Maldives: 'Islam' becoming an election
issue?
N Sathiya Moorthy
Two events in as many weeks, and Maldives has
been making news, both on the home front and in the global arena, for reasons
that had been better left untouched. Coming as they did after the successful
SAARC Summit in the southern Addu City, these developments have the potential to
become a major political and poll issue ahead of the presidential elections of
2013, if the current trends remain un-reversed.
The first incident flowed from the SAARC Summit
itself. Forgetting that Pakistan too was an 'Islamic State', religious
fundamentalists in Addu ransacked the SAARC memorial erected by Islamabad for
depicting what they claimed were idolatrous, 'un-Islamic' symbols. Customary as
Pakistani memorials have mostly been, this one carried a bust of Mohammed Ali
Jinnah and the nation's flag. At the foot of the pedestal were reliefs of
archaeological finds from the Indus Valley Civilisation sites in the country.
Fundamentalists, first in Addu and later in the
political capital of Male, claimed that a relief motif represented Lord Buddha.
They burnt the whole monument one night and took away the rest. It is as yet
unclear if their protests were only over the presence of a perceived
representation of Lord Buddha, who is worshipped in many of the SAARC
member-nations, or it also related to Jinnah's bust, as worshipping
fellow-humans was also banned in Islam.
It was possibly not without reason that
subsequent to the destruction and disappearance of the Jinnah statue,
fundamentalists also targeted the Sri Lankan monument, a replica of the nation's
'Lion' emblem. Investigators have to find out if this attack had anything to do
with the Buddhist character of Sri Lanka, or was aimed at defusing the
embarrassment flowing from the earlier attack on another 'Islamic Republic',
where again fundamentalism and religious extremism were thriving -- targeting
not just the immediate neighbourhood but the rest of the world at large.
In contemporary context, Pakistan, along with
neighbouring Afghanistan, are considered the global capitals of fundamentalism,
from where Maldivian groups are perceived as deriving their strength. In
Pakistan, unlike the other two nations, certain State agencies are believed to
be aiding, abetting and funding fundamentalist efforts -- and for carrying the
message to the rest of South Asia and outside, too. Thus the contradiction in
the fundamentalist attack on the Pakistan monument was palpable.
A full month after the SAARC Summit, local media
reported that the Nepalese monument for SAARC too has been 'stolen'. They quoted
officials to say that the 'theft' had taken place when the police on guard duty
were in between shifts. With three such desecrations, the authorities, if is
said, were considering the wisdom of shifting all SAARC monuments to a central
place in Addu and providing 24-hour police security.
Uni-faith character and
flogging
The fundamentalists got another shot in the arm
not long after when the visiting UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) chief
Navneetham Pillay questioned Maldives uni-faith character that did not accept
non-Muslims as citizens. Addressing the People's Majlis, or Parliament, only a
week after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh became the first overseas
dignitary to do so, Pillay also questioned the Maldivian law on flogging of
women, describing it as inhumane and violating of international commitments by
the nation. She called for a national debate.
Since Pillay's visit, local media has come up
with a belated news report, citing a lower court ruling, that growing beard was
close to being a religious obligation for males in the country. According to the
daily, Haveeru, Magistrate Ibrahim Hussein in Maafushi, Kaaf atoll, had
overturned a Department of Penitentiary and Rehabilitation Services (DPRS)
regulation that instructs its male employees to shave their beards. The DPRS has
since challenged the ruling, as the magisterial verdict of March 2 has held that
the regulation contradicts with Islamic principles, and cannot be made in a 100
per cent Muslim country such as Maldives.
Though wholly unexpected, and possibly taken
aback after the monument-burning, the Government of President Mohammed Nasheed
did not lose much time in expressing regret to the Governments of Pakistan and
Sri Lanka. It also arrested two persons for the desecration of the Pakistani
monument. The public postures of rival political parties however surprised many.
President Nasheed's Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) was not as unequivocal as
the rest. It was only to be expected under the circumstances, and also given his
pro-liberal attitude and public image but individual MPs did declare that there
was no question of permitting the practice of other religions in the country.
