Religious Persecution in the Maldives

Woah, lookie here what I found!

Once again, a delegation from the Maldives had to face a UN Panel regarding the government's efforts to eliminate racial and religious discrimination.

And once again, the spin masters in the Government have resorted to the same old, time-tested, two-faced approach of white-washing the institutionalized racism and repression of minorities at home, and presenting a sunshine and daffodils picture to the outside world.

For years, the Maldives has officially pleaded that we are a 'special' case, and therefore rampant persecution of religious minorities in the Maldives should not matter to anyone, and open abuse of basic human rights in this country can be safely ignored.

From the initial UN report:

"the position of the Government had been to deny the existence of racial discrimination in the country as the Maldives has a small homogenous population.. and the people are of the same origin, pursue the same religion (Islam) and speak the same language (Dhivehi)...

We enjoy the same songs, order the same soup, have the same DNA, share the same shoe size..

... and we're all blue in color!

This argument is extremely offensive, because it suggests that Ismail Mohamed Didi, the young atheist Maldivian, who was driven to suicide last year after long-term harassment by family, friends, workplace and State religious authorities, was not really discriminated against, per se. 

Heavens no! He just randomly chose to hang himself by the neck from the ATC tower early one dawn.

It is disgraceful that the MDP government is also resorting to this bizarre 'we're special and therefore exempt from practicing human rights' argument, by perpetuating the tired old Gayoom myth of a 'unique 100% Muslim society'.

Let's be very clear on one thing. The Maldives is NOT a 100% Muslim country. It never was, and never will be.

There's no nation in the history of civilization that has achieved a '100%' uniformity in any ideology -  simply because it is statistically impossible for a sizable society of thinking humans to all agree on the same idea at any given point.

In fact, the very concept of democracy firmly rests on this basic assumption that humans inherently have differences of opinion, and possess the ability to freely change this opinion.

Without this free will and the right to an independent opinion, democracy is utterly meaningless.

Forget democracy. Free will is the reason why Islam itself has so many schools of thought - because thinking people at various points of history arrived at different conclusions regarding religion and morality, and other thinking people chose to agree or disagree with them.

This is also exactly why one set of bearded mullahs from the Jamiyyath-ul- Salaf thinks taxes are haraam, while another set of equally bearded mullahs from the Islamic Ministry think they're absolutely permitted.

Yet, both these classes of idiots continue to insist there's an absolute, rigid version of 'true Islam', thus proving my point that the central pillar of Wahhabism is built on a foundation of bullshit - a false assumption that absolute conformity is achievable in a society with any form of intellectual freedom.

Coming back to the delegation, however. At one point, they asserted "Muslims and non-Muslims live harmoniously in the Maldives" (!)

Yes. We do rummage through their belongings at the airports, confiscate their objects of worship, and if  they're found praying in a silent corner of a beach without bothering anyone, we call the cops and force them off the island... but apart from that, non-Muslims are just like our own dear twin siblings!

In fact, here's our State Minister and Cabinet Minister warmly welcoming our Jewish brethren

Oh, and this one time, an MP would propose that non-Muslim foreigners should be completely stripped of their rights to worship even in the privacy of their own bedrooms. But hey, what's a little religious persecution between friends? 

When confronted by the UN Committee on the constitutional clause depriving non-Muslims of citizenship, the Maldivian delegation reportedly had this to say:

It was not true that under the new Constitution existing citizens could be arbitrarily deprived of their nationality if they were to stop practicing Islam. The Constitution was very clear on this point: no citizen could be deprived of his or her nationality under any circumstance. The Muslim-only clause under the citizenship article of the Constitution only applied to non-Maldivians wishing to become naturalized.

Gee. That's certainly news.

I specifically remember the time when the 'Muslim only' clause was being debated back in late 2007. Then Attorney-General Husnu Suood was among those who expressed concerns about the potential disenfranchisement of non-Muslim Maldivians - some of whom he claimed to know personally, and were living abroad.

It is a joke for this delegation to suggest that existing citizens who choose to declare their disbelief in Islam would continue to be safeguarded by the Maldivian constitution.

In the absence of codified laws governing apostasy, the courts automatically fall back on Islamic Sharia - and could potentially recommend the death penalty.

The Cabinet Minister of Islamic Affairs, Dr Abdul Majeed Abdul Bari has publicly stated that, ultimately, the punishment for apostasy in Islam is death.

When a Maldivian man, Mohamed Nazim, declared to a visiting Indian quack that he was struggling to believe in Islam, an instantaneous mob pounced on him, and tried to physically attack him before cops took him into custody.

Within hours, the Islamic Foundation of the Maldives - a pseudo-religious NGO founded by a former Guantanamo bay inmate with an unhealthy obsession with homosexuality - issued a swift press release demanding Nazim's murder, claiming it was the correct Islamic verdict.

So is the delegation suggesting that while the constitution won't deprive a person of his citizenship - it just might put him at the risk of a death sentence in a court of law? Sorry, that's just absurd.

The Maldivian government needs to sort out this mess - and stop trying to forever brush this issue under the carpet, while simultaneously crooning about its romantic love affair with 'Human Rights'.

The very least they could do is to stop playing this hypocritical game of trying to hoodwink the UN and other International groups, and plainly acknowledge the very real oppression of minorities in Dhivehi Raajje - one that has actually cost innocent lives.

If there's no shame in denying the most basic human right imaginable - the right to exist - to non-Muslim Dhivehin, then there should be no shame in publicly acknowledging this fact to the International community either.

Even though a fair share of our Parliamentarians and Politicians are educated, liberal-minded and privately admit to their support for universal human rights, they claim their hands are tied.

Because, these guys.

The dog-in-the-manger attitude of many Maldivians when it comes to granting others the same rights that they so vocally demand for themselves is simply astounding.

These people ooze tears of blood from every pore when it comes to 'oppression of Arabs' by Israelis (Oh cruel Jews! Have you no compassion?! How could you treat other humans like that?!) , but they show not the slightest hint of discomfort while demanding the persecution of local non-Muslims, simply for the crime of existing.

How these people manage to not gag on their own double standards beats me.

Given that the Maldivian constitution is also explicitly discriminatory in nature with no room for a different interpretation, how do we actually go about changing things?

It's simple. We kill the batman.

Actually, it's a fair bit complicated than that.

First, we need to convince two thirds of the Parliament to do the right thing and pass a bill declaring that it is indeed 2011 and about darn time we stopped the humiliating discrimination of our own people.

We must wholly commit ourselves to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights without reservation, like all decent societies in the world already have ages ago.

Then, once Parliament gives the go-ahead, it's just a matter of holding a quick public referendum, and obtaining a simple majority of votes in favor.

At this point, the President will have to give his assent - and then Parliament fixes a date to publish this in the government gazette .. and voila! We'll be a true, civilized society again!

Or. We could continue to be cowards, and go on forever pretending that we're a 'special' case, and keep perpetuating the barbaric, inhuman and shameful oppression of religious minorities in the Maldives.

~ Peace!