The Message of 23 December - WE LOVE ISLAM AND WE WANT TO BE MUSLIMS
Friday the 23rd of this December was a very special day in the history of this country. On that day, tens of thousands of Maldivians took to the streets and squares in almost all the 200 inhabited islands of the country to give the Maldivian Government and the whole world a simple message: the Maldivians love Islam; they do not want any other way of life than Islam; they do not, in their sovereign and independent nation, welcome those who mock and bash Islam and try to replace it with false ideologies; and they do not accept the Maldivian Government’s continued mockery of and attacks on Islam with the support of their Islam-hating friends.
The base of this mass protest was Malé, the capital of the country. Dutifully abiding by the laws that prohibit protests in a way that would cause disturbances and disruptions to everyday life in Malé, the protesters gathered in the large open area at the eastern shore of the island, which is as far as one can get from the daily life of the public in the jam-packed City.
The mass protest, officially called “Maldivians in Defence of Islam”, was organized by the Union of Civil NGOs with the participation of some of the major political parties in the country. In Malé it was lead from a mounted stage-like podium by the leaders of the Union and leaders of the political parties that supported the protest. Prominent among them were Abdullah Muhammad, the Deputy President of the Union, and Sheikh Imran Abdullah, President of Adhaalath Party, who named the area where the protest was held “Victory Square”.
Thousands of Maldivians at the Victory Square proved beyond any shred of doubt that this nation deeply loves Islam. The time for sunset prayer struck while the protest was going on. The adhan was given there, and thousands of men and women did their ablution; some with small bottles of drinking water, and others by stepping down to the shoreline and using seawater. Then began a congregation of prayers that may well have been the largest that the Maldives has ever seen. Ranks upon ranks of the faithful bowed and prostrated before the Lord of the Universe, as the prayer leader repeated – Allah Akbar, God is the Greatest – creating a spiritually charged ambience that reached deeper into the heart than any music ever could.
The Largest Protests So Far
The Associated Press, news wholesalers to international news agencies, reported that the number of protesters was approximately 3000. It is probable that this figure was a deliberate misinformation supplied by the Maldivian Government. It may also have been a more innocent mistake; be that as it may, this was a gross understatement of the total number of protesters.
In reality, nearly 100,000 people across the Maldives came out for the mass protest. This figure was provided by the Union of Civil NGOs, which headed the organization of the protest. In Malé, more than 20,000 people gathered in the Victory Square according to the estimates of the Union.
An Inspector at the Maldives Police Service revealed to us, on condition of anonymity, that the official figure the Police had recorded in Malé was set at nearly 24,000, an independent count which implies, at the superficial level, that the Union’s estimate was very conservative at best. This number turned out after and during, we should not forget, the Maldivian Government’s relentless propaganda against the protest and its organizers, accompanied with threats and press releases, state-sanctioned bullying, and constant labeling of protest organizers, supporters, and sympathizers as extremists, terrorists, murderers, etc.
Throughout the last decade, we have seen demonstrations organized by the governments of the day and opposition sides, may be more than a couple of hundreds of them. However, we have seen nothing like this. In Malé, we have rarely seen even 5,000 people gather in a protest before this. The mass protest on the 23rd of December was simply the largest mass demonstrations that this country has seen, as far as recorded history tells.
Why Couldn't They Digest?
The Union of Civil NGOs and those who worked with them announced the mass protest approximately a month before 23rd December. Interestingly, but not entirely surprisingly, the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) started an instant campaign against the protest.
The Union did not announce a rebellion to overthrow the Maldivian Government. It was not a protest against MDP. From the very beginning, it was made very clear that 23rd December would be a day for the Maldivians to express their disapproval of the Government’s unrepentant disregard and disrespect of Islam. The Maldivian people have watched their Government install what they believe to be heathen idols on their soil, its contempt and disregard of the Noble Qur’an, its frantic efforts to establish ties with the terrorist state of Zionist Israel blindly ignoring the latter’s continued violence against the beloved, oppressed people of Palestine. The mass protest was organized to tell the Government and the world that the Maldivians did not approve of these policies.
Why should MDP then come out tooth and nail against the protest?
MDP, the de facto ruling party of the Maldives, and its Government continued taking measure after measure to upset the planned protest. One such act was summoning the organizers of the protest to the Committee on National Security of the People’s Majlis. The Committee is one of the Standing Committees in Parliament whose majority is held by MDP. Preposterous questions, such as whether the protest was supported by the now-deposed Taliban of Afghanistan, were put before the organizers by the leading figures of MDP sitting in the Committee.
