Tag: islam

Fundamentalism more urgent threat to Maldives than climate change: The Diplomat

If global warming poses an existential threat to the Maldives, Islamic fundamentalism arguably presents an even greater political and economic challenge to the island nation in the short term to medium term, writes Sanjay Kumar for The Diplomat.

This danger was evident recently when the government ordered the shutdown of all spas and health centers at all resorts on the island. The decision came in the wake of a protest by an opposition conservative Islamic party, Adhaalath party or Justice Party, calling for a complete ban on such spas, which they believe are operating as brothels. Protesters were also demanding a ban on the sale of alcohol, demolition of monuments that the Islamists see as idols and a halt to direct flights to Israel.

In an apparent about-face, the government last week rescinded the ban, not least because of the damage that an extended ban would have done to the economy, which relies heavily on tourism. According to one estimate, approximately 900,000 tourists visited the islands last year.

Most of the 1,200 islands that make up the Maldives, which has a total population of more than four million, practice Sunni Islam. But the character of this island nation has still traditionally been liberal and tolerant – women there don’t typically wear the burqa, and they are active in the socio-economic arena. Indeed, President Mohamed Nasheed recently advocated for a “tolerant” form of Islam in his country.

But this hasn’t stopped a very determined minority working to radicalise society. Some blame former President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom for turning the country toward radical Islam by declaring Islam to be the state religion in 1997, thereby restricting the freedom of non-Islamic beliefs.

In 2002, a Maldivian named Ibrahim Fauzee was arrested in Karachi for having links with al-Qaeda and was whisked away to Guantanamo Bay by the United States. In 2003, an Edhyafushi Island poster praising Osama bin Laden appeared on the walls of a school. In 2005, Islamic fundamentalists attacked a shop in the capital Male for showcasing a picture of Santa Claus. In September 2007, foreign tourists were injured in an explosion in the capital’s Sultan’s Park.

When I last visited the Maldives I got the sense there was underlying apprehension about the expansion of Islamist extremist forces in the country. I interviewed President Nasheed recently to ask him about these concerns, and he told me that although he understood people’s fears, that there was no need to worry. He felt the radicals were a tiny minority that would be rejected by the people.

But some of the officials I spoke to were less sanguine. They explained that ideological support for the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan is increasing, and they expressed concern over the rising number of Maldivian students going to Pakistan and the Arab World to seek religious education.

It’s clear that rising sea levels aren’t the only threat to the Maldives’ way of life. And while no nation in the 21st century should have to fear any religion, extremism has a tendency of eating up and spitting out even the best intentions of some countries.

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Islam was never in danger in the Maldives: Eurasia Review

Islam was never in danger in Maldives, but what should alarm the people was the way the opposition political parties used this occasion not only to politicise the whole issue but also to whip up frenzy to accuse the Government of trying to wipe out the “Islamic faith of the people” by subterfuge, writes S Chandrasekharan for the Eurasia Review.

But what we saw in Maldives on the 23rd was that the Government need not look beyond Maldivian shores for “extremist preaching” and that they have sufficient otherwise sensible people to whip up religious frenzy to further their own political objectives. As I had said before time and again that the politicians are trying to use religion as a political tool and that it would have disastrous consequences. My paper 4459 of 1st May 2011 and the earlier one 3894 dated 27 June 2010 may be referred to.

There were media reports to indicate that the rally was financed by Pakistan and it could as well be by Saudis too as many of the NGOs do get their money from abroad.

It is regrettable that one person who should have stopped this unfortunate development, instead took a leading role in getting the rally organised and getting his statement read out in the rally as the “star event.”

This was the former president Gayoom – he said in the statement that was read out -”Maldivians are not forced to be Muslims but they chose to believe in Islam and allowing a religion other than Islam in Maldives will create division among the society. Maldivians should have the right to defend the religion of Islam. I call upon the government to stop its efforts to weaken the Islamic faith.” No one least of all the government was trying to introduce any other religion!

Is it not an irony that a person who claims to have brought in democracy in Maldives should go to such low levels to whip up frenzy only in the hope of getting elected once again as President in 2013?

In this he was joined by Dr Hassan Saeed, the former Attorney General who had felt the taste of extremism in Maldives when his book on Apostasy was banned in Maldives.

