Category: Society & Culture

Maldives a 99.41 percent Muslim country, claims RISSC report

The Royal Islamic Strategic Research Centre (RISSC)’s report into the global state of Islam has described the Maldives as a 99.41 percent Muslim country.

RISSC is an independent research entity affiliated with the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, an international Islamic non-governmental institute headquartered in the capital of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

The calculation is a collation of research by Dr Houssain Kettani – who identifies the Maldives as a 100 per-cent Muslim nation – and the Pew Research Center, a Washington-based nonpartisan research body claiming to “promote a deeper understanding of issues at the intersection of religion and public affairs.”

The PEW Research Centre’s Forum on Religion estimates that of the Maldives population of 395,921, 389,586 are Muslims, equating to 98.4 percent or a non-Muslim population of 6335.  The RISSC report averages the two figures and arrives at 99.41 percent, or a non Muslim population of 2335.

State Islamic Minister Mohamed Shaheem Ali Saeed, described in the RISSC report as one of the world’s top 500 influential Muslims ‘administrative’ category, said according to the constitution of the Maldives the country was a 100 percent Muslim nation.

”The world should know the appropriate information about Maldives before publishing documents about Maldives. Everything in the Maldives is conducted in accordance with the constitution,” Shaheem said.

According to the Maldivian constitution all citizens are required to be Muslim, and the country is always described as a “100 percent” Muslim country.

In late May, famous religious scholar Dr Zakir Naik visited the Maldives and delivered a sermon in the capital Male’. During a question-and-answer session 37 year-old Mohamed Nazim stood up and declared himself “Maldivian and not a Muslim”, to which Dr Naik replied: “So 100 per-cent minus one.”

Nazim’s declaration angered the 11,000 strong crowd, and he was escorted from the venue by police and officials from the Ministry of Islamic Affairs amid calls for his execution.

After two days of religious counselling in police custody, Nazim appeared before television cameras at an Islamic Ministry press conference and gave Shahada – the Muslim testimony of belief – and apologised for causing “agony for the Maldivian people” and requested that the community accept him back into society.

Police submitted his case to the Prosecutor General’s office earlier this week, which is currently deciding whether to take the former apostate to the Criminal Court.

In July, 25 year-old air traffic controller Ismail Mohamed Didi was found hanged from the control tower of Male’ International Airport in an apparent suicide, after seeking asylum in the UK for fear of persecution over his stated lack of religious belief.

“Maldivians are proud of their religious homogeneity and I am learning the hard way that there is no place for non-Muslim Maldivians in this society,” Didi wrote in a letter to an international humanitarian organisation, dated June 23.

Maldives in RISSC’s top 500

Alongside Sheikh Shaheem, President Mohamed Nasheed features in RISSC’s list of most influential Muslims “for being one of the most environmentally conscious state leaders in the world.”

“In the earliest stages of his political career, Nasheed was imprisoned for his criticism of his country’s government and became an Amnesty Prisoner of Conscience,’’ said RISSC. ‘’Today, Nasheed has [pledged] to make the Maldives carbon-neutral within a decade by moving the country’s energy reliance to wind and solar power only.’’

Dr Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips, who visited the Maldives in May to deliver a sermon at the invitation of local NGO Jamiyyathul Salaf, was listed under ‘Media’.

RISSC described Philips as “a notable convert and Islamic scholar, Philips is founder of the virtual educational institution Islamic Online University and Discover Islam, an Islamic center based in Dubai.”

The report added that “In May 2010, Philips was the subject of a letter-writing campaign in the Maldives which condemned his preaching as a promotion of religious extremism. He was subsequently banned from entering the United Kingdom.”

Dr Naik was also listed in the top 500 under ‘Preachers’. RISSC describes him as “an Indian public intellectual teaching about Islam. He hosts huge public events where he speaks on Islam, highlighting misconceptions and promoting understanding about the faith.”

RISSC also noted that in June 2010, “Dr Naik was banned from entering the United Kingdom due to ‘unacceptable behaviour’. His public statements on terrorism and Osama bin Laden have contributed to his reputation as a controversial televangelist.”

His Majesty King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, King of Saudi Arabia and Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, tops the list of most influential Muslims.

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Comment: Real democracy is when barriers to women’s participation come down

If democracy is to function, barriers to women’s participation have to come down. If the citizens of Maldives are to improve their lives, women voices need to be heard at the political level and the obstructions removed.

Any politician or citizen of good will in the country who wants democracy will need to be honest and understand this aspect, and promote it willingly and without any reservations.

When women who have worked their way up the career ladder are able to be in the front line of the country’s development, can take ownership and are acknowledged for their achievement by political leaders and considered an asset, then it is an indication of a democratic government.

