Author: Azra Naseem

Comment: Burning bridges – SAARC Summit exposes depths of Maldivian intolerance

Democracy strips a people naked by giving them the freedom to be who they really are. Recent events reveal that the Maldivian so exposed is not a pretty sight: she is bigoted, xenophobic, and ignorant.

First came the gutter press hullabaloo about an illustration of Jesus on a banner welcoming leaders of the SAARC region which, as it happens, is home to the largest collection of deities known to man.

Pardon me if I am bordering on the verge of apostasy here, but is Jesus not Easa? You may know him from such books as the Qur’an.

Perhaps the good people of the Sun magazine, which ‘broke’ the ‘news’, are not too familiar with the book. Be that as it may, truth is, Sun writers had not been this excited about alleged ‘anti-Islamic activity’ since they went under covers in a brothel.

When the public failed to foam at the mouth (not about the brothel, about Jesus), other plans had to be hatched to ratchet up hatred. Along came MP Ahmed Mahloof, our saviour from the unlikely Second Coming of Jesus as a line-drawing flapping about in the warm breeze of a tropical island.

The ex-footballer as a public figure is an interesting (side)step in the evolution of man. To begin with, he possesses a brain that accepts kicking a ball into a net for money is a life well lived. The capacity of such brains to adjust to other styles of living is minimal, though not non-existent.

It has been proven, for instance, that they can successfully switch from playing ball to building a career of provocatively displaying one’s own balls for couturiers of men’s underwear. But a career in politics? Mahloof is proof that electing ex-footballers to political posts is an own goal of epic proportions.

As if the MP and his idiocy were not enough to make us the laughing stock of South Asia, we then set about destroying a monument installed by Pakistan because it contains idolatrous images.

Maldivians destroying a Pakistani creation for alleged anti-Islamic imagery. Now, tell us – does that not make it clear once and for all who is the more Islamic of the two states: the Islamic Republic of Pakistan with its 97 percent Muslim population, or Always Natural Maldives, the tourist destination extraordinaire with a hundred-percent-minus-one-Muslim population? Surely we have won this religious pissing contest that Pakistan probably did not even know they were engaged in.

At least we cannot be accused of bias in our India-Pakistan foreign policy. Last month we deported an Indian for having on his laptop a religious hymn. This week we destroyed a religious display from Pakistan.

In fact, we are very even-handed in our policies and attitudes towards all our neighbours. Just ask any of our hundred thousand Bangladeshi Muslim brethren: we treat them all with equal inhumanity and cruelty.

And surely Sri Lanka would attest to just how seriously we take the commandment to love thy neighbour: for didn’t we, while on the UN Human Rights Committee, describe the UN’s condemnation of Rajapaksa’s war policy as ‘singularly counter-productive’?

Somewhere in this unpalatable exposé of the 21st century Maldivian is a lesson, not just for Maldivians but also for democracy itself. And it is not just that ex-footballers should not be elected to public office but also that, given the freedom, a majority of people are just as likely to choose intolerance as they are to choose tolerance.

That is the tragedy of three years of democracy in the Maldives: we have chosen to use its liberties to exercise our freedom not to be free.

All comment pieces are the sole view of the author and do not reflect the editorial policy of Minivan News. If you would like to write an opinion piece, please send proposals to [email protected]

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Comment: Adhaalath out of sight, out of mind?

The Adhaalath party has blown the popsicle stand, having declared defeat in its efforts to ‘reform’ the sinful government led by President Nasheed.

In the days leading up to its decision to leave the coalition, Adhaalath provided the public with what it considers a damning indictment of MDP-facilitated transgressions: invited Jews to preach Christianity in the Maldives; sent young Maldivians to a Christian seminary otherwise known as Christ College, Oxford University; and encouraged Maldivians to commit the haraam act of gambling by publicising the US Green Card Lottery.

Adhaalath’s departure from the ruling coalition, and the preceding days it spent in the headlines, provoked different reactions among different segments of society.

For some, the party and its departure are inconsequential. They have no political power, anyway. A substantial number of social media pundits think Adhaalath should be wholly exempt from mainstream media coverage. There are two primary reasons offered as support for this position: Adhaalath is too stupid to be worthy of attention or Adhaalath is too good (read too Islamic) to criticise. The inevitable conspiracy theorists, meanwhile, see media coverage of Adhaalath as evidence of a covert operation run (probably by Mossad) to discredit Islam in the Maldives.

Quite apart from the fact that no right-minded journalist would turn down the opportunity to cover displays of such gargantuan stupidity by politicians, there are many reasons for the public watchdog to keep a wary eye on this party.

A party of little consequence?

It is a mistake to assume that Adhaalath has no political power because it has few bodies in state institutions. Power is not exercised simply by those in government; and governing is not done merely by elected politicians. The power Adhaalath has is greater than the sum of its political seats – it governs by dictating faith and thus penetrates further into people’s lives than a democratic government can.

Consider this: the Constitution requires that every Maldivian citizen be a Muslim. Automatically, that puts every citizen within the legitimate reach of any authority that claims to know Islam best. It is this power to govern the conduct of every citizen through a supposedly privileged knowledge of ‘true Islam’ that makes parties like Adhaalath important. It is a power that is outside the boundaries of legislation and government policy, yet manages to carry the most legitimacy among the people.

Over the last few years, Adhaalath has positioned itself as The Religious Party. Given the emphasis that Islam places on truth and honesty, it is the most politically advantageous position that any political party can occupy in the Maldives today. People are daily disillusioned by reports of corruption at every level of government, and within communities. Two years of intensely partisan politics have created strife within previously harmonious communities. The decentralisation project is increasingly revealing itself to be deeply flawed with untrained local councillors and people clashing on a regular basis. The promise of ‘equal justice for all’ remains not just unfulfilled but is being intentionally ignored, there being neither political will nor courage to change the status quo.

Let there be truth

In uncertain times, people flock to those who can shepherd them towards certainty. Adhaalath’s position as ‘the only honest party’ is proving attractive to many disillusioned voters. The septuagenarian Gayoom’s recent political acrobatics was an added bonus for Adhaalath as disgruntled voters, unsure of which letter of the alphabet to choose from, signed up for the simplicity and straightforwardness of ‘Adhaalath.’

