The Maldives today celebrated the day it embraced Islam, a nation-wide celebration and public holiday.
President of the Maldives Mohamed Nasheed this morning inaugurated the first Islamic Bank in the Maldives in celebration of the day, the first such Shariah-compliant institution in the Maldives.
The main opposition Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) has announced that it will host a special ceremony tonight at Dharubaaruge in celebration of the day, in an SMS message circulated by dismissed former Deputy Leader Umar Naseer.
The Maldives will also celebrate the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day with a special event at the Artificial Beach in Male’ this evening, from 9-11pm.
The event is being organised by UNFPA in collaboration with Thirees Nuvaeh, an NGO focused on promoting traditional Maldivian culture.
The legend of how the Maldives embraced Islam is taught to children studying in Maldivian schools.
It is said that long ago, an evil demon named ‘Rannamaari’ appeared from the sea on the first of every month, and the only way it would leave the islanders alone was through the sacrifice of a virgin girl.
Every month the islanders selected a girl to be sacrificed for the demon, only to discover her body on the beach the following morning.
This continued until one day a Muslim traveler named Abul Barakathul Yousuful Baru Bary arrived in Male’ and coincidentally stayed in the house of the next virgin girl selected.
As he saw the whole family weeping in sorrow he asked what was going on, and learnt about the incident.
He then decided to disguise himself as the virgin girl and go to the temple instead. The following morning, the islanders found him alive and reciting the verses of the Quran.
The King and his people were impressed that the demon never appeared after that incident, and decided to embrace Islam from that day onwards.
However, this story is dismissed by the young generation today as a myth. Many today believe that it was the King himself pretending to be the sea demon, allegedly raping and murdering the virgin girl every month and leaving her bod yon the beach.
Former State Minister for Islamic Affairs Sheikh Mohamed Shaheem Ali Saeed has written an article calling for studies in comparative religion to be included in courses at the Islamic Faculty of the recently inaugrated National University.
The national university “should be a place that conducts research on issues that the Maldives faces today, especially issues related to human rights, comparative religion, terrorism and the rights of women,” Shaheem wrote in an article (Dhivehi) on the Adhaalath Party’s official website.
Shaheem first floated the idea in April 2010, emphasising that the subject should not be taught at a secondary level “because [students’] minds are not [yet] prepared to deal with these philosophies.”
However at a university level, “it is very important to research and understand other religions,” said Shaheem. “You will not become an infidel for learning about other religions.”
”At Medina’s University Faculty of Shariah they teach comparative religion as well as at the International Islamic University in Malaysia,” he said. ”Terrorism is a rising issue today, and it is very important to know the difference between terrorism and jihad, and the obligations and reasons for jihad.”
He also said that it was the former government that paved way for the Maldives College of Higher Education to progress to a University.
The National University of the Maldives was inaugurated on February 15 by President Mohamed Nasheed, who appointed former Education Minster Dr Mustafa Luthfy as the university’s first chancellor and presented him with the institution’s seal.
The last time to the topic of comparative religion was raised in the Maldives, Adhaalath Party President Sheikh Hussein Rasheed told Minivan News the party would not support the prospect until an understanding of the basic principles of Islam were strengthened. will not support the study of comparative religion in the Maldives until understanding of the basic principles are strengthened.
While he did not disagree with it in principle, Rasheed said that before introducing comparative religion the government should teach Islam in more advanced manner.
President of Jamiyyathul Salaf Sheikh Abdullah Bin Mohamed Ibrahim said in April that people should understand Islam comprehensively before comparative religion was introduced.
Sheikh Abdulla said there were some necessary subjects of Islam many people in the Maldives did not yet understand or were not being taught.
”Only a few people understand the ‘Tafsir’ [exegesis] of Quran,” he said, adding that ”knowledge of other religions is already taught in verses of Quran and Hadith.”
Hundreds of young Maldivians descended on Sultans Park on Friday night for the launch of a music album by a young local artist.
