Author: Azra Naseem

All the world’s a stage: Maldivian death metal band beats the odds and goes global

Death metal is the genre, Maldivian is the nationality – not the best odds for making it on the world music stage. However Nothnegal, a band of determined and passionate young Maldivians, have beaten the odds and are getting ready to perform at twenty different venues across Europe.

The band of young Maldivians Hilarl, Fufu, Avo, and Battery have been signed by Season of Mist, one of the biggest labels on the death metal music scene, who count music monolith EMI as a distributor.

They are going to open for Fintroll, one of the biggest bands on the contemporary metal scene, on their European tour. Starting from Europe, the band will perform gigs in various cities across Germany, France, the Netherlands, Finland, Spain, Austria, Switzerland, Hungrary, Slovenia, Italy and the Czech Republic.

Their tour will conclude at the O2 Academy in the UK, supporting Fear Factory, a gold-selling band which tops the death metal scene. For band members it is a sweet success – Fear Factory is one of the first death metal bands they ever listened to.

“They were our heroes, and now we are doing support for them,” Hilarl, the lead guitarist and composer, told Minivan News. He feels the same about Arch Enemy, which they supported in July at Rockstorm in Male’.

Nothnegal started their career doing covers of Arch Enemy in 2006. Within four years, Nothnegal were their supporting act, an astonishing transformation by any standard.

Banging heads against a wall of prejudice

Nothnegal’s journey into big time has been difficult. The genre itself is a tough one in which to make it on the world scene. Being Maldivian has made it doubly-hard where musicians have to overcome not just the non-mainstream nature of the genre but also lack of support for music and youth as a whole.

“You are not a Maldivian band”, Nothnegal was once told by a local television station, which refused to give it any coverage. “You do not sing in Dhivehi”, was the reason given for their ‘un-Maldivianness’.

Without any institutional support to encourage the music scene in the Maldives, band members had to go to wealthy members of society with out-stretched hands, asking for sponsorship.

“It is a very subjective process – people fund what they are themselves into. If the head of a company likes football, football is the only activity that company will support”.

Even when a potential sponsor did like music, it was hard to find someone who had time for a death metal band. “It is easier for those who mime, or those who cover Bollywood music, to find sponsorship. Original work gets sidelined, because people are not prepared to listen,” Hilarl said.

They met Minivan News with a photocopy of their record label contract in hand, apparently a document demanded as “proof” by journalists.

“When we meet the media, they ask us to bring ‘valid documents’. They do not believe that we have a record deal”.

The general prejudice against youth manifested mostly in potential sponsors’ aversion to the length of band members’ hair, almost a must on the death metal scene. In Maldivian society, a ‘sure sign’ of a life wasted on drugs.

Nothnegal found an exception in Maaji (with Nothnegal people do not have surnames) of Le Cute, a businessman with a passion for music who looked beyond the long hair and the negative perceptions, to encourage and support Nothnegal. “Without him we would not have made it,” Avo and Hilarl were both keen to emphasise.

There were a small band of others who helped Nothnegal for nothing more than the love of music and belief in the band. Shamheed who did all the artwork and a soon to be released video for the song “Web of deceit”, Muhaa who did the photography, and Kudoo who does all the local promotion work, are people that the band wants desperately to thank.

A solo act

For the rest of the journey, they walked alone. Their last album, “Antidote of Realism”, was produced after many a sleepless night in a studio, which a friend had let them use for free. All of them were working, some holding down full-time jobs.

“Avo would come to the studio straight after work. He would stay up all night, sleeping for only an hour before going to work the next morning,” Hilarl said. They paid close to Rf70,000 (US$5500) for the album’s production in Finland out of their own money.

It was worth it.

“Antidote to Realism”, which they released on the internet, got Nothnegal noticed by the world death metal scene. It is also got them their new drummer – American Kevin Talley, and Finn Marco Sneck.