It did not stop at the Committee on National Security. The MDP Administration kept on making all kinds of baseless accusations against the protest organizers. According to them, the protesters were extremists, terrorists, murderers, and much, much worse.
Not a week after the announcement for the mass protest, a message containing death threats against “enemies of Islam” were posted on a special website launched by the protest organizers. The government desperately tried to capitalize on this and prove to the whole country and the whole world that the protest was a movement of murderous Muslim fanatics. The organizers denied the accusations against them, and repeatedly said that the messages were the doing of hackers. The greatest proof of their truthfulness was that they never, either before or after the appearance of the said messages, encouraged or perpetrated violence. They always promised a peaceful protest and fulfilled their promise. Furthermore, the fact that the website was hacked and vandalized a total of five times in the week leading up to the 23rd of December gave testament to the poor security measures the webmaster had implemented.
After trying to use all kinds of political pressure against the protest, MDP finally announced a “strong counter-protest” on the same day, at the same time, based on a decision of its Council. This resolve naturally created fears of a bloody collision. It was too much even for some of the leaders of MDP (though they were a handful), who spoke against the decision asking about the purpose for which MDP should go so far against a protest intended at protecting Islam.
MDP leaders later decided that they would hold “a gathering” as opposed to a demonstration, leaving many people wondering what on earth that would mean. Obviously, neither did the handful of dissenting members among MDP leadership understand what that meant, as we never heard them agree with the new idea of “a gathering that would not be a demonstration”.
In retrospect, all dissenting opinions within the MDP had either been quelled—or the dissenters had given up their symbolic opposition to the Council decision.
MDP’s “gathering” against the mass protest was held several hundreds of yards away from the Victory Square, in the Artificial Beach, which also lies along the eastern coast of Malé. President Nasheed, despite calls from all quarters of the country, was present at the “gathering” of not more than 1,500 people. Addressing the paltry crowd, he accused the protesters of demanding for such things as allowing marriage of 9 year old girls, female genital cutting, and the practice of having concubines; most probably the first things to pop into his head when the word "Islam" is mentioned. Thus, he demonstrated how little he knew about Islam, and how little he cared about understanding what Islam was about. What most of us overlooked, in the first shock, was that he also blatantly misrepresented the protesters’ positions and demands with his diatribe.
The organization of the mass protest continued for about a month, and the protest itself continued from around 4 pm until about 12 midnight on the 23rd of December. Never was there such a call as claimed by the President in his speech, from any of the organizers of the protest or from any protesters. Why would our President tell such a big lie? Doesn’t he know that lying is very, very bad?
It should be noted that MDP's "gathering" was styled as a call for "Moderate Islam". I do not intend to go into the details of what that is, for it would make this article, which is already of a burdensome length, even longer. Suffice it to say that the tag of "Moderate Islam" was in itself a direct attack on the religion of Islam, among many other such attacks by the Maldivian Government with the support of their Islam-hating friends; and that President Nasheed and his friends are grossly mistaken if they think God needs them to edit His religion!!
The “gathering” of MDP at Artificial Beach began at the same time as the mass protest, but it was disbanded only after little more than an hour and a half.
On the other hand, the mass protest continued for some eight hours. All the while, Channel One of MNBC went on waging a blind and deceitful war of propaganda against the mass protest. They shamelessly aired wrong information about the number of the protesters, misrepresented their purposes, and continued spreading lies such as the claim that the protesters were, in exasperation, preparing to burn down the houses of government officials.
MNBC, or the Maldives National Broadcasting Corporation, is a Government corporation that illegally continues to hold onto and operate the State Television and Radio by the use of lawless force, in direct violation of statutory law. The corporation is run and directed by a group of MDP activists and pro-government individuals, whose common, and usually only, qualification is having a colorful history of Maumoon-bashing. While the other television networks in the country were covering the protest, as a newsworthy event and in full detail, the MNBC One had set President Nasheed’s speech at MDP’s counter-protest “gathering” from that evening on loop.
A Scene of Crime
At about 11 pm during the night of the protest, while still the mass protest was ongoing, MDP leaders and a crowd of activists gathered at the Party Activity Centre at Ameenee Magu. In the gathering, MDP leaders thundered from the soapbox, issuing repeated warnings against the protesters from within the Activity Centre, giving ultimata and threatening to attack them and break their ranks with violent force if the protest continued beyond midnight. They threatened to conduct a counter-protest that even the Police would not be able to control. Specific threats against the lives and property of some of the leaders of the mass protest were frequent, and while MDP leaders all sounded extremely hateful, furious and violent, Interim Chairperson Moosa “Reeko” Manik was a step ahead, as usual.