Sitting in the dark shade of the trees at night, they cheered loudly as two young ladies strummed guitars to a soft melodic tune.
Music has been closely entwined with cultures around the world, from beyond the mists of time. Soaring orchestras and gentle flutes have enamoured mankind with their ability to convey, wordlessly, their deepest thoughts and most powerful emotions. So majestic is their beauty that, in many cultures, instruments like the lyre, the sitar and the harp have been associated with the divine, the heavenly.
The ancient traditions of song and dance in Dhivehi Raajje have evolved to a point where geographically disparate islands have formed their own subtly distinct styles that allow a keen ear to differentiate between, for instance, the Giraavaru tribe and their neighbouring islanders.
The accelerating beats of bodu beru drums have moved generations of Dhivehin to ecstasy and euphoria as they climaxed in a thrilling crescendo.
As it happens, the centuries old traditions that seem to be infused in the very genes of Maldivians are now facing a new kind of threat – a battle between cultural expression and religious dogmatism that has recently arrived on the Maldivian shores.
In March 2008, a gathering assembled at the Dharubaaruge Conference Centre, organised by Jamiyyathul Salaf, a religiously conservative NGO.
The backdrop on the stage had an image of a burning musical note crossed out with flames.
During the gathering, presumably held in opposition to the government’s support for cultural activities like song and dance, they released a video with 22 local lslamic clerics ruling that song and music were ‘haraam’, or forbidden in Islam.
The gathering was broken up by police, citing concerns over religious radicalisation.
Today, the first cleric to condemn music in that video montage, Adhaalath Party leader Dr Abdul Majeed Abdul Bari, is the country’s cabinet Minister of Islamic Affairs.
Among other clerics in the same video were two members of the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs, staff members of the Centre for the Holy Qur’an, one member of the Human Rights Commission, and also a member of the MDP religious council.
Immanuel Kant, the 18th century German philosopher, suggested that one’s ability to appreciate beauty was closely tied with one’s ability to make moral judgments.
Grand symphonies of Mozart, Schubert and Bach have endured for centuries on the strength of their sheer brilliance, and the daunting complexity and elegance of their compositions that could evoke romance, passions and dark sorrows in mute observers.
However, during another sermon organised by Jamiyyathul-Salaf in 2010, titled ‘Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘N’ Roll’, preacher Abdur-Raheem Green called the attention of his audience to the music playing from the nearby Carnival stage, and alleged that the musicians playing at the venue were people with empty lives.
In his sermon, he equated music with hedonism and “worship of materialistic culture… the Qur’an of the shaithaan.”
When the Maldivian death metal band Nothnegal returned from a successful tour of Europe, what awaited them in the report of their story were several hostile comments that insisted music was forbidden in Islam, and the group’s activities were akin to ‘devil-worship’.
While the Maldivian music scene hasn’t quite come to a head-on collision with religious dogmatists the way it has in some other Islamic countries, there are some notable incidents where they have crossed paths.
Ali Rameez, arguably the biggest pop-star in the Maldives at the time, famously quit music in a very public manner, reportedly making a symbolic renunciation by dumping a large quantity of his CDs into the sea.
The lead singer of the popular music band Trio, that had recently represented the Maldives at International music events, quit music at the height of the band’s popularity and announced on his Facebook page that his decision was driven by religious considerations, as he was given to understand that music was forbidden to Muslims.
The cultural differences and the attitudes of talented musicians towards their religious duties are a fascinating study in contrast.
The famous Ghazal and Qawwali musical traditions of the subcontinent have a long and rich legacy of talented Muslim artistes, including internationally acclaimed Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
AR Rahman, the double Oscar and Grammy winning Indian musician is also known to be a very devout Muslim.
There appears to be no clear consensus on what is considered acceptable music and what is not.
The late Sheikh Ibn Baz, former grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, rejected all forms of popular music as ‘haram’, except during weddings where it was restricted to women folk.
While many conservative scholars make exemptions for devotional songs accompanied only by the beats of a daf (a frame drum resembling a tambourine), others consider even devotional music to be taboo.