The Opposition parties at one stage seemed to be
competing with one another in expressing their solidarity with the Islamic
forces. Fundamentalist Adhaalath Party (AP), which had left the Government only
recently over religious issues, wanted Customs officials who had cleared the
'banned monument' into the country sued. A section of the Progressive Party of
Maldives (PPM), founded recently by those owing allegiance to former President
MaumoonGayoom, was shriller. Undiluted as yet, a party leader described the two
arrested persons as 'national heroes' and wanted PPM to defend their case/cause.
Other parties, including the Dhivehi Rayyithunge
Party (DRP) with Thasmeen Ali, a former running-mate of Gayoom in the 2008
presidential race, could not be seen as being left far behind. Some of them,
including a section in Gayoom's PPM, sought to draw a distinction between
fundamentalism and modern-day issues of sovereignty, in this regard, arguing
that installation ofidolatorous monuments and statues challenged the sovereign
right of the Maldivian State, including Parliament, to frame a Constitution and
laws that reflected the people's sentiments -- and enforce them, too.
Pillay's utterances, which she repeated at a news
conference in Male, revived the argument even more, as political parties felt
uncomfortable about commenting unfavourably an issue involving fellow nations
like Pakistan and Sri Lanka. To them, the former was an Islamic nation as
Maldives, and the latter, the closest neighbour and economic partner, too.
Unacknowledged, they were also concerned about possible retaliation in Sri
Lanka, where a large number of Maldivians reside, for work, studies or medical
care, or use as a transit-point to travel to the rest of the world.
'Missed opportunity', says
President
Historically, Maldives was home to Dravidian
people from south India and also Sri Lankans. Before the arrival of Islam in the
atolls-nation in the twelfth century when it was adopted by the ruler and his
subjects soon enough, Buddhism was the dominant religion. As critics of the Addu
attacks point out, the National Museum in Male, built by the Chinese in recent
years, houses Buddhist artefacts from that era. Maldivian history also has it
that among the earlier non-Islamic, non-Buddhist rulers were women -- thus
possibly explaining relative liberalism to date, barring of course flogging for
extra-marital relationship.
Even granting that the Addu incidents were a
stand-alone affair, the Pillay controversy, identifiable with the UN system, has
triggered calls for condemnation of the parent-organisation. Fundamentalist
protestors shouted slogans outside the UN office in Male soon after the Addu
incidents.
For starters, Maldivian parliamentarians in
general and the mild-mannered Speaker Abdullah Shahid in particular would be
uncomfortable until a future guest had completed his or her address to the
People's Majlis, if and when invited. Answering criticism in this regard,
Speaker Shahid said that he too was not privy to what Pillay intended saying.
Fresh to such engagement with visiting dignitaries as much to the rest of the
democratic scheme, Maldivian parliamentarians had possibly taken Prime Minister
Singh's address as the standard practice. Pillay may have now set them thinking.
Sometime after the dust from the Pillay fiasco
had begun settling down, President Nasheed provoked fellow-Maldivians into a
national discourse by declaring that "Our faith should not be so easily shaken"
by utterances theNaviPillay kind. "To build a nation, we should all have the
courage, the patience and the willingness to exercise our minds to its deepest
and broadest extent," the local media quoted him as saying at an official
function. By coming down heavily on Pillay's suggestions, the President said
elsewhere that Maldives might have "missed an opportunity" to demonstrate the
nobility of the Islamic Shariat.
"We should have the courage to be able to listen
to and digest what people tell us, what we hear and what we see," said Nasheed,
adding that Maldivians should not be "so easily swayed and conned?For that not
to happen, we have to foster in our hearts a particular kind of national spirit
and passion?This national spirit is not going to come into being by not
listening, not talking and hiding things, (but) by clearly and transparently
saying what we think in our hearts, discussing its merits among us and making
decisions based on (those debates)."
Given his democratic credentials and the tendency
to throw up issues for national discourse through his weekly radio address,
President Nasheed's observations did not raise hell as his detractors would have
hoped for. Nor did it stir the nation into a discourse as he may have hoped for.