Look at the irony of the presence of Gasim Ibrahim the multimillionaire and head of Jumhorree party, who is making profits by sale of alcohol and resort “spas” that are alleged in the media to have shady activities? Even the Minister for Islamic Affairs Mohammed Abdul Majeed Bari is said to have stakes in the resort business!

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Maldives at a crossroads: The National

The dramatic decision by the Maldives government to close down health spas in tourist hotels – following recent noisy protests that claimed they were “unIslamic” – provoked fairly predictable headlines in some of the Western media, writes Mark Seddon for The National.

Best was the tongue-in-cheek concern in the London Evening Standard that Tamara Ecclestone, a multi-millionaire British heiress, might have to alter her travel plans, having trilled on at length in glossy magazines about her planned holiday massages in Maldivian tourist resorts.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, there was rather more to the story than the flurry of excitable newspaper headlines might have suggested. For no sooner had the order to close the spas been made than it was then rescinded by the government. The ultimate decision was then passed on to the Supreme Court for final adjudication.

The Maldivian tourism industry heaved a collective sigh of relief, and the Maldives President, Mohammed Nasheed, closed his office door for the evening, quietly confident that he might just have won an almighty PR victory over some of his conservative opponents. Next year, 2013, is election year and barring economic calamity over the next few months, opponents of the president appeared to have played most of their big cards.

A scattered archipelago of more than 1,000 islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean, 200 of which are inhabited and home to 313,920 people, the Maldives now stands at a crossroads. Should the island state, which gained its independence from Britain in 1965, retain its 800-year allegiance to a fairly liberal blend of Sufi and Sunni Islam, or should it resist the encroachment of what some in the country see as Western decadence, and adopt a stricter interpretation of the Islamic faith?

“This,” says a supporter of President Nasheed, “is now a struggle between different visions of the Maldives. Bluntly, do we want a moderate Islamic state or a Taliban state?” On Wednesday, it had been expected that the Supreme Court might be forced to make some kind of official and ground breaking declaration as to exactly what tenets of Islam were appropriate to the Maldives. But at the eleventh hour, the court edged back from its own massive leap of faith. This decision, has for the time being at least, been put on hold.

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Comment: “No animal shall sleep in beds…with sheets”

One can’t help but recollect the lines from George Orwell’s brilliant 1946 satire, Animal Farm, after listening to the agitators on stage during the ‘big protest’ held in Male’ on 23rd December 2011 in order to “protect Islam”.

In the classic novel, the farm animals rise in revolt against their drunken owner and take over the running of the farm. They write down their Seven Commandments on the wall of the barn but, over time, as a totalitarian dictatorship takes root at the farm, they find mysterious qualifiers added to those commandments.

Curiously enough, one of the central demands made by the ‘protect-Islam’ brigade was to “Ban the sale of alcohol… on inhabited islands”.

The ‘…on inhabited islands’ qualifier has a lot of significance, for it reveals the unresolved contradictions that are central to the controversy currently raging in the shallow, but always turbulent waters of Maldivian politics.

No animal shall drink alcohol… in inhabited islands.

The term ‘inhabited’ is officially used in the Maldives to refer to commonly populated islands. The country’s famed beach resorts fall under the ‘uninhabited’ category, despite housing thousands of Maldivian staff for the larger part of the year, and a lot of the usual restrictions do not apply there.

While there is a general consensus among  Islamic jurists that both consumption and trade of alcohol is forbidden in Islam, the economic realities of heavy dependence on tourism has meant that certain un-Islamic vices like consumption of alcohol is permitted in the Maldivian resorts.

The issue of alcohol sales remains a controversial topic among Maldivians, and is wantonly exploited by every tin-pot politician seeking an audience.

Alcohol was one of the major “issues” highlighted at the recent protest on December 23 organized by seven opposition parties and a network of NGOs  who joined hands  against what they alleged were ‘anti-Islamic policies of the government’.

The turnout of over 5000 religious protesters was considerably less than the ambitious 100,000 originally anticipated by the organizers. The flags they carried were surprisingly not the bastardized offspring of the Maldivian and Saudi Arabian flags, as displayed on the protest’s official website.

Meanwhile, the ruling MDP had also called for another protest the same day, at a venue just a couple of hundred meters away, calling for ‘moderate Islam’.