Renowned Lebanese Islamic scholar Sheikh Ibrahim Ramadan Al-Mardini rejects such religious restrictions on music, saying no such prohibition existed in the Qur’an.
He also argues that the hadith often used to justify it were “very weak”.
Opposition religious leader, Dr Afrasheem Ali, said on national television in 2008 that the Prophet himself had sung. Former President Gayoom, also a religious scholar, asserted in a speech that singing and dancing were not incompatible with Islam.
Indeed, even the definition of the term ‘singing’ appears to be equally nebulous.
The stirring qualities of rhythm, melody and tenor have been used to great effect by famous qaris like Abdul Basit Abdul Samad – who became internationally known for his spell-binding recitations of that Qur’an that inspires many imitators.
Even after ‘renouncing music’, former pop-star Ali Rameez has sung several devotional songs, many of them quite popular.
So did Rock-star Cat Stevens, who embraced Islam at the peak of his career and gave up music. Upon conversion, he took on the name Yusuf Islam, and auctioned away all his guitars.
Elsewhere, Salman Ahmad, the lead singer of iconic Pakistani rock band Junoon and arguably the greatest rock star to emerge from the Muslim world, is appealing to youth in his terrorism-plagued country to take up the guitar and reject extremism.
Cat Stevens, aka Yusuf Islam, eventually returned to music. On the eve of his album’s re-release, he explained that he had stopped performing due to his misunderstanding of the Islamic faith.
“This issue of music in Islam is not as cut-and-dried as I was led to believe … I relied on hearsay, that was perhaps my mistake”, Yusuf said.
Salman Ahmad, too, pointed out that the verses of celebrated Sufi poet Rumi “promoted harmony, tolerance, peace, self-discovery, simplicity… really, the antithesis of the religious extremists protesting on the street.”
Arguing that both rock musicians and extremists had a common target – the youth, he has vowed to undertake a new kind of ‘jihad’, one that combats what he considers the destructive power of extremism and “murderous thugs masquerading as holy men” by providing the outlet of music.
Indeed, young rock bands in the Maldives have chosen to vent their angst against political violence with powerful thrash music. Judging by the crowds that throng their shows, the message has been received well.
Gentle plucks on guitar strings have in the past summoned millions of anti-war activists, raised millions in charity, and defined entire cultural eras.
Countries everywhere use the strength of music to put together stirring verses set to triumphal tunes played by military brass bands – a shared national anthem, to signify a shared nationhood.
Maldivian bands like Zero Degree Atoll have revived cultural identities by skilfully infusing the sounds of waves and conch shells along with modern guitar riffs and bodu beru percussion, accompanying, of course, their evocative Maldivian poetry.
If the music that mingled with the Maldivian sea breeze for centuries is to survive, one would do well to heed the advice of the young man on the stage at the Sultan Park last night, who exhorted his artist and musician colleagues to defy those who discourage and object to music, and remain steadfastly committed to creating wonderful new melodies; words that would clearly be music to our ancestors’ ears.
The Islamic Ministry’s Fiqh Academy has declared that women are not allowed to perform marriages or lead a marriage ceremony according to Islam, and therefore cannot be a judge when performing marriages.
The declaration was announced by the President of Fiqh Academy and Islamic Minister Dr Abdul Majeed Abdul Bari, together with eight other scholars of the academy.
The Fiqh Academy explained that the Prophet Mohamed (PBUH) had ruled that woman could not perform a marriage ceremony herself, and nor could she perform the marriage of another woman.
The wife of Prophet Mohamed (PBUH), Ummulmu’mineen Aisha, Ali and Abu Hurairath had also said that women could not perform marriages, the Academy explained, adding that all the companions of the Prophet (PBUH) also agreed that woman could not perform marriages.
Furthermore, the Fiqh Academy said that as marriages were in the hands of judges, it was contrary to Islamic Sharia for a woman to be in such a position.