Both are big names in the world of death metal worldwide, and both wanted to join Nothnegal because their music is good. Greg Reely, a Canadian record producer who has worked with some of the biggest names in music including Coldplay and Fear Factory, is going to work on their next album.

Even the global recognition, however, has not been enough to get them noticed within the Maldives itself.

“We are still waiting to meet the Youth Minister [Hassan Latheef]. We asked for an appointment a long time ago. We are not even sure if he got the message,” Avo said.

Being left in the cold by the Youth Minister, however, is not the most pressing issue for Nothnegal right now. They have other, more important – again, uniquely Maldivian – problems to worry about, such as finding the right clothes to wear for the middle of winter in Europe.

“Not an easy task in the Maldives,” where wool is harder to find than even foreign currency. Nothnegal are in the process of procuring winter gear on e-Bay, and are hoping that it will get here on time before they leave.

Even wrapped up in wool, ready for a harsh European winter, Nothnegal remains Maldivian through and through.

Their new album, which they have just completed writing after a year’s hard graft, is going to be influenced by Maldivian sounds. Like Metallica, they have mellowed their sound from extreme metal to what they call ‘industrial thrash metal’.

Their new lyrics will tell the story of a post-apocalyptic world brought about by climate change. Their last album, ‘Antidote of realism’ tells the story of the political chaos of recent times.

“Singing in Thaana, to the tune of someone else’s music, is not what Maldivian music should be about’, Hilarl said. Nothnegal is going global as a Maldivian band, and are proud of it.

Listen to ‘Antidote to Realism’ online

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Qur’an teacher on child sex abuse charges moved to house arrest

Former Qari Hussein Thaufeeq, arrested last month on multiple charges of child sex abuse, has been transferred to house arrest, reports Haveeru.

Renowned Qari Thaufeeq, Maafannu Dreamy Light, was arrested on 17 August this year and faces up to 18 years imprisonment if found guilty.

He was transferred to house arrest on Friday, as confirmed by the Criminal Court and the police.

The penalty for child sex abuse, according to the Child Sex Abuse (Special Provisions) Act, is 10-14 years but can be extended to 15-18 years if the accused was in a position of trust with the childrenhe allegedly abused.

Thaufeeq was a resource person at the Centre for Holy Quran in Male’ when the allegations were made against him.

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Couples clamour to begin wedded bliss on 10-10-10

Fifty couples, more than three times the daily average, are planning to get married on Sunday the 10 October 2010, reports Haveeru.

The binary number 10-10-10 prompted many to lodge applications at the Family Court to have their marriage ceremony performed on the day. The Family Court approved 50 applications, and told Haveeru that it will try and accommodate all requests.

On average 15-20 marriages are performed daily. On dates that are easy to remember – and leave little chance of forgetting the anniversary – the average always increases manifold. 87 couples got married on 08-08-08, 56 on 07-07-07 and 63 on 06-06-06, says Haveeru.

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Death penalty and Shari’a are the answer to escalating violence in the Maldives, say MPs

Imposing the death penalty, following Shari’a, and harsher prison conditions are the best way forward for solving the increasing violence in Maldivian society, several MPs have stated.

Fares-Maathodaa MP Ibrahim Muththalib said the major problem faced by society today is the decision of the criminal justice system to ignore Shari’a. “We cast aside the Shari’a and adopted man-made sentencing laws”, he said, making today’s violent society possible.

“Instead of being put to death, murderers are allowed to languish in prisons, given the opportunity to get married and to procreate. We cannot stop the violence without stopping such practices. We cannot stop such problems without a death for death policy”, Muththalib told the Majlis.

“I believe that if you impose the death sentence on just two people in this country, there will no longer be anyone left who will kill. If you amputate the hands of two people in this country, there will be no more thieves left. We have to think about how we can establish these principles of Islam”, Muththalib said.