Speaking at the MDP protest, President Nasheed claimed that the government was being accused of being ‘anti-Islamic’ simply for sticking up for traditional Dhivehi values, and rejecting the recently imported dogmatic versions of Islam that had room for concubines, marrying nine-year olds,  female genital mutilation and harsh punishments such as amputations and stoning humans to death.

The ill-advised protest concluded early, but gave enough ammunition for the opposition protesters to last through till midnight.

The opposition-allied mullahs tore into President Nasheed’s remarks against concubines and marrying children, claiming it amounted to a mockery of the Prophet. They steadfastly defended amputations and other punishments as being a central part of the Sharia penal code and – by extension – of Islam.

They demanded that the government to apologize for the UN Human Rights High Commissioner’s comments to Parliament condemning medieval punishments like flogging.

Swinging between Halal and Haram

One protestor on stage, criticizing the President, declared that one could not accept one part of the Qur’an, and reject the other.

“…unless it is the parts advocating religious tolerance”, one might presumably add, because the protesters demanded the removal of allegedly idolatrous monuments placed by neighbouring countries during the recently concluded SAARC summit in Addu City, amid repeated accusations that the government was trying to introduce ‘religious freedom’.

Leading the protesters in this righteous cause was DQP leader and former Attorney General Dr Hassan Saeed, who co-authored a book called ‘Freedom of Religion, Apostasy and Islam’, the opening paragraph of which curiously claims there is “a vast amount of Qur’anic texts in the favour of freedom of religion”.

The protesters further demanded that the Israeli airline El Al should be forbidden from landing in the Maldives with their Zionist crew.

The Cabinet Minister of Islamic Affairs, Dr Abdul Majeed Abdul Baree also threw his weight behind the idea, saying he was of the ‘personal opinion’ that Israel was ‘not a legitimate state’.  He nevertheless requested that his personal opinion be translated into a parliamentary resolution.

Also on stage was the cleric Dr Afrasheem Ali, who once had stones thrown at him at a mosque for his “liberal” remarks such as claiming that singing was permitted in Islam. Sharing the stage with him were pious clerics who all agree that music is ‘haraam’.

What was not haraam, however, was the official song of the protest, apparently sung by former pop-star and current Salafi posterchild Ali Rameez, extolling the sacrifices of the battles of Badr and Uhud, and calling upon good Muslims to take up Jihad to ‘protect Islam’.

… Some massage parlours are more equal

Another major demand made by the opposition speakers during the 8 hour long protest was that ‘spas and massage parlours’ should be banned, as they were clearly fronts for the flesh trade. One protest leader provided a surprisingly specific number of brothels in the capital, contrasting them with the number of mosques in Male’.

Leading the agitators on stage, without the slightest trace of irony, was MP Qasim Ibrahim, the business tycoon whose fortune was made on a business of selling liquor to tourists, and whose resorts proudly boast of luxury spas and exotic massage parlours.

He could have perhaps invoked the amended commandment from George Orwell’s book, and declared that ‘No animal shall drink alcohol…  to excess”.

Instead, he responded to the President’s call for moderate Islam by publicly retorting, “We don’t know there is a moderate, higher or lower Islam. We only know Islam, which is above all the religion. The only road we must follow is based on Allah’s callings”.

Scorched Earth politics

Despite the initial reactions from the MDP vowing to not give in to “the extremists”, the government somehow decided to one-up the opposition instead by ceding to their demands, and engaging in the dangerous game of political brinkmanship.

Following the protests, the government has issued a circular ordering the closure of hundreds of spas and massage parlours in the country, including the ones in resorts.

In doing so, the government has acted in a callous manner, with the maturity and foresight of a jilted adolescent.

The President’s Office has also said it is considering a nationwide ban on alcohol and pork – including in “uninhabited” islands. The unstated intention appears to be to call the Opposition’s bluff or, even worse, teach a lesson to political opponents such as Jumhooree party leader Qasim Ibrahim, DRP leader Thasmeen and PA leader Yameen Abdul Qayoom, who all have massive business interests in the tourism sector.

It is quite clear that the opposition leaders weren’t counting on the government to actually do anything about their demands; both Qasim and his political allies have condemned the government’s acceptance of their own unreasonable demands.