However, attackers did take on others, and physically so. A small group of
pro-tolerance protestors under the banner of 'Silent Solidarity' were stoned by
unidentified men when they gathered for a rally, advocating openness to all
faiths in the aftermath of Pillay's advocacy.
Even as the controversy over the Pillay
statements was unfolding, Foreign Affairs Minister Mohammed Naseem lost no time
in trying to smoothen out the ruffled Opposition feathers. "What's there to
discuss about flogging?" Minister Naseem was reported as saying, "There is
nothing to debate about in a matter clearly stated in the religion of Islam. No
one can argue with God." The Minister clarified that Maldives had submitted
certain reservations to the international conventions that Pillay had referred
to, including the provisions on gender equality and freedom of religion. "On
these points the country could not be held legally accountable by an
international body," he said further.
Islamic Minister, Dr Abdul Majeed Abdul Bari, a
renowned religious scholar, had lost no time in calling for the removal of
idolatrous SAARC monuments. Later after the Pillay controversy, he said that the
Shariat could not be made a subject of debate. A representative of the
fundamentalist Adhaalath Party who chose to return to the Government after the
party had pulled out, Dr Bari appealed to the people not to vandalise symbols of
other religions. He referred to what he claimed was a retaliatory attack on a
local mosque in Addu City and quoted the Quran 6:108, which reads "And do not
insult those they invoke other than Allah, lest they insult Allah in enmity
without knowledge. Thus We have made pleasing to every community their deeds.
Then to their Lord is their return and He will inform them about what they used
to do."
Dr Bari's junior colleague and State Minister for
Islamic Affairs, Sheikh Rasheed Hussein Ahmed, had a different take on the
former's suggestion for the host nations to take back the monuments. A former
president of the Adhaalath Party and native of Addu atoll who has chosen to stay
back in the Government (though the party has no parliamentary representation
under the Executive Presidency), Dr Rasheed seemed to concur with the official
position that it was improper for Maldives to suggest such a course. At the
outset thus he indicated the need for securing all SAARC monuments in a common
place at Addu. The media has reported that the Government was looking at the
option in the aftermath of the attack on the Nepalese monument.
Nation-wide protest on cards
Unimpressed by the Government's explanations, if
any, the Opposition parties have independently or otherwise, extended their
support to over 125 non-government organisations (NGOs) that have called for a
nation-wide protest on religious issues on December 23. Some in the Opposition,
including one-time Minister and presidential aspirant, Jhumbooree Party founder
Gasim Ibrahim, see in the Addu affair and the Pillay statements a governmental
conspiracy aimed at twin-goals -- of, allowing other religions into the country
and at the same time dilute the Shariat as is being practised in Maldives.
As observers point out, for the past over two
years, the Government of President Nasheed has been giving a handle to
fundamentalist elements to make a hue and cry, every now and again. Starting
with the Government's decision to accept a Guantanamo Bay detainee at the
instance of the US, inviting Israeli doctors, farm experts and now their
airline, considering permission for liquor sale and consumption in inhabited
islands, starting with the national capital of Male, seeking to make the study
of Islam and the national language, Dhivehi, optional for A-Level students, they
say, the Nasheed leadership has been seeking to dilute Islamic traditions and
practices, one after the other. On the economic front, they have added the
IMF-induced reforms and the 'managed float' of the dollar to the 'conspiracy'.
On the one hand, the emergence of one
religion-related controversy after another, almost at periodic intervals, has
the potential to keep fundamentalism alive, and possibly expanding to take
extremist colours, if only over time. On the other, the ever-expanding political
support-base that such issues have been attracting confers on the more
identifiable practitioners, greater and otherwise unintended legitimacy that is
otherwise lacking. Greater legitimacy could strengthen their political cause and
electoral presence, as the Adhaalath Party has proved in the local council polls
of March 2011. The party materialised unexpected gains in the council polls,
limited still as they were. Continued irrelevance on the electoral front, as
happened in the presidential polls of 2008, could strengthen the resolve and
determination to adopt a more extremist course.
The formation of the PPM and its political
identification with the AdhaalathParty for now on the religious front has the
potential to keep fundamentalist issues on the fore of the nation's political
and electoral agenda, during the run-up to the presidential polls of 2013.
