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Purpose – This study aimed to explore what the Islamic boarding school does to protect their students from radicalism, violence, and fundamentalism.

Approach – For this research, both a qualitative approach and a phenomenological method were used to get the accurate results.

Findings – The study was conducted from April 2016 to December 2016. The Islamic Boarding School of Jabal Nur was taken up as a case for this study. The school has a lot of strategies to protect its students from radicalism, violence, and fundamentalism ideology. Those ideologies might damage their health mental and behavior. This research found that the strategies are: (1) applying the curriculum of the study according to the Ministry of Religious Affairs (Kementerian Agama); (2) religious education based on the salafi method (al kitab alasfar) which contains the deradicalization concept, and by this method, the students were trained to be a obedient; (3) foster care system or parenting done for 24 hours. The tutor was responsible for paying attention to their development, listening to their complaints, taking care of their mental and physical health, and guiding them at all times; and (4) the student (santri) was occupied by various extracurricular activities, such as Arabic caligraphy learning, language department center, sport activities, etc. Prevention efforts should also be based on the agreement between the students and their teacher. With these efforts, this study concludes that the radical ideology potential for santri (student) will not occur.

Originality/Value – The study of radicalism becomes an important discussion today, given the rise of terrorist threats in almost all countries.

Critiques of elites define populism, which conceives of power relations as a unified, conspiring elite exploiting the good people. Yet, populism itself is inherently elitist, calling for a strong leader to take power and channel the will of the people. Elite theory, surprisingly overlooked in scholarship on populism, can clarify this apparent paradox and elucidate the dimensions of populism and its risk of authoritarianism in new ways. In contrast to populist ideological conceptions of power relations in society, elite theory points to the possibility that several elites with diverging voices and interests exist. Furthermore, elite theorists argue that such elite pluralism is a necessary component of a well-functioning democracy. Much scholarship on populism, often aiming to understand its causes and focussing on Western Europe and North America, points to the similarities of populist movements. The focus on similarities strengthens the understanding of populism as a uniform phenomenon and populist elite critiques as homogeneous. However, broader comparative studies show that different populist movements target a range of various elite groups. Indeed, the empirical reality of populist elite critiques targeting diverse elite groups is more in line with elite theory than populist ideological conceptions of power relations in society. A key to grasping the democratic challenges posed by the power relations between elites and masses in both populist critiques and populist solutions is an understanding of the institutional conditions for elite integration versus elite pluralism. This central discussion in both classical and modern elite theory is applied to analyse populism in this contribution.