Gayoom’s ploy to stem the number of people leaving him by aligning himself with Adhaalath’s version of Islam backfired somewhat. For many Maldivians who regarded the right path to Islam as intertwined with the road leading to Gayoom’s favour, his endorsement of Adhaalath provided a way of leaving the increasingly erratic Zaeem without betraying their religious loyalties. It is a little wonder that Adhaalath boasted a bump in membership numbers in recent weeks.

For the minority who have been exposed to alternative ways of thinking, Adhaalath’s policies may appear formulated in an intellectual vacuum, and no doubt provides much cause for levity. For the majority, however, Adhaalath speaks the truth. It is a claim Adhaalath never hesitates to reiterate, invariably shoring it up with references to the Qur’an.

The power of such truth claims is evident in the religious right’s ability to convince the population of an entire island that they were about to be infiltrated by a group of Jews pretending to be philanthropic farmers, whose real aim was not the local cabbage patch but preaching Christianity. It would be a mistake to underestimate the power of any group capable of convincing a population that such a scenario is not just probable but imminent.

The known unknowns

The Maldivian people, like most people across the world, have been put through an ideological and political wringer in the last decade. Unlike most other countries going through the chaos of transition, however, a majority of the Maldivian population has been vastly shielded from the intense debates surrounding the enormous changes in the world’s political, economic and ideological landscapes.

Thirty years in which ignorance was used as a tool of governance would have that affect. The long cultural and educational stagnation has created a society in which a majority of people are incapable of critically engaging with the world around them. The democracy that flourishes in such a society cannot help but be different from a democracy that takes shape in a society more widely exposed to diverse views and opinions.

In the absence of alternative views, on what comparative basis can the majority question the policies Adhaalath advocates? After all, the leaders of Adhaalath can recite the Qur’an, often from memory, and always have handy a suitable interpretation of Hadith whatever the situation. When they have all the answers, what is there to question?

Among a population that is being directed to spend their lives preparing for afterlife, there is no authority greater than the one that offers them a straight path to heaven. Adhaalath has positioned itself to be just that.

For those who advise against scrutiny of Adhaalath – if not now, then when? After the first person is hanged for blasphemy? After the first woman is stoned? After all civil liberties have been eroded in the name of Islam?

Refusing Adhaalath the ‘oxygen of publicity’ is not going to wane its influence. With the pulpits theirs for the taking, Adhaalath does not need the mainstream media for its message. Ignoring Adhaalath, on the other hand, will allow it to quietly perpetuate its ideology among people until every follower will happily to make a detour to the ballot box en route to heaven.

All comment pieces are the sole view of the author and do not reflect the editorial policy of Minivan News. If you would like to write an opinion piece, please send proposals to [email protected]

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Comment: Maldivian government endorses Deobandi Islam, the religion of the Taliban

The Religious Unity Regulations have provided the clearest indication yet of the official direction religion in the Maldives is taking: towards Deobandi Islam, the religion of the Taliban.

Among 36 institutions of Islamic learning approved by the regulations is the ultra-orthodox Jamia Darul Uloom in Deoband, India and at least six affiliated madrassas.

Established in 1867 to bring together Muslims who were hostile to British rule, the Deoband madrassa, created the so-called ‘Deobandi Tradition’ committed to a literal and austere interpretation of Islam. For the last 200 years, the Deobandi Tradition has argued that the reason Islamic societies have fallen behind the West on all spheres of endeavour is because they have been seduced by the amoral West, and have deviated from the original teachings of Prophet Mohammed.

It is the fundamentalist Deobad Da-ul-Uloom brand of Islam that inspired the Taliban movement. Many of the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan and in Pakistan are graduates of the Deobandi-influenced seminaries in Pakistan. Mullah Omar, for example, attended the Deobandi Darul Uloom Haqqania madrassa in Peshawar.

The Kabul Centre for Strategic Studies has reported that so many of the Taliban leaders were educated at the school that its head cleric, Maulana Sami ul-Haq is regarded the father of the Taliban. The Deobandi Tradition is highly critical of Islam as practised in modern societies, feeling that the established religious order had made too many compromises with its foreign environment.

The mission of the Deoband is to cleanse Islam of all Western influences, and to propagate their teachings with missionary zeal. Increasingly, the Deobandi movement has been funded by the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia, leading to the former being co-opted by the latter.

Without a clear indication – such as ‘Darul Uloom’ appearing in the name of the institution – it cannot be said with certainty how many of the total of 10 listed Pakistani institutions in the regulations  are categorically Deobandi.

Available facts suggest, however, that more than just the two Darul Ulooms listed in the Regulations are Deobandi. It is the Deobandi that has the largest number of religious seminaries in Pakistan – of 20,000 registered seminaries in Pakistan, 12,000 are run by Deobandi scholars; and 6,000 by the Barlevi, with whom the Deobandi have many disputes.

Among the 10 Pakistani institutions approved by the regulations is also Jamia Salafia, a seminary whose alumni include several leaders in Al-Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Taiba, the organisation behind the Mumbai terror attacks in which a Maldivian is alleged to have participated. It is also the leading supplier of Salafi neo-conservatism in the Maldives.

Even when the approved list of institutions in the regulations’ list goes beyond South Asian borders, it gravitates towards the Deobandi movement. The list includes, for example, the Dhaarul Uloom Zakariya in South Africa. The only institute in Britain the regulations approve of is the Islamic Da’wa Academy, a place which produces the Muslim equivalent of a missionary. Why is there such an acute need to proselytise in a country where the population already believes in Islam except to propagate a particular view?

The Deoband HQ has recently sought to distance itself from violent extremism. For the powers that be in the War on Terror, what matters is the graduation from extremism to violence. But, for societies such as the Maldives, and for the people who have to live under its precincts, what matters more is the oppression that extremism imposes on daily life. This is the reality that a Maldivian people living under the Religious Unity Regulations will have to face.