Despite the fact that some religious scholars disagreed as to whether women could perform marriages,the Academy said it was inclined to side with the majority of scholars who had ruled this was inappropriate.
The Judicial Service Commission (JSC) recently appointed judges to the High Court, including Dr Azmiraldha Zahir, the first woman to be appointed to such a position. Member of the commission Sheikh Shuaib Abdurahman voted against her appointment on the grounds of her gender, arguing that females were not permitted to deal with many of the issues required of a judge under Islam.
President Mohamed Nasheed has spoken to the leader of the Tunisian opposition as ripples from the fall of its deposed President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali spread throughout the Arab world.
Speaking to Moncef Marzouki over the phone, Nasheed expressed the hope that democracy, human rights and the rule of law would prevail.
He also condemned the use of violence against civilians during the protests, and the human rights abuses that were occurring in the country.
The government in Tunisia, previously regarded as one of the Middle East’s most stable democracies and a popular tourist destination, was overthrown after widespread protests and growing street violence eventually forced Ben Ali to flee the country on January 14 after 23 years in power.
In a surreal side note, Ben Ali’s wife reportedly retrieved US$60 million worth of gold in person from the country’s central bank before fleeing to the airport with her husband. The bank has denied the reports, leaked by French security officials.
The protests were sparked after Mohamed Bouazizi, a local fruitseller, set himself on fire when police confiscated his cart. That incident sparked a national uprising that led to almost 100 deaths in clashes with security forces, and the hasty departure of the President. The government has since issued an arrest warrant for Ben Ali in absentia.
The violence triggered a wave of regional instability, particularly in Egypt, where tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets on Tuesday in opposition to 29 years of strict rule by President Hosni Mubarak.
Three people were reported killed, including a policeman, while three more self-immolated in imitation of Bouazizi. Protests also erupted in Yemen, Jordan and Algeria.
Regional analysts such as Robert Fisk have observed that Tunsia was widely feted by the West for the stability of its autocracy: “If it can happen in the holiday destination Tunisia, it can happen anywhere, can’t it? The French and the Germans and the Brits, dare we mention this, always praised the dictator for being a ‘friend’ of civilised Europe, keeping a firm hand on all those Islamists,” Fisk wrote in UK newspaper The Independent.
Meanwhile, further revelations from al-Jazeera’s publication of controversial documents detailing 10 years of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process include details of a secret crackdown on Hamas, orchestrated by British Intelligence and executed by the Palestinian Authority (PA).
The 2004 plans also reveal a high degree of security cooperation between Israel and Palestinian security forces, further heightening public anger in Palestine against the PA.
Comments made by government officials to Indian magazine The Week, concerning the potential for homegrown terrorism in the Maldives, risk portraying the country as a safe haven for terrorists and creating problems for Maldivians overseas, the Islamic Foundation of the Maldives has said.
The cover feature of The Week quoted a “Maldivian intelligence official” as saying that the spread of an extremist belief system in the Maldives “is fueled by hate preachers like Sheikh Fareed and Sheikh Ilyas. Both are [under surveillance],” the magazine reported a “Maldivian intelligence official” as saying, adding that a large section of Maldivian youth were becoming “hooked” to ideas of “transnational jihad”.
“The signs are ominous as seven radicals chose to contest the Maldivian polls in 2008. Though all [of them] lost, we found that Islam is being increasingly used as a political tool in Maldivian affairs,” the magazine quoted the intelligence official as saying.
In response, the Islamic Foundation warned that the government was raising such concerns and allegations “at a time when there is a tremendous rise in religious awareness and people’s attempts to return to mainstream Islam.”
“Apart from the threat of being arrested and interrogated by authorities abroad and being kept under surveillance by foreign governments, the government’s action may create obstacles and insecurity for the Muslim religious scholars and the people of Maldives in travelling abroad,” the Islamic Foundation said in a statement.
“We also call the government to stop stereotyping the people of this country with the hope of getting financial benefits from the enemies of Islam. We also urge the individuals involved in such acts to get repent and return to the Path of Allah.”