The barrier to this opportunity has not come down in the Maldives. Presently women in the front line are players selected to those positions by the government’s political agenda.

On the broader horizon, the change starts with women. Women need to see that they can do something about improving the quality of their lives, and those of their families and communities, by reaching for political leadership or becoming involved in political and civil activities. Women need to have the will to share and enjoy the privileges and the benefits of a democratic constitution.

How do women think?

The outcome of a woman’s thought is influenced by the role she plays in life. Women’s leadership may not bring all the solutions but then neither does men’s leadership. What makes the difference is the process of decision making and the outcomes when women voice their issues and express what they see as significant to a better environment for living. That is an important difference and must be taken seriously for good governance.

The difference can also be seen as the gender difference. The difference in thinking may be defined in this manner because the woman may have been a mother, or have cared for elderly people, or have experienced marginalisation or exposure to various forms of abuse, etc.

How could a viable political environment be formed without the views, advocacy and judgments that include women’s perspective? Women’s perspective in the Maldives especially is important as it presents grass root advocacy.

Beyond traditional spheres

Being politically active means to reach out to leadership positions and taking a stand for the values of democracy. It means moving into positions that are critical to attain social justice, raising public awareness and accessing visible positions of authority. It means venturing beyond traditional sphere of home and family. It means promoting fairness and no allowance for partiality.

Political engagement does not necessarily mean having a political career, campaigning, and getting into the parliament or the government’s leading positions. You can work up to leadership on the job so that you can implement fair and equal working conditions in your own work environment, you can be socially responsible, you can support people’s development and high-quality resources management.

If you choose to move onto the benches or go into law, you go beyond simply taking voting as your only civic engagement and civic participation, but pursue civil rights for the people and are in a position to advocate for and against implementation of legislative initiatives.

Your political activity may take the form of collective action, by forming associations to reach out to larger groups and transform your society. You would create a common vision, define common goals, invite people with similar aspirations and reinforce each other thus linking individual empowerment to group empowerment.

Moving beyond traditional spheres means change. Today people identify change with empowerment.

Empowerment can be defined as claiming the right by an individual to choose freely and control their own lives. Broadly defined it is the woman’s right to her own body and sexuality including protection against any form of violence, the right to her own income and equal opportunity to earning, power over her resources and fair inheritance, her rights to justice and position in a legal system (including impartiality in the Constitution).

The organisation and political aspects are self-help groups and collective action to bring change. Fundamental to change is the access to information and know-how.

Although this article focuses strongly on women, the content is applicable to men and can help them to become aware of their own disadvantageous position. Without this awareness, neither men nor women can seek empowerment. Empowerment means more than an adequate comfortable adjustment. On a personal level and the community level, it is redistribution of power that does justice to the opportunities and members of the society, does not compromise freedom and does not take happen at the expense of others.

Aminath Arif is the founder of SALAAM School.

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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Five children and one man arrested for eating during fasting hours

Police have arrested three persons for allegedly eating during fasting hours of Ramadan, and another three people accompanying them.

Police Sergeant Abdul Muhsin said the three arrested for eating in fasting hours were under-aged males, who were released after giving a statement “and receiving advice.”

According to a person familiar with the matter, the three other persons arrested and taken to the police station included an under-age male and female, and a man over the age of 18.

The source claimed said the second three were not discovered eating, but were arrested by police as they were accompanying people who were eating in the public.

“The group were arrested while they were allegedly eating behind a construction site on the land behind Dharubaaruge,’’ said the source. ‘’They were arrested that afternoon and five of them were released later that afternoon.’’

He added that one of the under-aged males was caught with a packet suspected to contain illegal narcotics, and was now in Dhoonidhoo custodial.

A further four men were arrested last week for eating, including two who were caught near the Alimas Carnival stage and a second pair who reportedly confessed to eating in the toilets of Giyasuddeen school.  They have since been released.

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DQP submits bill on industrial action: two days notice required for strikes

The Dhivehi Qaumee Party (DQP) has submitted a bill to parliament regulating industrial action conducted by employees in the Maldives.

If passed, the bill requires employees to give 48 hours notice to employers before protesting, and restricts the timing of strikes to between 8:00am and 4:00pm.

“The employees can only boycott their work for a specified duration. For instance, for 24 or 48 hours,” DQP Deputy Leader and MP Riyaz Rasheed explained to newspaper Miadhu.

The bill comes a week after strike action at Kurumba Maldives led to the evacuation of guests and the arrest of 19 staff by police for intimidation and vandalism.

A statement by the resort’s parent company, Universal Enterprises, deplored the action and alleged strike organisers “sent employees armed with makeshift weapons to blockade the main kitchen and physically threaten staff serving meals to guests”.