The application of the Deobandi school of thought on Maldivian women is a frightening prospect that is not too far in the distant future. The Taliban’s stance on women is a clear indication of the scale of the potential problem. An example of the Deobandi’s take on women is the 24 April 2010 Fatwa by the seminary in Deoband that declared it ‘haraam’ and illegal according to Sharia for a family to accept a women’s earnings.

‘It is unlawful for Muslim women to do job in government or private institutions where men and women work together and women have to talk with men frankly and without veil.’

Embarrassed by the angry reaction in the Indian media and among women’s groups, the Deoband madrassa denied it banned women from the work place and only insisted that working women be ‘properly covered’. As analysts have pointed out, however, what the Fatwa suggests is that women can only work in such places where they can fully veil themselves and where they cannot ‘frankly’ talk to men, whatever that means. The Fatwa effectively banned Muslim women from the workplace in India.

The Religious Unity Regulations stipulate that no one should propagate their particular ideology of Islam as the ‘right Islam’. This stipulation looks good in writing, and is perhaps what has allowed the government to spin the document as ‘a crack-down on extremism’.

It is true the regulations prohibit the promotion of a particular ideology of Islam as the ‘true Islam’. But by regulating what truth about Islam would be considered as legitimate in the first place, a pre-selected knowledge of the ‘right Islam’ – what looks like Deobandi Islam – is being imposed on the people that pre-empts the regulations themselves. It is clear from the staggering changes that have occurred in Maldivian faith in the last decade that the Deobandi movement has been a resounding success in the country. Now it has the chance to flourish further, with no conflicting opinions to be allowed in.

Clamping down on other forms of Islam is, in fact, a defining characteristic of the Deobandi Tradition. Although from a global perspective the Deobandis are only one of many religious expressions of Islam, from the Deobandi point of view, theirs is the only true Islam.

The Deobandi regard all other forms of Islam as heretical, leading to continued tension and long-term violence between the Deobandi and other Muslims. In Pakistan, where the Deobandi is known to have played a crucial role in establishing an Islamic state, the Deobandi Taliban have carried out many acts of violence against followers of the Berlevi tradition, which many Pakistan’s Muslims follow.

The Religious Unity Regulations have already created tensions among those who have claimed the mantle of ‘religious scholar’ in the Maldives. The Islamic Foundation of the Maldives is arguing against the Regulations on the basis that the requirement of a first degree as a prerequisite for the Preachers License is unconstitutional. It is also fighting for the religious right to describe Jews as ‘evil people and liars’.

The Adhaalath Party, meanwhile, has objected to the regulations because the President and his advisors apparently watered down the purity of their contributions to the draft Regulations by contaminating it with “provisions from English law…not suited to a 100 percent Muslim country”, echoing the founding principles of the Deobandi Tradition.

‘Compared to the first draft’, President’s advisor on the Regulations, Ibrahim ‘Ibra’ Ismail, said, “the regulations do not impinge on freedom of expression”.

What matters is not whether, comparatively speaking, the first draft is a veritable Magna Carta. What matters is the final draft that has been gazetted. And it severely restricts the freedom of the Maldivian people in the name of the ‘right Islam’ – Deobandi Islam. To spin the document as something that “will allow liberal-minded thinkers to convince people of the middle ground” is deliberately misleading if not an outright lie. This document does the exact opposite.

All comment pieces are the sole view of the author and do not reflect the editorial policy of Minivan News. If you would like to write an opinion piece, please send proposals to [email protected]

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Comment: Is the President serious about reforming the judiciary?

Has Anni given up the fight for an independent judiciary?

“We will reform the JSC”, President Nasheed said in May.

“When the powers were separated and the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) became the executive we came into a situation where the previous regime had a majority in the parliament.

“But in many minds the situation with the judiciary was far more worrying. Nothing had changed – we had exactly the same people, the same judges, the same manner of thinking and of dispensing justice.”

On Wednesday he appointed as his member at the Judicial Services Commission (JSC) Kurendhoo Hussein Ibrahim, a man who first came to public attention during the drafting of the 2008 Constitution as someone vigorously apposed to gender equality.

As a member of the Special Majlis, Hussein Ibrahim was vociferously opposed to the appointment of women as judges, and was particularly vitriolic in his comments against changing the Constitution to allow women to run for office of the President.

“He was very clear about where women should be in society – in a place where they have no say in the running of public affairs,” a senior member of the law community, who wishes to remain anonymous, told Minivan News.

“To be honest, I am very surprised that the President would appoint such an individual as Velezinee’s replacement,” he said.

Aishath Velezinee was the President’s Member at the JSC until 19 May this year, when she was unceremoniously removed from the position. Although there were unconfirmed reports, including in this newspaper, about a backroom deal that made her removal politically advantageous for MDP, neither President Nasheed nor Velezinee have so far spoken publicly about the reasons for her removal.

Hussein Ibrahim’s views are diametrically opposed not just to Velezinee’s, but also that of a President who frequently espouses his commitment to the democratic ideal of equality and non-discrimination.

The President’s Press Secretary, Mohamed Zuhair, said Hussein Ibrahim might have distanced himself from such hard-line views since he sat on the Special Majlis for redrafting the Constitution.

“It is quite possible that he has changed,” Zuhair said. Pressed on the question of whether he knew this for a fact, Zuhair said, “We believe that in accepting the position as the President’s Member, he is entering into a ‘social pact’.”

“It is our hope”, Zuhair said, “that he will work towards the realisation of the President’s goals and to further his views in his new job.”

Even if Hussein Ibrahim, seemingly appointed on a wing and prayer, does show himself capable of leaving behind his misogyny, there is still the question of his professional ability to push a reform agenda.

A misogynist with a sentencing certificate

Hussein Ibrahim has no formal qualifications and is one of the many ‘lawyers’ allowed to sit on the bench on the basis of a Sentencing Certificate – a legacy of the Gayoom era. Having served as a magistrate in two different lower courts, he later did a stint as an ‘Islam Soa’ at Aminiya School.