The debate began after an emergency motion tabled by Hoarafushi MP Ahmed Rasheed on Monday to discuss the violent murder of 81-year-old business man, Hussein Manik, on September 27 in Hoarafushi.

“Those who kill should be killed”, Rasheed said, introducing the motion. “We should amend our penal system to ensure that those who endanger the lives of others would be held in solitary confinement for life, and are never eligible for parole”, Rasheed told the Majlis.

If the murderers of Mohamed, or “any criminals of the sort” should ever return to Hoarafushi, he said, he would personally lead a campaign to provide justice to the people of the island. “I will not hesitate, even if it means that I personally get entangled in the law.”

Madaveli MP Mohamed Nazim agreed that the death penalty, as in the Shari’a, was the answer. “Islam is unequivocal that the penalty for death should be death”. The current violence in the country is a consequence of ignoring or violating the teachings of Islam, he said.

“Otherwise, had we maintained the principle of death for death the murderer would not be there to kill again, or to encourage others to kill. The problems we are confronting today is a consequence of ignoring this principle, which would have set an example for the Ummah and the nation’, he said.

Nazim also said there is no need to amend the country’s murder laws, as the death penalty already exists. “I do not see anything in the penal code that says the penalty for murder should be changed to 25 years imprisonment”.

Nazim said that unless and until the death penalty is imposed, as it is stated in the current penal code, the escalating violence in the Maldives could not be stopped.

Thoddoo MP Ali Waheed attributed the increase in violent crime to the lack of proper prisons. “People who should be behind bars are sitting around on the beaches, sucking on butts and all sorts of things – this is the result”, he said.

Drugs, agreed several MPs, were the main cause for the increase in violence in the Maldives. “We know that sometimes people can get intoxicated to such an extent that they become unaware of their own actions. Sometimes murder can be committed,” said Vilifushi area MP Riyaz Rasheed.

MPs themselves should set a good example, and allegations of intoxicating substances being found in their places of residence or their vehicles are not helping matters, Riyaz Rasheed said.

“Pictures of official delegations abroad show them drinking some sort of a yellow liquid”, he said. Unless such ways are amended, there would be no solution to the social problems of the Maldives today, Riyaz Rasheed said.

Maavashu member Abdul Azeez Jamal Abubakr suggested that religious scholars can make the most important contribution to the problems in society. Perjury, he said, is a major problem in Maldivian courts.

The gravity of such an act, as stated in Islam, should be made clear. “It is incumbent upon religious scholars to relay the ominous penalties that await such actions in Islam”, he said.

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Queen of the Netherlands moves islands, causes shock and awe

The sheer speed at which the enormous dredging vessel Queen of the Netherlands has been reclaiming land at various islands has left some islanders open-mouthed with astonishment.

“People were truly in awe,” Hinnavaru Councillor Adam Yousuf told Minivan News.

Yousuf said it had previously taken nine months to dredge six hectares of land in Hinnavaru. The rate of the current reclamation project – 28 hectares of land reclaimed in less than ten days – was hard to believe for most islanders.

Currently Queen of the Netherlands is docked at Haa Dhaal Kulhudhuffushi where, within two weeks, it increased the size of the island by about a third. The growth of the island has left islanders a little disconcerted, Kulhudhuffishi Councillor Jamsheed Mohamed told Minivan News.

“When we wake up in the morning, the island is bigger than we left it the night before,” Mohamed said.

The welcome extended to the reclamation project on Kulhudhuffushi has not been completely unadulterated, however. The impact of the island’s rapid expansion has left the fishermen more than just disorientated.

“One week the harbour was on the West of the island, where it had been for generations. The next, it had moved to the north west,” Kulhudhuffushi fisherman Mohamed Iqbal, Dhinaashaa, told Minivan.

Added to the disconcerting switch is the lack of facilities at the new harbour.

“It is very far from where people live, which means that anybody wanting to buy fish has to walk a longer distance on Kulhudhuffushi than they ever have had to before,” Iqbal explained.