The Kurumba strike was the most recent of several resort strikes this year. In April staff at the Shangri-La Villingili Resort went on strike after four workers were dismissed for allegedly playing on a PlayStation in a vacant villa, while in February staff at the Centara Grand Island Resort in North Ari Atoll held a strike complaining they were not receiving the service charges agreed to them by management.

Shangri-La Villingili eventually dismissed the 10 strike leaders and invited the remaining staff to return to work, while  Centara Grand increased the service charge allocated to staff after a representative from Ministry of Human Resources visited the island.

As most resorts operate on privately-owned islands, the nature of the sector makes the legality of industrial action contentious – while the Constitution provides the right to strike, workers cannot simply picket outside the factory gates and invariably protest on resort property, running into further conflict with management conscious of image in a highly service-oriented industry.

“MATI believes employees should not strike on resort [property] – this is the shop floor,” said Mohamed Ibrahim ‘Sim’ from the Maldives Association of Tourism Industry (MATI). “It has to be somewhere else. People do not understand that resort islands are standalone communities that must produce their own water and other amenities. A hotel in the city of Male’ does not face such disruption to essential services.”

Sim questioned the practicality of restricting  the hours of strike action, but acknowledged the bill’s objective of requiring notice for any stop-work action “and only after following established grievance procedures.”

Maldives Resort Workers (MRW), an active community of resort workers campaigning for fair treatment in the tourism industry, condemned the DQP bill as “effectively relegating protesting and demonstrations against working conditions in resorts to the era [of the former government].”

The introduction of a notice period would give employers “ample time to serve warning letters, suspensions, dismissals or anything to prevent a strike,” MRW claimed.

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Bollywood film island “just a concept”: Thoyyib

Reports that Bollywood has been invited to establish a film studio in the Maldives were erroneous, according to Minister of State for Tourism Arts and Culture Thoyyib Waheed, “as the idea is just a concept.”

Newspaper Miadhu reported Thoyyib as claiming during a press conference that the Maldives had “already proposed that one of the islands could be turned into a studio to shoot movies”, and that Bollywood industry could be solicited in the Maldives – “hopefully, it will materialise by next year.”

The prolific Mumbai-based Hindi-film studios eclipse Hollywood in terms of box-office receipts, churning out productions with budgets of up to US$20 million. The films are a strong cultural influence in the Maldives and visiting film stars like Salman Khan are given state receptions.

Speaking to Minivan News today, Thoyyib said he was referring to a call for expressions of interest (EOI) by Invest Maldives and the 100 percent government-owned Maldives Entertainment Company (MEC) in February, to develop the country’s entertainment infrastructure.

“It was a development concept – 6-7 parties put forward proposals but none were successful,” Thoyyib said.

According to the EOI statement, proposals sought by the government included entertainment complexes, “a theme park/amusement island”, multiplex cinema complexes, musical facilities and “a film-friendly island, dedicated to film shoots providing resources, state of the art equipment, resort style accommodation and other amenities for production teams, cast and crews producing feature films, documentaries, telemovies, mini-series, TV series, commercials, and music videos.”

The EOI statement predicted that “this new concept in full spectrum shoots will have strong appeal to Hollywood, Bollywood and beyond.”

Thoyyib commented that if a collaboration with Bollywood was achieved, the currently fledgling Indian sector of the Maldives tourism market “will definitely increase.”

Despite the proximity of the Maldives, Bollywood producers were shooting in Mauritius and the Seychelles “because we just don’t have the infrastructure in Maldives. We would need to provide an island with both low budget accommodation for the crew and upmarket accommodation blocks or villas [for the stars].”

No island had yet been earmarked for such an endeavor, he said.

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Case of former apostate Nazim sent to Prosecutor General

Police have completed investigating the case of Mohamed Nazim and have submitted the matter to the Prosecutor General’s office.

Nazim publicly claimed he was “Maldivian and not a Muslim” during a question-and-answer session with Islamic speaker Zakir NaikNaik in March, angering many in the 11,000-strong crowd and forcing police and Islamic Ministry officials to escort him from the venue for his own protection.

After two days of religious counselling while in police custody, Nazim appeared before television cameras at an Islamic Ministry press conference and gave Shahada – the Muslim testimony of belief – and apologised for causing “agony for the Maldivian people” and requested that the community accept him back into society.

Deputy Prosecutor General Hussein Shameen confirmed the PG’s office had received the case from police, but had not yet taken the decision to submit it to the Criminal Court.

According to the Maldivian constitution all citizens are required to be Muslim, and the country is always described as a ‘100 percent’ Muslim country.