Confirming that the lunatics have indeed taken over the asylum, the principal opposition PPM has made a grand stand itself, saying it would “support” this move if ‘the government dares’ to actually go ahead and do it.

It appears both sides have decided to engage in a high-stakes game of Russian roulette, showing a disturbing willingness to put the even country’s economic lifeline at stake while they both dig deeper into their respective political trenches waiting to see who blinks first.

A Hotel in Medina, and other fairy tales

While the politicians engage in their scorched-earth politics, there are some realities that the Maldivian public has to learn to accept. The foremost among them is that, as detestable as the tourism industry maybe, we have grown to be dependent on it.

The income from tourism keeps the Maldivian economy afloat, pays the country’s bills and also props up other industries and employment sectors like telecom, health, education, catering and construction. It builds our roads, drainages, schools and hospitals, and pays for our fuel, electricity and drinking water.

It is not by accident that the average Maldivian’s life expectancy has jumped from under 45 years to over 76 years today since tourism was introduced.

When opportunistic politicians and clerics decide at their convenience that the bedrock of the country’s economy is no longer halal, then perhaps they owe the Maldivian public an alternate economic plan that does not involve alcohol or non-Muslims.

The last time any politician even attempted to offer such an alternative was when Adhalaath party leader Mohamed Shaheem Ali Saeed, then State Minister of Islamic Affairs, pointed out in March 2010 that the Intercontinental Hotel in Medina drew thousands of visitors every year, despite serving no alcohol.

Fortunately, it doesn’t take the Nobel Committee to figure out that the holy city of Medina would continue to see hundreds of thousands of visitors irrespective of whether there’s any alcohol – or even a hotel for that matter.

If only Sheikh Shaheem would clarify how he intends to replicate the ‘Medina hotel’ model of economic development in the Maldives, the issue of alcohol laced tourism would be forever settled.

Rewinding the clock

There are, of course, orthodox clerics who outright condemn the idea of progress itself, and advocate just living off the fish from the sea.

But would Maldivians who today complain of the rising prices of coffee willingly go back to living in huts, defecating by the sea, and starving in stormy weather?

In the 21st century, the nations of the world are interconnected and interdependent in ways that simply weren’t true a hundred years ago.

Could these orthodox ideologues point out to the public just ONE example of a developing country that is able to live in such romantic seclusion? There is a reason why isolated nations like the North Koreans aren’t able to just live off rabbits and groundnuts.  There is a reason why Pol Pot’s Cambodia became a blood-soaked failure.

Economies don’t run on hollow slogans, nor do romantic ideals feed the hungry.

Dr Hassan Saeed was right when – speaking at the protest – he paraphrased the Qur’an, stating that people’s conditions can only improve when they themselves take up the challenge of improving their own plight.

To do that, Maldivians need to settle on what kind of Islam we’re going to follow, and demand solutions from the elected officials, instead of mere slogans. We cannot afford to put up with politicians who wilfully destroy our country’s peaceful image, and complain about a suffering economy in the same breath.

As the Police Commissioner Ahmed Faseeh said recently, we’re living under the threat of becoming another Afghanistan – except, unlike Afghanistan, the Maldives produces no food to feed its own people. We’re dependent on international goodwill, and simply cannot afford to have leaders who engage in harmful rhetoric aimed at destroying our country’s standing in the international community.

The last few weeks of 2011 have set the precedent of hard line, no holds-barred brand of politics that could easily prove fatal to the country’s democracy, economy and social stability.

President Nasheed has recently made grand promises that 2012 will be a ‘year of happiness’. But it will take much greater political maturity and statesmanship from the country’s elected leaders to achieve this goal.

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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Government considering nation-wide ban of pork and alcohol

Press Secretary for the President Mohamed Zuhair has said that the government has decided to shut down all the massage parlors in the Maldives and is considering banning the trade of alcohol and pork throughout the Maldives in response to demands made by protestors on December 23.

‘’The government has decided to take urgent measurements to fulfill the demands,’’ Zuhair said. “There are five demands made after raising voice in the name of protecting Islam.’’

Zuhair said one of the demands was to close massage parlors and spas, as there have been accusations that prostitution is conducted widely in these locales.