The newly reclaimed area is also far from residential areas, and does not have any electricity either, which makes running a fish market there extremely difficult, he said.

Councillor Mohamed told Minivan that while all the islanders are not happy with the way things are at the moment, they are all expecting them to improve. All islanders had wanted the new land.

“We are all hoping that things will change soon. We are hoping to have a new harbour within less than a year”, Councillor Mohamed said.

Bad weather, combined with unfamiliarity with the new harbour, caused an oil carrier accident as it approached the island on Sunday night.

The state-funded Rf109 million project to reclaim Kulhudhuffushi began on 21 September 2010, and is being carried out by Netherland’s Boskalis International. The Queen of the Netherlands is a trailing suction hopper dredger in its fleet.

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MPs sacrificing core Maldivian values for personal political mileage on Gitmo issue: Dr Shaheed

Political self-interest and false assumptions are behind some MPs’ opposition to the government’s plans to resettle a Guantanamo Bay detainee in the Maldives, Foreign Minister Dr Ahmed Shaheed has said.

Opposition to the plan, Dr Shaheed said, amounts to “a couple of MPs and their sponsored press” who “shot first and asked questions later”. Their objections to the plan, he said, do not reflect “core Maldivian values and are based on false assumptions.”

It is assumed, he said, that “everybody at Guantanamo is a lethal terrorist” and that “this government is going to break laws to accede to the United States’ request”.

Both assumptions are false, he said, and are backed by a third – again false – premise that “whatever Shaheed does, must be attacked”.

“Last year I was pilloried because I spoke to the Israelis… Last year the problem was that I did not care about Palestinians. This year the problem is that I care too much about the Palestinians,” Dr Shaheed said.

“When you remove this politicking and the madness from the surface”, he said, “you are left with a lot of people who think it is good to help people find a better life”. Helping Muslims, helping Palestinians, Dr Shaheed said, are values that Maldivians have long believed in.

Dr Shaheed was speaking to Minivan on the government’s plan to resettle a Guantanamo Bay detainee in the Maldives. The detainee is a Palestinian national who has remained in United States custody at Guantanamo Bay for the last eight years.

The detainee was taken into United States custody in Karachi, Pakistan, and transferred to the prison in Guantanamo Bay in 2002. “He was a non-political Muslim preacher, a Tablighi”, Dr Shaeed said.

“By all accounts, and from what I have seen, he is an innocent person,” Dr Shaheed said. No criminal charges were ever brought against him, nor was he tried at any of the US military tribunals that determined the “enemy combatant” status of detainees.

The Bush administration refused to grant ‘Prisoner of War’ status to any of the detainees held in United States custody as part of the War on Terror, denying them all the rights guaranteed by the Third Geneva Convention.

The decision allowed the United States government to detain prisoners indefinitely without charge and without legal representation. Despite the Obama administration’s decision to close Guantanamo Bay in 2008, close to 200 detainees still remain at the facility.

No money exchanged hands

The Maldivian government’s decision to assist the current United States administration in closing Guantanamo Bay by resettling one of the detainees, Dr Shaeed said, was not going to break any laws of the country, nor was it a decision made on a quid pro quo basis.

“The United States has not come with a bag full of money and said: ‘here’s your reward for doing this’, but because we work with the US on this and other issues, they will try to help us where we need help,” Dr Shaheed said.

He denied that the Maldives had been complicit in the Bush administration’s controversial practice of extraordinary renditions in which suspected terrorists were transported from one country to another without due process.

The Maldives, however, had acquiesced to the United States request to allow its planes to refuel at her airports during its military invasion of Afghanistan that began in October 2001.

Although the permission was granted, Dr Shaheed said, it was not utilised. It was more a pragmatic move which allowed the United States to add the Maldives to the list of countries that supported its War on Terror.

“It was also important for them to be able to say that Muslim countries were backing them also, because they were not attacking Islam, they were attacking Al-Qaeda.”

