Trust is vital in efforts to counter terrorism

SMU Associate Professor of Law Eugene Tan highlighted inter-faith ties in many parts of the world are visibly under stress. Minority communities increasingly find themselves under a pall of suspicion, distrust and danger. Too often, moral panic and probing questions have been raised over the viability of multiculturalism as the integrative social glue in diverse societies. He pointed out governments do not defeat terrorism on their own. Instead, societies defeat terrorism by nurturing from the ground up an effective and sustainable bulwark against violent extremism and the divisive forces that seek to destroy our way of life and our common humanity. Trust is essential and has to be the foundational ethos in all that we do against an existential threat.