‘’Therefore the government has decided to close every massage parlor and spa in the Maldives,’’ he said. ‘’Those places are not operated with a special permission from the government, but the government has now begun inspecting those places.’’

Addressing the demand to disallow Israeli flights to land in the Maldives, he said the government has tried to commence operations of any flight only for the purpose of tourism, for the benefit of the citizens and for the benefit of businessman in the tourism sector.

‘’When tourists want to come they will first book the resort before booking the airline and if the resorts cancel their bookings they will not come to the Maldives and the airline will stop operations because it cannot run the business if there won’t be any passenger to travel,’’ he said adding that the situation was in the hands of tourism businessman.

Referring to the demand made to remove all the SAARC monuments placed in Addu, he said under the decentralization plan, the decision rests with the Addu City Council.

‘’The government will not obstruct any decision made by the council to remove those monuments.’’

‘’Next is [UN High Commissioner for Human Rights] Navi Pillay’s remarks made in parliament, according to the President during the meeting she held with the President she did not mention anything that a Muslim would resist,’’ Zuhair said. ‘’The parliament is the one that has said anything in response to comments made by her in parliament, because the meeting with parliament was not organized by the government.’’

Trade of alcohol, Zuhair said, is not a business conducted by the government. He added that the government receives a relatively large amount of money through this trade from Goods and Services Tax (GST).

‘’The businessman running the trade of alcohol receives a huge amount of profit through this business as well,’’ he said. ‘’The government is now considering banning trade of alcohol and pork throughout the Maldives.’’

Only 200 people live in some less populous islands, but 400-500 citizens live in the tourist resorts, he pointed out.

Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) MP Ahmed Mahlouf today said no matter what Zuhair said the government will not have the courage to ban the trade of alcohol in the resorts.

‘’It is all lies made by the government to mislead the citizens,’’ Mahlouf said.

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Adhaalath Party calls on party members to conduct peaceful protest

Adhaalath Party has called on all its members and others joining the protest tomorrow to protest peacefully, uphold all laws and respect foreign missions.

In a statement issued by former State Minister and current Spokesperson of Adhaalath Party Sheikh Mohamed Shaheem Ali Saeed called on protesters to cooperate with the armed forces and to put patience forward if someone initiates a confrontation.

‘’I advise all protesters that participate in this protest in all the islands to use decent language to express your opinions and to uphold Islamic policies,’’ Shaheem said in the statement. ‘’And, I also advise to not to refer any political party with fault language and to set an example for others.’’

Sheikh Shaheem also said there have been many challenges in recent days, and advised protesters to aim for unity and remain within Maldivian law.

“Adhaalath Party is a party that loves peace, respects the state institutions and respects diplomatic relations and international conventions,’’ the statement read.

Meanwhile, Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) MP Mohamed Musthafa expressed concern that if MDP protested on the same day as the opposition parties-NGO Coalition protest, there was a risk that both protests would turn violent.

‘’I advised the President today to delay our protest supporting ‘moderation’ but it was a decision made by the party,’’ he said. ‘’We tried to stop the MDP protest by submitting a petition but we did not have the majority support so we cannot challenge the majority.’’

Musthafa said that he was not happy with the decision but was obliged to follow decisions made by the party majority.

Recently there have been unconfirmed reports of mercenaries from terrorist groups being recruited for the protest.

Maldives National Defence Force (MNDF) Spokesperson Major Abdul Raheem said that there have been no confirmed reports of said recruits and referred Minivan News to the police.

Police Sub-Inspector Ahmed Shiyam said ‘’it is very difficult to say anything about it.’’

Today the Commissioner of Police Ahmed Faseeh and Chief of Defence Force Major General Moosa Jaleel was summoned to the parliament’s National Security Committee meeting along with MDP Planning Committee officials, NGO Coalition President Abdulla Mohamed and Adhaalath Party president Imran Abdulla.

All the parties assured the parliament that they will not confront each other and that the protests will go peacefully.

NGO Coalition President Abdulla Mohamed was today questioned at the committee whether pregnant women and children will participate in the protest, to which he replied that he cannot stop pregnant women and children from coming to the protest.

Local newspaper SunFM reports that during today’s committee meeting MDP MP ‘Reeko’ Moosa Manik questioned Adhaalath President Abdulla whether Al-Qaeda mercenaries were recruited to the protest. Abdulla replied that he did not want to answer that question.