Proceeding with caution

Dr Shaeed said that until both the Maldivian parliament and the United States Congress were satisfied that the detainee did not pose a threat to the national security of either country, he would not be brought to the Maldives.

The invitation to resettle in the Maldives has been extended to the detainee on the basis that he agrees to abide by certain conditions, Dr Shaheed said. And the agreement with the United States to resettle him in the Maldives is dependent on the fulfilment of three conditions.

“We have to first satisfy ourselves that the person poses no threat to the Maldives; that our laws are compatible with the resettlement; and that the United States will meet its costs. That is the basis from which we started the negotiations, and that is what we are still maintaining,” Dr Shaheed said.

He denied any possibility that the detainee might establish links with the increasingly radical elements of Maldivian society. “There is no such danger”, he said.

Nor was there any evidence to suggest that detainees who are resettled in third countries associate with, or contribute to radicalisation of host societies, he said.

A “Mullah environment”

Dr Shaheed agreed that the Maldives lacks, and needs, an integrated and coherent anti-radicalisation policy that addresses the issue as a whole.

“It is too fragmented to say that there are nine in Pakistan doing Jihad, four in a park exploding a bomb, five in the park calling for the murder of a High Commissioner in another country – these are all fragmented – we need to see where we are in a more coherent manner,” Dr Shaheed said.

He said the Maldives needs to take stock of where it currently is, and to gauge how far the education system has become “atrophied into an instrument of radicalism”.

What is needed is to assess the extent to which democracy has “opened the floodgates of radical ideas”, he said, and how far the society itself has become a handmaiden of radicalism.

The ‘operating environment’ in the Maldives, he said, is “a Mullah environment”. Any development plans or any plans for change, unlike in other developing countries such as those in Latin America for example, he said, have to take “the Mullah environment into account”.

Grand narratives that currently dominate the Maldivian society, such as that of treating women as second class citizens, Dr Shaheed said, need to be addressed and changed.

A policy document that targets these problems in a coherent manner is needed, without which “we have not yet fathomed the scale of the problem”, he said.

“What we do know is, every day it is increasing”, Dr Shaheed said. “I believe women in this country are in great danger”.

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Fuvamulah runs out of gas

Rain has prevented gas supplies from reaching Fuvahmulah, forcing the islanders to switch back to wood for fuel, reports Haveeru.

Gas retailers told Haveeru that the two main supply boats have been forced to remain in Laamu and Huvadhu Atoll due to the bad weather. Islanders are now using firewood and oil for cooking.

Haveeru also reported that switching to traditional methods of cooking has been a “painful” experience for the people of Fuvahmulah.

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UN to increase protection of right to free assembly

The United Nations Human Rights Council has unanimously adopted a resolution to appoint a Special Rapportuer to promote and protect the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association across the world.

Reports from the Foreign Ministry say the resolution was introduced to the 15th Session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva by the Maldivian delegation on behalf of the Czech Republic, Indonesia, Lithuania, Mexico, Nigeria and the United States.

Article 20 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone has the right to peaceful assembly and association, and that no one should be compelled to belong to an association.

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Mind the gap: is lack of education the main reason for extremism in the Maldives?

“Extremism spreads because extremism is being taught, not because of inadequacies in the education system,” Minister of Education Dr Musthafa Luthfy told Minivan News.

“Extremism is a form of teaching in itself, and it is being taught by some people,” Dr Luthfy said. “It is not in the schools that it is taught, but outside of them.”

He said Islamic Affairs Minister Dr Abdul Majyd Abdul Bari was right in saying yesterday that extremism might be spreading because proper religious education is missing from the curriculum.

“Proper religious education,” Dr Luthfy said, “is very difficult to define. It means different things to different people.”

The subject of Islam is taught, he noted, according to an approved formal national curriculum in Maldivian schools from primary right through secondary school.

The education system is not the reason for extremism but extremism does affect the education system, Dr Luthfy said.