According to Haveeru Daily, one of the leading news agencies in the country, a turbaned gentleman passed by the MDP Activity Centre while this gathering was going on. Haveeru reporters described MDP activists running at him, attacking and bringing him down.
Why, one may ask.
A turban is sometimes worn in this country by people who claim to strictly adhere to the Sunnah of the Noble Messenger Muhammad peace and blessings be upon him. From what little information we have, it is possible that the man may have been a Sikh or one of the Brelavi missionaries operating in that area of the island, with the permission of President Nasheed to do so, with absolutely no connection to the protest. The poor gentleman, who was an innocent passerby for all anyone could see then and there, was attacked by MDP activists obviously because he seemed to them to have been a possible sympathizer of the mass protest. This attack reminds us of the ones in the US during the months that followed 9/11.
The incident was not reported by any other news agency, and any word of it may have been immediately quelled. The identity of this gentleman remains unknown.
Strangely, and somewhat amusingly, after all the said terrorist threats against the peaceful protesters, and the barbaric, terrorist attack on an unsuspecting civilian, Imtiaz Fahmy, an MDP parliamentarian and senior leader of the party, who spoke at this gathering had the nerve to yell the words, “we do not communicate with terrorists”. Terrorists—a reference to the religious-conservative protesters who had not yet broken out into a frenzy of threatening violence and bloodshed that MDP was already displaying.
Who are the Real Terrorists?
On the night of 27th December, MDP activists kidnapped the Minister of Finance Ahmed Inaaz, and took him by force to the Party Activity Centre at Ameeny Magu. There, tens of them surrounded him harassed, terrorized, and bullied him, and gravely violated his constitutional rights to personal security, dignity, freedom of movement, etc. They prevented onlookers, including a handful of police officers, from helping him. They swore at him with the most foul and obscene words and phrases that Divehi language can offer. The Minister, who had been criticized for being blindly docile to the President and his Party and negligent of the real interests of the nation, was thus humiliated, disgraced, and terrorized by MDP activists in an exceedingly shameful manner. His crime? They spotted him in a car conversing with an opposition leader.
If such use of violence and intimidation to achieve MDP’s political goals, to express their unprincipled hatred of opposition politicians, and to give vent to their uncontrolled rage at people who get on the wrong side when dealing with them, cannot be defined as terrorism; then nothing can.
Since organization of the mass protest began, the MDP Administration frequently called the protest organizers, sympathizers and supporters "terrorists". Why would such a term be necessary? The Maldivians were never known for their support of ideologies that advocated violence. The pulpits of the Maldivian mosques, if President Nasheed ever visited them, would only confirm a message of peace, human brotherhood, deep thought and devotion. Two isolated incidents have marred our record: a botched bombing at Sultan Park; and a video, made in Pakistan, of a proud suicide bomber making a farewell speech before he headed to his death. But these were only isolated events that should not, as any man of reason and justice would agree, be used to draw a general picture of Maldivian Muslims. What remains, then, to warrant the MDP Administration’s description of Maldivian Muslims as terrorists? Is it their expressed love and adherence of Islam, or their disapproval of the Government’s continued mockery of Islam? Or is it simply the fact that they are Muslims?
Being called terrorists is nothing new for Muslims. We have heard that artless, boring, hateful song for a very long time. The Westerners, who have backed the MDP Government, have led this campaign of vilifying Muslims, ironically forgetting that it was they who perpetrated such terrorist, murderous, genocidal crimes such as the crusades, the inquisition, the reformation violence, the witch-hunts, the Christian Identity Movement, the conquests of the New World, the Atlantic Slave Trade, the two great World Wars, the attacks on Japan with atomic bombs, and the Bosnian Genocide. We Muslims have not bombed nations, burned children, and destroyed innocent lives for oil, economic and political hegemony, racist hatred, and religious jealousy. We Muslims have not operated ghettoes, pogroms, concentration camps, open-air prisons, Abu Ghuraibs and Guantanamo Bays. Those among us who breach Islam and do such things are almost always the friends of the enemies of Islam.
While the MDP Administration has had the nerve to accuse Maldivian Muslims of terrorism, it is another irony that they are apparently desperate in establishing a friendly relationship with the murderous, genocidal, and terrorist state of Israel. The government has made its willingness to establish diplomatic ties with Israel very clear. The President himself and ministers of his Government talked about “stronger relations with Israel to be favorable to Maldivian interests” during September 2009, according to a diplomatic cable leaked by the whistleblower Wikileaks in 2011. A secret visit of Israeli ambassador to India to the Maldives and a trip to Israel by the then defence Minister Ameen Faisal deceptively put forth as a trip to Amman, Jordan, during the 2009, were incidents showing how the Government tried to develop an illicit relationship with Israel behind the backs of the Maldivian people.