In other words, he is a member of the very same brigade of “exactly the same people, the same judges, the same manner of thinking and of dispensing justice” President Nasheed said he wanted removed from the judiciary.

Removing unqualified judges was a Constitutional requirement, stipulated by Article 285. Put in charge of carrying out the task, however, the JSC dismissed Article 285 as “symbolic” and allowed all but a handful of the unqualified judges to remain in the judiciary. The President has now appointed just such a man to represent him at the JSC.

Hussein Ibrahim’s presence at the JSC means that female members of the judiciary, few in number but who as a group represent the most qualified judges in the country, now have another man overseeing them who not only thinks they are biologically and intellectually inferior to him, but also knows less about the law than they do.

The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), which in February this year published a highly critical report on the JSC, pointed to members’ lack of technical ability and knowledge as one reason for its inability to do its job of ensuring the judiciary’s ethical and professional standards.

Citing ‘administrative efficiency’, as the reason, the JSC abolished the Complaints Committee in May this year. It was the mechanism by which the JSC was to have investigated complaints against the judiciary.

The JSC’s 2010 annual report shows there are over 200 complaints – some involving judges at the country’s highest courts – that are yet to be investigated. Any attempts to force the JSC to investigate complaints using the courts system have so far been unsuccessful.

Meanwhile, any criticism of the judiciary is becoming increasingly difficult as the courts gag the media, or issue threats against those who speak against its actions – even when they are clearly unconstitutional.

Recent examples include the Criminal Court’s decision to ban the media from Deputy Speaker Ahmed Nazim’s alleged corruption hearings and the Supreme Court’s reprimanding of President’s Advisor Ibrahim Ismail (Ibra) for urging the public to fight for their right to an independent judiciary.

What is even more shocking is that the JSC convened an emergency meeting to discuss Ibra’s remarks where members agreed to ask ‘relevant authorities’ to investigate Ibra.

The JSC is constitutionally mandated to investigate complaints against the judiciary made by members of the public. It has no authority to investigate complaints against members of the public made by the judiciary.

Clearly the JSC needs someone who, at the very least, knows what its own role is.

As seen in the case of Velezinee, who was stabbed in the back in January this year, fighting for judicial reform is one of the most dangerous jobs in the country.

Hussein Ibrahim is a religious conservative who thinks women should be covered up and chained to the kitchen sink when they are not occupied with the holy task of breeding. He has no record of pushing a democratic agenda, and has no formal qualifications in any profession. It is hard to imagine him taking on the JSC let alone the judiciary.

Which begs the question: is President Nasheed serious about reforming the judiciary?

All comment pieces are the sole view of the author and do not reflect the editorial policy of Minivan News. If you would like to write an opinion piece, please send proposals to [email protected]

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Comment: Parliament is laughing at you

What a laugh the Majlis is having at the people’s expense. If voting to give themselves the extra MRF20,000 (US$1300) was like spitting people in the face, having the pay cheque backdated is like rubbing the polity’s face in the MPs’ bejewelled excrement.

For what is this money being rewarded? For emotional distress caused by having to bend to the people’s will for eight arduous months? Has life really been that tough on MRF60,000 US$(3900) a month that MPs need financial redress for their suffering?

It really must have been difficult coming up to Ramadan, having to forgo one or many of all those pre-Ramadan MP necessities. No pre-fasting trips to Bangkok, no spiritual rejuvenation trips to Sri Lanka, no shopping trips to Malaysia, no tri-annual holiday abroad for the parliamentary off spring.

Having had to endure a month in which the prices from fish to furniture have gone beyond the common man’s reach, the collective empathy of the people are no doubt with the Majlis.

Kudos to the 17 who have said they do not want the allowance.  Most fascinating, though, are the 16 who abstained. Would the allowance have been possible without them?

How complex and nuanced a question is: do you think you deserve the MRF20,000 a month at a time of grave national debt? It requires a simple yes or no answer – you are either with the people or you are not. Sitting on the fence on this question is even more self-serving than those who voted to keep the allowance – at least they were honest.

And then there are the MPs who are speaking out against the proposed income tax. On the grounds that it applies only to a small percentage of the population! Taxing the small percentage of the mega rich who have this country in a stranglehold, and letting the poor escape the burden – that is the purpose of it, one would have thought. In some MPs’ books, taxes should be equal – this is some people’s understanding of democracy, alas.

The avarice in the parliament is widespread, and its connections to big money are many. On the day of the salary vote at the Public Accounts Committee, its Chairman Ahmed ‘Jangiya’ [Panties] Nazim was in court for allegedly embezzling money from the public coffers to the tune of US$400,000.

If MPs stuck the polity’s face in their excrement, the Criminal Court’s decision to ban the media from MP Nazim’s court hearings buried the public in shallow graves dug in the same matter.

The accused is the Deputy Speaker of Parliament, the man who chairs the meetings at which decisions are made on how public accounts are to be balanced. He stands charged with fraud. If this is not a matter of public interest, then what is?

And what does the Criminal Court’s justification for the decision to ban the media even mean? Article 42 of the Constitution, to which the Court referred in its decision, says courts can only exercise their discretion to exclude the media if doing otherwise would disrupt public order, public morality or national security. None of these issues are at play here.

If the Criminal Court’s decision to gag the media refers to ‘other special circumstances where publicity would prejudice the interests of justice’ as said in Article 42, what the Court is effectively saying is that it is open to suggestion by every lowly hack out there.

The ‘democratic norms’, only according to which the discretionary powers in Article 42 are to be exercised, has long established that dangers of prejudice by media criticism arises where a jury is involved – not in cases where judges are sitting alone.

Unlike a jury of 12 ordinary people, judges – assumed to have achieved higher levels of education and higher levels of ethics and morality than ordinary people – are seen as above outside influence, and able to make a ruling based solely on the evidence before him.

By saying the court cannot come to a fair and impartial ruling because of what is being said in the media, it is clearly admitting that the judge sitting alone is easily influenced and cannot be trusted.

Perhaps balancing the people’s right to freedom of expression with an accused person’s right to a fair trial was not a module covered in the Sentencing Certificate?