In the statement, the Islamic Foundation expressed specific concern about the forthcoming counter-terrorism bill The Week revealed the government was drafting, reportedly in consultation with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and Interpol.
“If the proposed bill has been passed, the law enforcement authorities would get a free hand to crackdown on religious activities with the pretext to preserve national security. The law is likely to provide an ample opportunity for the authorities to arrest Muslim religious scholars and extradite them or send them abroad for investigation, and also ban preaching Islam in public or conduct sermons and lectures to a wider audience,” the Foundation warned.
In the article, Deputy Commissioner of Maldives Police Service Ahmed Muneer is quoted as claiming that the bill would “provide sufficient powers to act pre-emptively on national security matters.”
“Our radical preachers are enjoying street credibility and radicalisation is visible at the street level. It’s a problem for us, but things would aggravate if the radicals get integrated into Maldivian politics,” Muneer told the magazine.
Speaking to newspaper Haveeru yesterday, Attorney General Dr Ahmed Ali Sawad confirmed work on bill and said it was an attempt by the government “to bring in a legislative framework due to our concerns.”
“We are not sure whether the laws and regulations currently in effect provide a complete solution to the issues that we face at present. Other nations of the world also deal with such issues through special legislations. So our security forces will also be able to deal with such issues through the necessary legislation,” Dr Sawad told Haveeru.
In response to reports of the bill, the Islamic Foundation said it “will not be intimidated by any threats from the Maldives government, the Zionist Israel and United States (the self proclaimed super-power) to abandon its work to propagate Islam in this country.”
The Islamic Foundation has also been highly critical of the Maldives’ government’s foreign policy following its decision to allow Israeli eye doctors to perform free surgery in the country during a visit in early December 2010.
The Foundation called on the government to “shun all medical aid from the Zionist regime” prior to the arrival of the seven eye surgeons, claiming that Isreali doctors “have become notorious for illegally harvesting organs from non-Jews around the world.”
The Islamic Ministry received a record amount of money as alms last year, reports Haveeru.
The Ministry received Rf 36 million (US$2.8 million) last year, an increase of Rf 9 million (US$700,000) on 2009.
Assistant Director General Ahmed-ulla Jameel told Haveeru that the number of people giving alms had also increased, as a result of “an increased public awareness about religious matters.”
The Ministry’s Alms Committee would distribute the money to the poor, Jameel told Haveeru.
It is a little known fact that many of the brightest, well-known stars in the sky have Arabic names.
The luminous Aldebaran of Taurus, the majestic Rigel of the Orion constellation… the night sky is studded with shining reminders of an age where the early Muslim astronomers mapped the heavens and the Earth, and committed the knowledge to thousands of paper manuscripts and stored them in the world’s first public lending libraries.
In the early centuries following the Prophet’s death, Muslims made tremendous intellectual and scientific breakthroughs in areas as varied as astronomy, arts, science, math, philosophy and literature: a period accurately portrayed as the ‘Golden Age’ of Islam.
Referring to what he called “civilization’s debt to Islam”, US President Barack Obama said in his famous speech at Cairo University in June 2009, “It was Islam… that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance.”
From the pinnacle of scientific and intellectual achievement 800 years ago, the downward spiral of Muslims to outcasts of the knowledge society has been spectacular, and devastating.
Astronomy, like other scientific disciplines, is today largely the dominion of Western scientists. The Soviets fired man into space in 1961. NASA landed man on the moon in 1969.
Nearly five decades later, only one Islamic nation, Iran, has managed to even launch a domestic satellite – in 2009. Meanwhile, the Voyager 1 spacecraft, that left the Western hemisphere 33 years ago, continues to send back images from the farthest edges of the Solar System.
Statistics paint a bleak picture.
Out of every 10 students who attempt the O’Levels in the Maldives, only three achieve passing grades. Maldivian citizens have an average of a mere 4.7 years of schooling.
