover, radicalism is a sort of terrorism. Natana J. DeLong-Bas as quoted by Arza (2012) calls for driving a wave of youth such changes as the “Facebook generation” or “internet generation” because the massive and intensive use of social media in orchestration movement demanded a change. Tragically, during conducting this research, a high school student who has recently graduated attempted murder of a priest who preaches in Sint Yoseph Church in Medan. Police investigations revealed that the action of attempted murder is linked to an international terrorist network, ISIS. The sample of this study was high school students and university students in Medan including religious teachers with a total sample of 175 people (150 students and 25 teachers). As the samples are selected non-randomly, its conclusion does not represent the opinion of entire youth in Medan. The study reveals that there is no single explanation for the occurrence of radicalism among the youth. Although in general, it can be said that each religion (Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Hinduism, and Buddhism) is less accepting of other religions in neighborhood relations, political relations as well as in economic cooperation. In other words, young generation in Medan was also less tolerant primarily due to a clash of religious beliefs and experiences of discriminatory treatment by other religious groups.