Shriller these sections become, in an attempt to take the elections out of
better debatable issues like democracy and economy, greater will be the claims
to mass-representation for their otherwise limited support-base. When, where and
how the former would drown the latter, if it came to that, is hard to predict at
the moment, given in particular the vastness of the nation in terms of the
logistical nightmare that an election campaign faces and the prohibitive
expenses that it entails. Thus Islam also becomes the first and natural choice
to unite the divided Opposition in electoral terms.
President Nasheed's camp is hopeful of his
winning re-election in the first round in 2013. Yet, some voices in his MDP are
already talking in public about his scoring 40-per cent and above, much less
than the 50-per cent victory-mark and far lower than the 60 per cent his
campaign-managers say he was sure to win. With Gayoom and his family ties to the
PPM needing no reiteration, some observers think, talking about the 'misrule'
from the past could help the Nasheed candidacy, particularly if the party were
to stick to its new-found Adhaalath ally, for the second round.
From the Opposition camp, too, there are hopes
that focussing on religion-based issues, rather than those of democracy, economy
and family rule, would take their campaign away from further internal strife
within parties like DRP and PPM -- and among the larger numbers, too. Yet the
official DRP Opposition sounds relatively uncomfortable flagging religious
issues compared to larger political and economic issues. The DRP's weakened DQP
(Dhivehi Quamee Party) has been focussing on such issues, and is now credited
with obtaining a civil court order restraining the Indian infrastructure major
GMR Group from collecting a higher $ 25 entry-fee at the Ibrahim Nasir
International Airport (INIA) at Male, for which it has a 25-year modernisation
and maintenance contract.
Incidentally, this means that GMR's projected
revenues will fall short by $ 25 million a year, and the group, it is reported,
intends appealing the lower court order. In a way, the court order may have
taken the arguments against the GMR contract further away from the hands of
fundamentalist groups. When the contract issues first came up before Parliament
and public arena in 2009, when it was signed, sections within the undivided DRP
of the time, and a few others in the Opposition had raised legal, constitutional
and procedural issues. They had argued that involving any foreign company in
airport modernisation would challenge Maldivian sovereignty. The debate lingers.
For all this however, mainstreaming of
fundamentalist ideas and politics may have positive fallout, however limited,
under a guided process. Mainstreaming of extreme viewpoints in other democracies
has often led to moderation, if only over time. Over the short and the medium
terms, sections of the polity with strong and extreme viewpoints have often
tended to push their agenda, convictions and beliefs, whether in government or
outside. As an Islamic democracy, Maldives is uniquely placed -- and could thus
become a test case, too. The question is if the nation can allow itself to be
one, now or ever. In a country, where religious moderation has been the hallmark
of the society for centuries, the reverse should also be true. Allowing for
evolutionary processes to take shape would be a better option rather than
imposing externally-induced debates and changes on an otherwise moderate and
harmonious society, it is said.
Over the past years, there have been reports of
Maldivian youth attending Pakistani madrasas where they were reportedly being
taught not just religion and theology but also jihadimilitancy. A 2009 report
said that close to a dozen Maldivian youth were among the jihadi militants
captured by the US-led forces along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, and that
they had confessed to being trained in Pakistani madrasas. The attack thus on
the Pakistani monument in Addu City thus raises questions about the authorship
of fundamentalism in Maldives, but at the same time also highlights the possible
consequences of either course, for Maldives in particular and neighbouring
nations, otherwise.
Either way, it is felt that any Islam-centric
campaign for Elections-2013would keep the fundamentalists going. They would be
targetting larger stakes and goals. Considering that the Maldivian State
structure and institutional mechanisms, starting with the national police force,
are ill-equipped to address such issues and concerns with any amount of clarity,
certainty and work-plan, in terms of intelligence-gathering and dissuasive power
at the grassroots-level, President Nasheed, it is said, would be handing himself
a tougher task than already in his second term, if his leadership does not drag
the nation away from Islam as an election issue. Deferring such a predicament,
either for the self or for successors might still be in his hand, instead.