The Sachar Committee Report, commissioned by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2006 to evaluate the social status of Indian Muslims, revealed that 25 percent of Muslim children under 15 didn’t attend schools, or dropped out early, despite free public education. Muslims were way behind the curve in literacy as well.
By the 10th century, Islamic centres like Baghdad, Cairo, Cordoba and Tripoli boasted great libraries containing between 600,000 and 3 million volumes, but the UN Human Development Report 2010, which weighs in literacy as a development factor, records only five Muslim states among the top 50 countries on its index, and none in the top 30.
Muslims take pride in the fact that the Guinness Book recognises Al-Qarawiyyin University in Fez, Morocco as the world’s first university to issue degrees. Ironically, not a single university from a Muslim country figures in the top 100 Times Higher Education world university rankings for 2010.
Only nine Muslims have ever won a Nobel Prize. Out of a population of 1.57 billion, exactly two have won the science prizes. In comparison, Jewish scientists and intellectuals have racked up 178 Nobels.
Some insight into this dismal performance can perhaps be gleamed from the reception to Nobel laureates at home.
Dr Abdus Salam, who won the Physics Nobel in 1979, was deemed a heretic in his home country of Pakistan. Dr Salam was certainly devout – he quoted from the Qur’an in his acceptance speech – but he subscribed to the Ahmadi sect which was declared un-Islamic in Pakistan in 1974. Consequently, the epitaph on his grave was defaced, by court order, to remove the word ‘Muslim’. His tombstone now reads, quite inaccurately, ‘the first Nobel Laureate’.
In Iran, religious conservatives criticized Nobel Peace prize winner Shirin Ebadi, a Human Rights lawyer, for not covering her hair during the ceremony, and alleged that the award was a conspiracy to “ridicule Islam”. Following attacks and raids on her home and office, Ebadi fled Iran and now lives in exile in UK.
These are reasons, perhaps, why President Musharraf of Pakistan, observed in February 2002, “Today we are the poorest, the most illiterate, the most backward, the most unhealthy, the most un-enlightened, the most deprived, and the weakest of all the human race.”
Egyptian scientist Dr Ahmed Zewail, who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1999, said in an interview that it was not Islam that prevented progress in the Muslim world, but “politicised Islamic scholars who profess that knowledge is restricted to the study of scriptures.”
Indeed, a study by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute of Pakistan found that the Curriculum Wing of the Ministry of Education, which is controlled by Deobandi Islamists, had altered school textbooks to include material that allegedly glorified war and incited violence against minorities.
A government proposal to introduce science subjects in Pakistani madrassas was met with hostility. The five madrassa boards formed an umbrella organization – the Ittehad Tanzimat-e-Madaris-e-Deenia (ITMD), which vowed to defy all government attempts at reforms.
Likewise, religious conservative parties in the Maldives objected strongly to plans by experts in the Ministry of Education to make Dhivehi and Islam subjects optional to senior Secondary students.
The Ministry argued that students should be free to focus on subjects that would help them get enrolled into Universities. Religious groups, however, accused the Ministry of “anti-Islamic” policies.
In September 2010, the Adhaalath party condemned government plans to introduce co-education in 4 schools. They claimed co-education was “a failed concept”. Incidentally, all of the Top 10 universities of 2010 were co-educational institutes.
Similar objections were raised by clerics in Saudi Arabia towards the inauguration the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology – a vast, new $10 billion dollar, co-educational institution.
Maulana Syed Kalbe Sadiq, a senior Indian Muslim cleric and Vice President of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board rejected this view. Noting that even co-worship was permissible during the Hajj, he stated there was no basis to deny co-education to Muslim students.
Speaking at Aligarh Muslim University in 2010, he said, “In the 21st century, only those who adopt high-level modern education will survive”.
The late Sheikh Tantawi, Egypt’s top cleric and the influential head of Al-Azhar University, ruled that Muslim girls in France should obey French Law and continue their education despite the ban on Hijabs, because sacrificing one’s education would be ‘the greater evil’.