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Amnesty declares imprisoned blogger a prisoner of conscience

Amnesty International has declared imprisoned blogger Ismail ‘Khilath’ Rasheed a prisoner of conscience, and called for his “immediate and unconditional” release.

The controversial blogger was arrested on December 14 following his participation in a ‘silent protest’ on Human Rights Day, calling for religious tolerance in the Maldives.

A group of men attacked the protesters with stones, and Rasheed was taken to Indira Gandhi Memorial Hospital (IGMH) with a fractured skull. He was subsequently arrested for questioning over his involvement in the silent gathering, and the Criminal Court granted police a 10 day extension of detention for the investigation.

“The continued detention of Ismail ‘Khilath’ Rasheed is in breach of international treaties on freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the Maldives is a state party,” Amnesty said in a statement.

“Amnesty International is dismayed that instead of defending Ismail ‘Khilath’ Rasheed, who has peacefully exercised his right to freedom of the expression, the government of Maldives has detained him. Moreover, the government has taken no action to bring to justice those who attacked the ‘silent’ demonstrators, even though there is credible photographic evidence of the attack.”

The attack on Rasheed and his subsequent detention was a “clear example of the erosion of freedom of expression in the Maldives,” Amnesty stated.

“This basic human right is not just under attack from some religious groups; it is also violated by the government of the Maldives. All people in the Maldives should be able to enjoy their right to freedom of expression without being attacked or detained by the police.”

President Mohamed Nasheed was himself declared an Amnesty prisoner of conscience in 1991, following his repeated and prolonged incarceration by the former government.

A photo of Rasheed's alleged attacker taken by the protesters

Journalist detained

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has also called for Rasheed’s immediate release.

“All he did was start a debate about the issues of religious freedom and tolerance in Maldives,” RSF stated.

“The authorities must explain the reasons for his arbitrary detention and release him at once. It is disturbing to see the government yet again yielding to pressure from the most conservative fringes of Maldivian society.”

Rasheed was one of the country’s leading free speech advocates and one of the few Maldivians bloggers to write under his own name, RSF observed.

“The Maldivian constitution bans the promotion of any religion other than Islam but guarantees freedom of assembly and expression as long as it does not contravene Islam. Rasheed professes to be an adherent of Sufism, which emphasises the inner, spiritual dimension of Islam.”

Reaction

President Mohamed Nasheed’s Press Secretary, Mohamed Zuhair, told Minivan News that Hilath had been arrested under an existing regulation passed by parliament that had no bearing on the [executive] government.

“The government’s policy is to allow freedom of expression to the greatest extent possible under the Constitution,” he said.

Under new regulations published by the government in September, interpreting the 1995 Religious Unity Act passed by parliament, media is “banned from producing or publicising programs, talking about or disseminating audio that humiliates Allah or his prophets or the holy Quran or the Sunnah of the Prophet (Mohamed) or the Islamic faith.”

Violation of the Act carries a prison sentence of between 2-5 years, and the Communications Authority of Maldives (CAM) in November blocked access to Rasheed’s blog on orders from the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, on the grounds that it contained anti-Islamic material.

Rasheed was arrested amid growing religious and political tensions in the Maldives in the lead up to a ‘Defend Islam’ protest to be held on Friday, December 23.

The protest follows several incidents of religious intolerance in the past few months, including as vandalism of the ‘idolatrous’ SAARC monuments in Addu Atoll and hostility towards calls by the UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay for a moratorium and debate on the flogging of women for extramarital sex.

The December 23 protest is being organised by a coalition of religious NGOs and opposition political parties, who have attacked the government for decisions such as its diplomatic relationship with Israel.

“The government is saying that the Maldives has had an unbroken Islamic tradition for 800 years, and 90 consecutive Chief Justices who have applied Sharia Law,” Zuhair said.

“The President is asking everyone to take a stand tomorrow on the 23rd for the continuation of the Maldives’ moderate Islamic tradition,” he said.

It was “not accurate” to suggest that the government was yielding to fundamentalist fringe elements, he insisted.

“This is political. [Former President] Maumoon Abdul Gayoom and his cronies are testing their support base. The people who are funding this so-called Islamic gathering are the same people selling pork and alcohol.”