Minister for Islamic Affairs Dr Abdul Majeed Abdul Bari told Minivan News at the time that he was unsure if Maldivian law had a penalty for apostasy. Where the country’s laws do not cover such a case, Maldivian courts default to sharia law.

Apostasy is considered a grave sin under Islam, although scholarly opinion varies as to its punishment: in response to Nazim’s question, Dr Naik clarified that the penalty was only death “if the person becomes a non-Muslim and propagates his faith and speaks against Islam. Just because a person who is a Muslim becomes a non-Muslim, death penalty is not the ruling.”

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Boy denies charges of terrorism, robbery, assault, kidnapping and possession of pornography

A male aged under 18 has denied charges in the Juvenile Court of robbery, assault and battery, kidnapping, administering illegal drugs, and possessing a pornographic picture in his mobile phone.

Evidence presented to the Juvenile Court by the Prosecutor General’s office included a medical report of the alleged torture and seven witnesses who claimed to have seen the victim with the defendant and a group of people from different areas of Male’.

The defendant, who represented himself, denied the charges against him and requested the prosecution lawyer present evidence proving he had committed the crimes.

The prosecution lawyer presented a medical report of the victim to the court, however the defendant denied the charges saying that the medical report did not state who had carried out the torture.

The Chief Judge of the Juvenile Court Shuaib Hussain Zakariyya fined the boy Rf 666 (US$51.82) for possessing a pornographic picture in his mobile phone, and concluded the hearing saying he would declare a verdict for the case during the next hearing.

The Criminal Court this week also sentenced two other males to 10 years jail in connection with the same case.

Police arrested the underage male along with a group of men in October last year. Police alleged the group kept their victim hostage, robbed his wallet, used his cash card, and tortured him. He reportedly suffered bruises and cigarette burns to his skin.

During a police press conference regarding the case last October, police claimed the kidnappers kept the victim hostage before releasing him for Rf 25,000 (US$1950).

Police alleged the group called the victim’s father and demanded he pay the money for his son’s release.

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CCHD reports increase in cases of leprosy

An unusual spike in the number of leprosy cases in the Maldives this year has led the Centre for Centre for Community Health and Disease (CCHD) to issue a reminder that treatment and diagnosis for such communicable diseases is freely available.

Dr Jamsheed Mohamed from the CCHD told Minivan News that five cases of leprosy had been reported to the government in the first eight months of the year, when the average incidence was 3-4 cases annually.

“Almost all these people received diagnosis [of leprosy] abroad in a neighbouring country and were given short-term treatment,” he said. “Leprosy requires long-term treatment and in some cases this was not explained to the patients – medicine was only obtained for a short period and is not available in pharmacies [locally]. But we do maintain a supply and freely distribute it.”

“Historically diseases such as leprosy and malaria were a problem in the Maldives until the government started control programmes in the 60s,” Dr Jamsheed said.

Very few of the cases involved open skin lesions and were contagious “and there is nothing to be alarmed about,” he added, explaining that the CCHD was more concerned that people were unaware that the facilities and treatment were available locally, “including some healthcare workers.”

“Leprosy has a very long incubation period and the bacteria stays in our bodies for a long time before symptoms appear,” he said, adding that the rising number of cases was in line with a general resurgence of communicable diseases such as conjunctivitis, chicken pox and hand, foot and mouth disease.

“Until we can address population congestion and poor living conditions in crowded islands such as Male’, these diseases will remain with us and there is very little we can do to combat them effectively.”

Leprosy is a chronic disease caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae and Mycobacterium lepromatosis. If it is untreated it can permanently damage the the skin, nerves, limbs and eyes, although contrary to its reputation the disease does not cause body parts to fall off.

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Father and son injured in street fight

One of three men who allegedly attacked a man and his father last night before fleeing surrendered himself to police this morning.

Police Sergeant Abdul Muhsin said the incident occurred at 11:50 pm last night.

“Three men attacked a father and son [in Male’]; they were both taken to hospital and treated. The father was 47 years-old and the son was 20,” Muhsin said.

He confirmed that one person in connection with the case had since been arrested.

A person familiar with the incident alleged the victim and another man first attacked the group of three men while they were walking past the house of the victim.

“The group of three men fought back,’’ said the source. ‘’One of the three men grabbed a metal tube and tried to escape from the fight.’’

He claimed the victim after ran towards his own house but was followed by one of the three men.

“The victim’s father came in between the two men to stop them [from fighting],’’ he said. “While his father was trying to stop the fight, another of the three men attacked the victim’s father caused him a two- inch cut in the arm.’’

He said claimed the victim suffered a head injury as well as bruises and cuts.

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