Nevertheless, young Muslim girls continue to be kept at home by religious conservative families in Muslim countries, including the Maldives.
“Read!” -the archangel Gabriel’s first words to an illiterate prophet sparked the beginning of a movement which led to one of the greatest periods of human cultural achievement and enlightenment.
Muslims have a legacy of generating a volume of knowledge that, historians say, outweighs the combined works of ancient Greece and Rome.
That legacy of reason and science appears to have been overwhelmed by dogma in the 21st century. A culture that produced intellectuals of the calibre of Al-Farabi and Ibn Rushd is today more closely identified by gun-toting militants.
In the Maldives, it appears increasingly implausible that Islam might someday be represented less by Islamist preachers and more by scientists like Dr Hassan Ugail. But such a day, if it were to come, would pay rich obeisance to the legacy of learned Muslim ancestors.
It could be argued that such intellectuals are equally, if not more, deserving of the title ‘ilmuverin’, or ‘Scholars’.
Perhaps what it takes to fire up the uninspired young Muslim generation is a set of healthy intellectual role models to finally step in to inspire and guide them.
Alternatively, they could look up at the same Arabic stars that fascinated their cultural ancestors, and be inspired by the distant, faintly-glowing reminders of their fiery intellect from an age gone by.
Image: An astrolabe made in Yemen in 1291, an ancient ‘computer’ used to calculate time and triangulate location, relative to the sun and the stars. They were also used to determine the time for Salah (prayers).
‘Covered in the righteous cloak of religion… even a puny dwarf imagines himself a monster. Important to face. And call their bluff.’
The man who tweeted the above sentence was shot in the head from behind by his own body guard.
Two other armed guards, who knew of the impending murder, violated standard operating procedure and stayed quiet, their guns hanging limply by their sides while the assassin shot 27 times at the now lifeless, punctured body of Salman Taseer, the governor of the Punjab province of Pakistan.
The governor was given a state funeral, but the reactions from sections of the Pakistani society were more than jubilant.
An uneasy disquiet hung over the country’s democratic credentials as hundreds of lawyers showered the unrepentant body-guard with rose petals as he was being taken to court. The Rawalpindi District Bar Association, a body ostensibly designated to uphold the rule of law, has even pledged to fight his case for free.
A statement by 500 clerics of the Jamaat-e-Ahl-e-Sunnat religious group commended the bodyguard for what they proclaimed was a righteous killing.
“We pay rich tributes and salute the bravery, valour and faith of Mumtaz Qadri,” they said of the assassin, who shot the unarmed 66 year-old governor from behind.
The incident has brought into sharp focus the tenuous democratic freedoms and fragile rule of law in Pakistan – a country that ranks 10th in the Foreign Policy magazine index of failed states.
Mr Taseer, an outspoken liberal and fifth-most senior member of the ruling PPP, had been the most vocal proponent for repealing Pakistan’s stringent blasphemy law, which was in the news recently following the death sentence awarded to Aasiya Bibi, a Christian woman, for ‘insulting the Prophet’ – an allegation she strongly denies.
The blasphemy law was introduced by former Pakistani dictator General Zia-Ul-Haq, whose military regime oversaw Pakistan’s decided swing towards a more hardline wahhabi religious state.
The law has been criticised by Human Rights groups in Pakistan for allegedly being abused to settle scores against minorities.
In December 2010, an Ismaili Muslim doctor, Naushad Valiyani, was charged with blasphemy after he threw away a business card belonging to a man whose first name was Mohammed – an exceedingly common first name for many Pakistanis.
In the past, accused blasphemers have been lynched inside court premises; at least one Judge has been killed after acquitting an alleged blasphemer.
Pakistan appears to be caught in a vicious battle between the pro-democratic voice of liberal Muslims, who espouse an Islam of reason and tolerance – and religious hardliners who promote an Islam of fear and supremacy, which rejects the rule of law and democracy. After Salman Taseer’s assassination, the scales have decidedly tipped in favour of the latter.