The media should be in an uproar over this gagging order. Apart from a statement from the Media Council, however, there has been nothing.

Where is the Maldives Journalists Association with their usual indignation? Where is the Maldives National Journalists Association? Where are the highly paid members of the Broadcasting Commission? Where is the burgeoning ‘free press’?

Will the real Fourth Estate please stand up?

All comment pieces are the sole view of the author and do not reflect the editorial policy of Minivan News. If you would like to write an opinion piece, please send proposals to [email protected]

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Comment: Let’s talk about ideology

There is an unbearable emptiness to Maldivian political rhetoric. Everywhere we look are people who say what they do not mean, and mean what they do not say.

Take former President Gayoom’s pre-Ramadan Epiphany: Z-DRP and Adhaalath are ideological twins.

Since when? Does Adhaalath not espouse beliefs that Gayoom once allegedly had people tortured for? Legend has it that the kind of beards that men sport with such pride these days were once shaved with chilli powder by Gayoom’s henchmen. This is a madness in method missing even from the notorious ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ at Guantanamo Bay.

Now, though, we are to believe that this vast ideological chasm between Gayoom and Them has been magically crossed. That somehow, in the turmoil of transition, the ideological kaleidoscope was shaken so much that Gayoom and Adhaalath are now soulmates.

Do you find it hard to believe that an individual could flip-flop across such vast ideological terrain in one lifetime, let alone in one political career (no matter how long)? Is it difficult to grasp how one man can go from actively banning the buruga to aligning himself with those who take the measure of a woman’s morality by the very same piece of cloth?

Do you find it difficult to get your head around how a man who once courted international diplomatic accolade with such rigour would now align himself with a party that thinks Iranian approval is a foreign policy victory? Even bearing in mind that this is Gayoom we are talking about, it is hard to make sense of such a complete volte face, is it not?

Do not be too hard on yourself, though, for no such vast ideological changes have occurred. The truth of the matter is there was no ideology to begin with. We are an ideologically empty vessel, and the proof is not just in the clamour that such vessels tend to make and we hear constantly on our airwaves. It is there to see in the many crossings made over seemingly irreconcilable ideological lines in recent times.

Remember DRP’s most vitriolic and vociferously anti-MDP figure in the Majlis, MP Ali Waheed, moving to MDP in May this year? The air was filled with such a triumphant yellow that everyone looked jaundiced. What was there to celebrate? That MDP was one man closer to an outright parliamentary majority.

Granted, a majority is clearly necessary if MDP is to surmount the blockades to progress set up by the Maldivian Tea Party-ers. But on how firm an ideological ground is a party willing to welcome – if not buy – a man who until the moment of transfer had been against everything the party stood for?

Fast-forward a few months, and there is Mr Ali Waheed, the proud owner of a MRF 4.6 million home, on the beachfront of Hulhumale’. How did he afford it? It is a question that one must not ask for fear of ‘politicising’ the issue, says the man himself. Indeed. These journalists must be insane to find anything political about an MP, even on the outrageous monthly income of Rf 60,000, buying a plot of land for almost Rf 5 million.

Then we have Adhaalath, the party of purists and the gatekeepers of heaven for Maldivians. One day they describe the West as the Great Satan, the Puppet Masters of the religiously weak Dhivehin, the corrupters of our children and the seducers of our youth. The next day they fly in individuals who represent the worst the West has to offer to lecture us on how we should conduct and govern ourselves.

British MP George Galloway

First there was Philip Green, according to whom England is a country full of drunken louts who do nothing but puke and urinate alcohol on the streets of London twenty four hours a day seven days a week.

Then Adhaalath proudly links us via video to George Galloway, former UK MP and Celebrity Big Brother star who once danced on national television in a pink lycra cat-suit. While even sinful liberals found Galloway’s behaviour hard to comprehend, self-righteous Adhaalath seems to have had no such qualms.

If Adhaalath believes what it says, how can it hold Galloway up as a figure of authority to the same people that it wants to cleanse of all alleged Western debauchery? Galloway’s decisions in the Middle East have not been exactly wise, to put it kindly. But that’s all right, because Adhaalath found some perverse use to make of him. And Galloway lapped it all up, like the cat that he was on Big Brother, happily dictating our foreign policy as ‘an entirely Muslim country’.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, in the same week we were celebrating our independence from British protection. It was also the same week in which Gayoom was speaking of the imminent threat we face from a supposed revitalisation of British imperial ambitions.

Ideological complexities? No. Lack of ideology, lack of a purpose except one’s own political or pecuniary power. What matters is knowing which side of your bread your Halal butter is on. What matters is that there is a pot of political gold at the end of the rainbow of beliefs one can feel free to pick and choose from.

This emptiness of rhetoric, of being, is dangerous.

As we saw from the riots in London earlier this month, when the people at the top believe that it is okay to rob from the poor with impunity like the bankers did in the West; and that it is alright to violate the rights of others as Murdoch’s news empire did in Britain – the chances are that the little people below may feel free to do the same.

If we want a society with purpose and belief, we need leaders who say what they mean; not individuals who take a Hypocrite’s Oath when assuming office.

To see the future of things to come if we continue on this path of duplicity, we need only look at the rampant hypocrisy among us from the designation of ‘Top Fashion Accessory’ status to the buruga to the ‘Back to the Prophet’s Day’ men on Harley Davidsons with their orange beards grotesquely flowing in the wind.

If all this is doing your head in, sign up for an Incantation Class at the Islamic Foundation’s Halal Magic Courses. Book early, though. They are proving even more popular than the fishnet stockings and the Botox shots that are to accompany next season’s lamé burugas.

All comment pieces are the sole view of the author and do not reflect the editorial policy of Minivan News. If you would like to write an opinion piece, please send proposals to [email protected]

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Comment: Majlis fiddles with democracy as society burns

The country is broke and the price of living is going up every day while the standard of living is going down.

The price of a can of tuna is now 20 percent higher than it was a few months ago. A valhoa mas kiba, part of our staple food since time immemorial, is now beyond the common person’s reach. A bottle of water was Rf10 just a month ago; it is Rf14 this month.