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Salaf calls for “new regulations” to protect Islam

Local religious NGO Jamiyyathul Salaf has called on the parliament to enact stronger regulations to protect Islam, beyond the the Religious Unity Act.

In a statement issued today Salaf claimed there were regulations protecting sea turtles, whales, birds, lagoons and the environment, but no adequate regulations that protected Islam as such.

Salaf claimed that the new Religious Unity Regulations allowed “anyone to play with the faith of Maldivians, any way they want to.”

The NGO accused the government of pressuring and threatening Salaf when Salaf once asked Home Ministry, Islamic Ministry and the parliament to investigate some persons that have violated the Religious Unity Regulation.

Salaf also claimed that Ali Ahsan, the developer of  the website promoting Friday’s protest, was arrested under the Religious Unity Regulations.

An Islamic Conference due to be held at Thinadhoo in Gaafu Dhaalu Atoll, organised by the Foreign Ministry and the Islamic Ministry, was questionable, Salaf said in the statement, alleging that article 22 of the regulation allowing for the deportation of missionaries was deleted before it was published in the gazette.

Salaf this week declined an invitation from President Mohamed Nasheed to meet and discuss their concerns.

In its statement, Salaf accused President Nasheed of pardoning “Christian missionaries” deported by the former government, and attached a list of names and passport numbers of individuals blacklisted by former President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.

Foreign Minister under both governments, Dr Ahmed Shaheed, has previously told Minivan News that allegations of proselytising against foreigners were often “political charges” deployed by the former President, and had reached “saturation point”.

“There is this very, very deep reaction to anything un-Islamic in this country, and you can use Islam as a political tool quite easily,” he told Minivan News in June, following his appointment as UN Special Rapporteur on Iran.

“But I think people are getting fed up with it – you can see the reactions in the press to my appointment as special rapporteur. DRP MP Mahlouf said it was a Zionist conspiracy and a trade-off for favours done to Israel on my part. These things ring hollow the more you say them. They become cliche.”

At the height of the heated election rally in October 2008, the former government “mischievously suggested” that Salisbury Cathedral in the UK was conspiring to blow up the Islamic Centre in Male’ and build a church.

Salisbury Cathedral subsequently denied the allegation.

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Maldives “on the tip of a dark cloud of hatred”, warns Sheikh Fareed

Prominent religious scholar Sheikh Ibrahim Fareed has given a sermon denouncing Friday’s planned protest, on the grounds that “it will be the blood of fellow Muslim brothers flowing down the roads.”

Islam did not preach unrest and violence, Sheikh Fareed said, and it was not honoring Islam if Muslims should clash with Muslims in the name of protecting it.

He said that the Maldives was currently “on the tip of a dark cloud of hatred”, and warned about aggressive activities that might take place during the December 23 event, calling on people not to destroy property, or damage the sanctity and good name of another Muslim.

Sheikh Fareed referred to 2;11,12 of the Quran which states: ‘’ When it is said to them: “Make not mischief on the earth,” they say: “Why, we only Want to make peace!” Of a surety, they are the ones who make mischief, but they realise (it) not.’’

According to Sheikh Fareed, Anas Radi allah Anha narrated that the Prophet [PBUH] said ‘’Be patient, there will come a time, where the time that comes after that time will be worse than the other, until you shall meet your god [judgement day].’’

He called not to give space for disputes and to try and make peace instead, and called for people to “protect our wives and children from danger rather than feeding wood to a burning fire.”

He said that everyone will have to be accountable to Allah, and reminded that there were two angels that keep writing all good and bad deeds including the words we say.

Sheikh Fareed said that this life was not eternal and that everyone has to believe that “we might have close our eyes for the last time at any moment.”

‘’Then comes the time you feel bad about how you lived and start crying, although you did not want to leave you had to. Then you will be amazed of the persons that come to question you. Indeed, with a strong voice they will question you,’’ Shaiekh Fareed said. ‘’The persons that encouraged you to destroy people’s property and to damage the good name of others will not be there.’’

He added that the deeds people committed in this world “will be the only thing they will have.”

Sheikh Fared further said it was regrettable to hear of the news that two Muslim groups were to confront with each other.

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