Mumtaz Qadri revealed that he was inspired by a sermon from Sunni cleric, Mufti Hanif Qureshi, who preached that anyone who killed Salman Taseer would be granted Heaven, and become a hero of Islam.
“After the motivation I decided to kill the governor,” Qadri told investigators.
Section 503 of the Pakistan Penal Code makes it an offense to threaten any person with injury. Nevertheless the law appears to not be enforced when it comes to public remarks by religious conservatives.
There have been attempts in the past to curb the trend of religious right-wing parties using mosques to incite violence, especially against minorities.
In 2007, MP Minocher Bhandara presented a bill to Pakistani parliament to include Mohamed Ali Jinnah’s famous August 11, 1947 speech to the Constituent Assembly, as part of the Constitution.
In his speech, the founder of Pakistan had famously proclaimed that ‘in course of time, Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense… but in the political sense as citizens of the State.”
According to Bhandara, “The speech has been consistently downplayed by the government of Pakistan since 1949. Parts of the speech have been materially altered, or omitted altogether, in the past… On the one hand tremendous respect is shown for the memory of the Quaid-e-Azam, but on the other hand his political thoughts are desecrated to appease religious groups.”
In an almost parallel narrative, the ideals envisioned by founder Mujibur Rahman proved to be short-lived in the overwhelmingly Muslim-populated Bangladesh.
Right wing fundamentalist General Ziaur Rahman rewrote the constitution and declared Bangladesh an ‘Islamic’ state, following the overthrow of a democratic government in 1975.
His widow, Khaleda Zia, who took over the reins of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), flirted dangerously with Islamist parties in the years following Zia’s assassination.
Over 8000 madrassas sprouted in Bangladesh – many of them Saudi-funded and promoting the rigid, literalistic Wahhabi school of thought, while terrorist groups like Harkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami (HuJI) and Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen mushroomed under her government’s rule.
As with Pakistan, the experiment in home-brewed radicalism blew up in the government’s face when, in the span of half an hour on the morning of August 17, 2005, nearly 530 bombs exploded across the country.
There have been stirrings in Bangladesh in the past year. Following a series of assassinations that took out many of its top leaders, the secularist Awami League stormed into Parliament in late 2008, winning 263 out of 300 parliamentary seats.
In October 2010, the country’s Judiciary struck down the fifth amendment of the constitution and invalidated the military regimes of the 1970s, thereby re-declaring Bangladesh a secular state and realising Mujibur Rahman’s long lost dream.
Indeed, the battle between democratic ideals and religious dogmatism has followed a familiar script in the Maldives, following the rapid rise of wahhabism in the last decade.
Censorship and religious intimidation appears to be taking root in the country. Soon after the first multi-party elections, the newly instituted Ministry of Islamic Affairs controlled by the Adhaalath Party banned DJs, blogs and websites critical of them.
In an article on their website, a local Islamic NGO openly denounced democracy as a decadent, evil, western system incompatible with their version of Islam.
Islamist preachers have made anti-Semitic speeches in public, justifying their positions with highly literalistic interpretations of the scriptures. In an unprecedented move, religious conservatives recently took to the streets of Male’, yelling anti-Semitic slogans.
Among the many frictions between Islamism and democratic ideals, liberals would contend that the Religious Unity Regulations drafted by the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, if imposed, would be an unheralded victory for Islamists: the Maldives would then have its own blasphemy law.
Notably, the liberal voice that lies buried in Pakistan is deafeningly silent in the Maldives.
In a chilling replay of Pakistan and Bangladesh, mainstream politicians and the public appear to have chosen to ignore the tide of Islamism – despite the Sultan Park bombing and a very visibly-changing Maldivian identity.
Liberals continue to await a Maldivian counterpart to Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the young chairperson of PPP, who has vowed to take up ‘jihad’ against Islamist forces.
Referring to violent Islamists in a speech mourning Taseer’s death, he said: ‘Allah has promised them hell, and we shall send them there.’
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