Electricity bills, water bills, gas bills, are all hugely more expensive than any other country in the neighbourhood. A majority of people are living hand to mouth.

A vast chunk of the country’s youth population are either addicted to drugs or recovering from it. They are unemployable, and out on the streets, committing crimes big and small or looking in vain for another chance at life.

The standards of teaching in public schools are abysmal, and private schools remain an unaffordable dream for the majority. To say that public schools are free is to lie through one’s teeth; for people are paying through their noses for private tuition – a parallel education system that exists in a parallel universe. It is the elephant in every classroom that nobody in authority wants to talk about – the government cannot regulate it without first acknowledging the massive failings in the education system; and a majority of the teachers do not want to talk about it because it is the cash cow that supplements their meagre incomes.

Children from other islands are having to migrate to Male’, boarding with host families or packed into small rooms the rent of which they share; paid by parents who break their backs working on farms or on fishing boats, just so their children can get an education. The housing crisis and social problems related to overcrowding increase.

The health system is too weak to cope with any unexpected outbreaks of disease; Maldivian doctors are still the minority and are offered less pay and benefits than their expatriate counterparts; and infant and adult mortality rates are needlessly high. It was all too clear to see with the recent dengue fever outbreak.

Unemployment rates are sky-high while trafficked Bangladeshis are bought and sold by the planeload. They live in their scores of thousands working and living on building sites; existing in an alternate realm of worker drones, buzzing away in the background, building, serving, cooking, cleaning, maintaining; jobs that Maldivians consider themselves too good to be doing.

Their presence is acknowledged only when the buzzing gets annoying; when their levels of ‘civilisation’ are deemed not to match our allegedly impeccable manners and faultless social graces; and when foreign governments chastise the Maldives for its cruelty for putting a price on the heads of human beings and selling them to the highest bidder.

Longstanding traditions of peace, friendliness and cleanliness have disappeared; replaced with avarice and aspirations of grandeur achieved by any means possible. Basic civility, let alone friendliness, is conspicuous in its absence: the smile; the queue; the exchange of niceties; respect for the elderly; the weak and the vulnerable; the knowledge of belonging together – what are they? People push, shove and climb over each other to get to an undefined ‘there’ faster than anyone else – literally and metaphorically.

It is all there to see in the pantomime that the Majlis is enacting, fiddling with democracy as society burns. What is the purpose of these theatrics? Are we supposed to be impressed with his behaviour? Are we supposed to admire this display of ignorance as ‘people power’? Is this to be seen as standing up (or sitting down) for the rule of law? Are we supposed to applaud these MPs for their ‘valour’ in forcing a needless confrontation between legislative and military power?

Are we supposed to cheer in adulation or tremble in fear when one MP who was only recently bought by one party now shouts at the party he had just left?

Are we to ignore the fact that if such members did indeed have an ideology, or a set of deeply held political beliefs or values they would not be so easily bought and sold?

Are we supposed to laugh with them and chuckle at the smirks on their faces when they are being led away by the army? Are we supposed to let our children hear the filth that is sprouting from their mouths into our airwaves on daytime TV? Are we to appreciate as media savvy the manner in which, like a bunch of schoolboy bullies in a playground, they are taking photographs and videos of each other being bundled away by men in army fatigues?

Are we supposed to be appreciate as role models of feminism the female voices heard screeching like cockatoos at the spectacle of MPs being carried away like chimpanzees by zoo handlers? What exactly is being celebrated here? What state will our nation be in the coming years if these are our highest representatives, if this is the pinnacle of success that our children as future leaders can aspire to?

Whatever destruction that three decades of dictatorship could not unleash on our society with its ruinous policies, society is wreaking upon itself. We did not have a transition to democracy, we just changed one supreme power to which we subjugate ourselves for another: Mammon for Maumoon.

The Majlis should be where the people turn to for solutions to their problems. It is, however, both the representation of all our problems as well as their nucleus and their source.

What a sham.

All comment pieces are the sole view of the author and do not reflect the editorial policy of Minivan News. If you would like to write an opinion piece, please send proposals to [email protected]

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Comment: Death penalty for infanticide is infantile

Among the many paths in life that lead a woman to kill her newborn baby, it is never this: one day she wakes up with an overwhelming urge to kill.

In order to satisfy that urge, she goes out and seduces/forces a hapless, innocent man to have sexual intercourse with her and to impregnate her. Still with the ultimate end-goal of killing in mind, she covertly carries the baby inside her. After nine-months of ingenious methods of hiding her ballooning figure from all eyes, she gives birth in perilous conditions without any medical attention.

Finally, she experiences the pleasure of killing which she had anticipated and meticulously planned for nine long months. And with immense gratification, she reaches out and makes sure her baby’s first breath is also its last.

Infanticide is not a new phenomenon – cases of it have been recorded from the time human records began, and research has shown a myriad of socially-generated causes behind the offence. Rates escalate in patriarchal societies where women are regarded as second-class citizens, and where crimes against women are on the rise. A recent report published by TrustLaw Women, an online organisation that offers free legal assistance to women, shows that infanticide is a common marker among countries that offer the worst environments for women to live in.

What is driving our women to such desperation? We do not know for sure, because we have invested neither time nor effort to find out. Crime statistics, however, give more than just a hint.

The thin line between perpetrator and victim

Police statistics for 2010 show over 500 sexual offence cases and 299 arrests for the same. By April this year, 58 cases of sexual offences had already been reported to the police.

In the last few months, Minivan News has reported on a whole range of random violent sexual offences against women from gang rape to rape of a 74 year-old. Added to these are less random rapes and sexual assaults occurring closer to home that run the whole gamut from decades-long sexual abuse of daughters by fathers to the attempted to rape of a mother by her son.

In the latest case, reported last month, five men are alleged to have raped an 18-year-old girl in Laamu Atoll Maabaidhoo. Her mother found her after two hours of searching, slumped under a coconut palm, her clothes in tatters and unable to walk from all the injuries the men had inflicted on her.