“Some people don’t want students to play; some don’t want them to do art; some don’t want them to do music – some say those are activities are haraam (forbidden) in Islam.”

He also added that there have been instances where some people advocated making it a regulation for male students to wear their trousers folded up a few inches above the ankle or to make beards compulsory.

Minister of Islamic Affairs Dr Bari told Minivan in an interview yesterday that a large share of the blame for the religious extremism in the Maldives lies with the education system.

Many Maldivians who turned to extremism were those seeking religious enlightenment that the education system could not provide. They sought such knowledge abroad, and ended up in unregulated institutions such as the madhrasaas in Pakistan, Dr Bari said.

Dr Luthfy agreed that there were inadequacies in the education system that contributed to contemporary social problems.

Between leaving school and reaching adulthood most Maldivian youth spend two years without a job, a sense of direction or purpose. A large number of contemporary social problems take root during these two ‘gap years’.

Latest Education Ministry figures show that an overwhelming majority – close to seventy percent of students who sit O’level exams – fail them. Of all the students who take the exams, only a small minority go on to take A’levels.

The rest, still legally children, fall outside of the school system and remain unemployed. Minister of Education Dr Luthfy said these two years were crucial.

Keeping the children within a formal education system until they are legally adults, at the age of 18, he said, is necessary for changing the current status quo. A polytechnic will soon open in Male’ that will address the problem, Dr Luthfy said.

Plans are also underway to setup vocational training centres on several islands using resources that already exist or by establishing new ones. The training centres would be subsidised by the government, and run by private organisations, Dr Luthfy said.

While the government’s plans remain in the pipeline, Salaam School, a social project launched under her own initiative by Aminath Arif, is attempting to plug the holes. It offers the children in an educational limbo an opportunity for personal development and trains them for the job market.

“There is very little help, direction or guidance given to such children,” Arif said. “They arrive at Salaam with very little language skills, and with almost no prior career guidance. For many, it is the last hope finding a way into gainful employment.”

“It is very easy to point fingers,” she said. “We can blame the internet, or we can blame something else.”

The problem, she said, is the very ethos of the education system: “It rarely encourages children to develop their creativity, to grow into their own individuality.”

Education Ministry figures show that compared to the ‘Enlightenment disciplines’ of the West such as the social and natural sciences, almost all school leavers sat the exam in Islam. In comparison, only a quarter of the students sat exams in any of the natural science subjects.

Humanities received even less attention from students with most subjects in its disciplines getting less than one percent of the total student population of the country. And, there were more students taking the Arabic language exam than the O’Level English language.

A 2004 survey of members of extremist Islamist groups found that over 60 percent had some higher or further-level education. The survey, by Marc Sageman, also found that about three quarters of extremists came from upper- or middle-class backgrounds.

Many extremists, research has also shown, were in professional occupations such as teaching, medicine or in skilled or semi-skilled employment such as the police or the civil service when they became radicalised or joined a group with extremist ideologies.

Such recent research, as was discussed in the European Journal of Criminology, undermines the previously accepted view that “Islamic extremism can be attributed to ignorance or lack of education.”

Social identity, group loyalties, social marginalisation, discrimination against particular groups, status and personal rewards as well as perceived injustices, research has found, contribute to the radicalisation and the creation of extremists in a society.

The substantial number of Maldivian youth on their enforced ‘gap years’ are broadly perceived as a negative force within society, Aminath Arif said.

“The marginalisation of youth on most islands is endemic throughout the country,” Arif told Minivan.

She travels to islands and identifies the most needy of such youth and provide them with the opportunity to enrol at Salaam.

Such initiatives, however, are few and far between, if not non-existent. Disaffected, marginalised and with no institutional support, a vast majority of Maldivian school leavers stray in a variety of directions.

Attending the ‘schools’ of extremism, or listening to the extremism being ‘taught’, as Dr Luthfy said, might be one of them.

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