In March this year, a gang of 15 men abducted, drugged and raped a 20-year-old woman on the island of Hithadhu in Seenu Atoll. They recorded their vile acts on a mobile phone, for post-rape pleasure. Yet, as a coalition of NGOs highlighted recently, ‘not a single case of ‘rape’ [was] in the statistics maintained by either the PG [Prosecutor General] or the Criminal Court’.

Why? Rape is not a crime under our current Penal Code.

We live in a society where years of ‘religious’ preaching and traditions that have refused to bow to the winds of progress have taught women to accept it as their due to be beaten up by husbands for perceived marital transgressions.

Seventy percent of our women believe this to be the case. One in every seven secondary school students are sexually abused, according to an unpublished 2009 report by UNICEF, a vast majority of them girls. A Gender Ministry report in 2007 found that over 12 percent of Maldivian women between the age of 15 and 49 are sexually abused as a child.

The situation is worse for girls in Male’ than elsewhere, where more than 16 percent of girls under the age of fifteen are sexually abused. This means that of every 100 girls you walk by on the streets of Male’ and its auxiliary islands, 16 have suffered sexually at the hands of a man. How many of these offences end up in unwanted and enforced pregnancies?

Some of the girls are in a position to travel abroad for abortions – and yes, whether we like it or not, it is happening; and it will continue to happen.

Refusing to see that this behaviour is not merely a sin, but also a social issue that affects every human society, does not make it into a religious problem alone with only the harshest of religious solutions. Those who cannot have their unwanted babies surgically removed, resort to dumping them somewhere, drowning them, or subject them to worse forms of mutilation and death. These girls/women need help.

Capital punishment is not a deterrent as evidence from various countries where it is in force has shown. The fate of previous perpetrators would be the last thing on the mind of a woman about to commit such an act. If she were capable of rational thought during those desperate moments, killing a baby would be the last thing she would do.

Immaculate conceptions?

The learned men at Adhaalath see only one reason for the rise of infanticides: the “rising popularity of fornication“, and have called for the death of mothers guilty of the crime. It is not sufficient that some of the women have been jailed for life while the men, who must surely have been involved, have walked scot-free.

Without the existence of a crime defined as ‘rape’, it is easy to categorise every such brutal violation of a woman as ‘fornication’ – the type that is only ever ‘popular’ among depraved, misogynistic men who seem to view preying on vulnerable women as a popular sport. By calling for the death of the women who become victims of such men while remaining wholly silent on the men themselves, the ‘scholars’ at Adhaalath are encouraging such behaviour among the men.

And, by taking such a stance on this pressing social concern, Adhaalath is making itself not just a misnomer, but is turning a blind eye to its own slogan proudly displayed on its masthead taken from Surath An-Nisã (The Women): ‘Allah commands you […] that when you judge between people, you judge with justice’ (4:58).

Criticism of Adhaalath’s views, and that of other religious bodies in the country, do not always arise from ‘mad secularists’, as is their constant accusation. Nor is criticism of these views meant to suggest that religion has no role to play in our society. It does; and there is much Adhaalath and other such institutions can do.

Why not preach against rape in their Friday sermons when they have the ears of most of the country’s male population within their reach?

Why not speak then of the respect with which Islam says women are to be treated?

Why not drive the point home that at least 50 percent of the blame [in cases where the conception arose from consensual activity] lies with the men?

Why not repeat the message until it penetrates through the thick haze of misogyny that seem to envelop many among them that women have not been put on this earth for their depraved ‘pleasures’, sexual or otherwise?

Adhaalath, and other religious bodies, could also use their proven ability for fundraising to raise money for proper research into the rising problem of infanticide.

Or to help boost the adoption programme under Islamic teachings that the Gender Department has been trying hard to get off the ground. Or perhaps to provide funding for a shelter for abused young women or a safe place for young girls turning to juvenile delinquency. None of them have proper care; none of them have a place to go. The buruga may cover, but it does not shelter; and being covered up is not the same as being protected.

There are many different ways to help, and many ways that Islam obliges its followers to help those in need; but they can only become clear when the dogma is put aside and room for reason made.

No doubt the next ‘religious’ edict calling for the death of yet another disturbed or disadvantaged group in society would be prefixed with the customary Bismillah. If only, instead of repeating it like some meaningless chant, a moment is taken to consider its meaning: ‘In the name of Allah, the most compassionate, the most merciful…’ Wither the compassion, Adhaalath?

All comment pieces are the sole view of the author and do not reflect the editorial policy of Minivan News. If you would like to write an opinion piece, please send proposals to [email protected]

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Comment: Osama’s ideology thrives despite his death

It is hard to overstate the impact Osama bin Laden has had on the world. Almost all major actions in international relations and warfare in the last decade were implemented either to further or to counter his ideology.

Al Qaeda’s attack on the United Stated on 11 September 2001 was driven by Osama’s belief that imperialist American foreign policies had created a world of injustice and equality for Muslims. He believed it was the duty of every Muslim to wage a holy war to correct those wrongs. His aim was to establish an Islamic Caliphate where Shari’a was the only system of law and Wahhabism or other purist forms of Islam the only forms of belief practised. In such a war, waged across the world to protect Islam and its believers, and to further its cause, Osama believed there were no innocents.

This thinking of Osama’s was what came to inform most Western definitions, policies and actions in the last decade about terrorism, Islam, and what it means to be a Muslim in the twenty first century.

Analysts have in recent years found Al Qaeda to have been virtually destroyed by the War on Terror, its network of secret cells across the world dismantled in ten years of aggressive counter-terrorism policies. It may also be the case that Osama’s death will reduce further the number of violent acts committed in the name of the Islam. It does not, however, mean that the large numbers of his followers across the world have stopped subscribing to his ideology or that they will stop doing so. Osama’s ultimate goal, the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate comprising of Islamic states that practise Shari’a and practise the form of Islam that he followed, remains alive and well. The Maldives is a case in point.

Osama in the Maldives

The Maldivian society has changed beyond all recognition in the last ten years. Some of the changes, like democracy, would have happened in due course – with or without the War on Terror. But it is difficult to accept that the other most fundamental change – manifest in the faith of the people – would not have been possible without the War on Terror and its validation of Osama as the most powerful representation of Islam.

Followers of Wahhabism, and other types of Islam, had existed in the Maldives years before the War on Terror. They had, however, been severely – sometimes violently – oppressed by former President Gayoom. They stayed on the fringes of society, widely seen as ‘odd’, often mocked. In the early 1990s when four women opted to wear the full buruqa, it was rare enough an occurrence to be newsworthy. Ten years later, it is the woman without some sort of a buruga that has become the oddity. The War on Terror, and its focus on Osama’s ideologies as representing Islam, made it possible for such groups to come out of the shadows. Whether the state recognised their beliefs as legitimate or not mattered no longer; their identities were not limited to the national anymore – there was the Ummah.

Emboldened by the mainstream position in Islam bestowed upon Wahhabism in the War on Terror, Maldivians who followed Osama’s ideologies and other strands of thought in Islam such as Salafism and Neo-Salafism began to come out in the open and loudly espouse their views. There were more tangible benefits such as increased funding and other forms of support from Islamic religious networks abroad – even as the War on Terror attacked the financial networks of Al-Qaeda more and more funds became available for Maldivian ‘fringe’ religious groups to increase their presence in society.

Educating minds

One of the most significant forms of such assistance came as educational scholarships. During the last ten years a large number of Maldivians were sent to various places of Islamic learning abroad from Madhrasaas in Pakistan to old bastions of Islamic knowledge such as the Azhar University in Egypt. A large number of them returned in the first half of the War on Terror to found religious organisations and parties. During the chaotic period of Maldivian transition to democracy in 2008, when the ruling government entered into politically opportune alliances with parties formed by such returning graduates, they gained a foothold within the structures of government that had previously been denied them.

This is not to say that every Maldivian who studied in an Islamic institute of learning is a follower of Osama’s ideologies – that would be as incorrect a generalisation as the assumption that every western educated Maldivian is a secularist, a liberal or even a democrat for that matter. What it does mean, however, is that it has put into positions of power a large number of graduates who believe in the superiority of Shari’a above all other systems of law, and are sympathetic to – if not actively engaged in – efforts to establish an Islamic state in the Maldives.

Despite outright denials by Islamic Minister Abdul Bari, evidence suggests that fringe religious movements in the Maldives did receive support from groups abroad – even if they were more organisational than financial. Many of the methods and means by which such movements flourished in the Maldives follow the same rulebook used by Al-Qaeda recruiters across the globe: targeting the most vulnerable, disaffected, and most curious in society. They gathered at mosques, recruiting young people seeking answers to questions of life, existence, and God; opened bookshops filled to the brim with their teachings in strategic locations near large schools; and actively sought out vulnerable young people feeling the most alienated and disaffected.

Winning hearts

In the Maldives, some of the richest such pickings were available in prisons where the shambles that is the criminal justice system locks up young drug addicts, homosexuals and apostates along with murderers and rapists. Maldivian religious movements that began and flourished during this period engaged in a policy that was often more organised and more humane than what the state had to offer such prisoners. Unlike government authorities, religious groups did not abandon their recruits once they left prison.

Reliable reports from ‘defectors’ reveal that recovering addicts recruited into the movement and given jobs within the business interests of the various religious groups were allowed to keep their jobs even if they relapsed and were caught with their hand in the till. In contrast to state policies, which force drug addicts to languish in prison without help, and are released into society without any efforts of re-integration or rehabilitation, the religious movements offered a lifeline that the alienated grabbed with both hands.

One of the most unique ‘opportunities’ available only to Maldivian recruiters is the geographic composition of the Maldives. Recruitment into the cause, research has shown, is less successful when the targeted segment of the population is exposed to other forms of thinking, and when individuals within the targeted community have an existing sense of identity, belonging and nationhood. Lack of education, religious or otherwise, and isolation from much of the rest of world and its many strains of thought and ideologies made it easy for recruiters to persuade whole populations that theirs was the only and the ‘right’ belief system.

From the fringes to the centre of society

The success of Osama’s ideologies in the Maldives and its impact cannot, however, be measured by the number of Maldivians who committed acts of violence in the name of a Holy War. With a population of 300,000, Maldivians are statistically incapable of making a significant contribution to the furthering of Osama’s violent ideals. The success of his ideologies are much clearer when we count the number of Maldivians who have become convinced that minority forms of Islam, like the Wahhabism followed by Osama, are the ‘right’ forms of Islam.

It is also  evident from the number of Maldivian Muslims who follow the same thoughts that now occupy positions of power within the newly democratic government. The Adhaalath Party, which distances itself publicly from the violence advocated by Osama, nonetheless, is pursuing many of the same goals – the establishment of a purist Islamic state in the Maldives that believes in gender inequality, practises Sharia, and contributes to Osama’s world vision of an Islamic Caliphate.

On Friday it galvanised thousands of Maldivians to march for the adoption of Shari’a as its only system of law, propagating death for death as the solution to the country’s burgeoning problem of gang violence. It has also advocated the view that any member of parliament that votes against a decision to implement Shari’a and the death penalty would be deemed apostates. Various prominent members of Adhaalath, and other Islamic parties and groups in the Maldives following the agenda, have displayed the same Anti-Semitism that drove Osama, equating Israel and Zionism with Judaism and placing the blame for the Palestinian situation solely and squarely on the shoulders of every follower of the religion.

‘Winning the hearts and minds of Muslims’ was a strategy employed by both sides of the War on Terror. Globally, despite the death of Osama, there is no clear winner. In the Maldives, the struggle appears more or less over: followers of Osama’s goal of an Islamic Caliphate are winning hands down; and are leading Maldivians, like Pied Piper, towards an Islamic state that would have made Osama proud.

<em>All comment pieces are the sole view of the author and do not reflect the editorial policy of Minivan News. If you would like to write an opinion piece, please send proposals to [email protected]</em>

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