The Maldivian delegation to the 36th General Conference of the UNESCO left the meeting before 31st of October, the day during the Conference which was set to see a vote to grant full membership to Palestine. Having left the Conference just before the vote, the MDP Administration did not give the same excuse for the decision twice; proving not only that this was a calculated decision to uphold Israeli interests, but also that they did not care at all about what the Muslims in the Maldives, Palestine, and elsewhere would feel or think about it. The fact that a diplomatic cable leaked by Wikileaks had told us, some months before the vote, that there was an understanding between the Maldives and the USA, whereby the Maldives agreed to be absent in cases where it had to choose between Israel and Palestine in votes at the UN, should not be overlooked.
Israel is a nation with an unusually bloody history of terrorizing and murdering innocent civilians and a notorious record of violating international laws. From the King David Massacre, to the Sabra and Shatila, the Deir Yasin, and the Gaza War, Israeli massacres, state terrorism, and war crimes against the Palestinians are a shame on humanity itself. The United Nations has passed resolutions criticizing and condemning Israeli aggression against and violation of the rights of Palestinians and neighboring countries such as Lebanon and Syria, more than the Organization has against all other countries in the world combined. UN Security Council alone passed 79 resolutions against Israel by January 2010, for violating the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions, and tens of other international conventions on terrorism, war and aggression, and human rights.
Yet, the MDP Government has shown a special interest in becoming friends with Israel. Possibly, they are under some kind of delusion as to the truth about the terrorist State of Israel, probably due to their more-than-once displayed contempt for Islam, Muslims, and Arabs. It is also probable that what we see here is a natural connection between those who hate Islam. The bottom line is, it was a bad joke when the Maldivian Government accused the protesters in defence of Islam of terrorism.
A Lesson for MDP
The mass protest conducted by Maldivians to express their deep love of Islam on the 23rd of December was, by all standards, exemplary.
It was by far the biggest demonstrations that the country has seen. While nearly a 100,000 people (about 33% of the Maldivian population) took to streets and squares in almost all the islands of the archipelago, in Malé alone, almost 24000 people (about 25% of the City’s population) gathered at the Victory Square.
The protest continued for 8 hours, from 4 pm to 12 midnight. About 20 leaders of the protest, belonging to the Union of Civil NGOs and a number of political parties, addressed the crowd. Criticism and strong disapproval of the MDP Government was voiced out, naturally and justifiably, for its Islam-hating policies. However, we heard no words of abuse or hatred against any Government figures or anyone for that matter.
The Government had repeatedly accused the protesters of having murderous, terrorist intentions. However, not a single call for such activities was heard, either from the podium of protest leaders, or from among the thousands of protesters. Not a single person demanded any kind or degree of violence against the persons, property, or liberty of any. The mass protest which, if it moved, would have, in the words of an Inspector at the Maldives Police Officer “broken our ranks and gone as far as they wished, and done anything that they willed” began, continued, and ended in perfect peace and harmony. Islam means “peace” and the mass protest was a very good live-up to that ideal.
This came in stark contrast with the protests that MDP has conducted during the last decade. Warnings against the person, property and liberty of anybody they see as a hindrance to their agendas, threats of death and painful vengeance against the leaders of former government, mockery and shameful ridicule of anyone who opposes them, foul and obscene language against anyone they hate, are characteristic of MDP protests.
One perfect example was seen on the 20th of October 2011. MDP activists, led by some of their prominent leaders and parliamentarians and in compliance with a Party Council Resolution passed that very day, broke express provisions of the country’s laws in gathering right in front of the Supreme Court to protest. Utterance of obscene words, threats against the judges, and furious yelling went on for more than an hour. MDP has always portrayed this outright violation of the country’s laws as a “struggle to reform the nation’s judiciary”. However, the obvious reality was that it was a cowardly attempt to exert undue influence through intimidation on an ongoing court hearing involving one of MDP parliamentarians.
After the said hearing came to a close for the day around 4:30 pm, MDP activists left the Supreme Court area and marched their way to the gates of Enderimaage, the private residence of Maumoon Abdul Qayyoom, former President of the Maldives. They attacked Enderimaage, threw stones and logs at the house and caused much damage to the property, and terrorized the residents of the house. The Government took absolutely no action to stop them. Death threats like “we shall cut you into pieces with machetes” were repeatedly heard. I myself saw them, and heard them uttering terrible threats, and obscene words, repeating which in public would be against the moral laws of decency.
The barbaric and shameful attack by MDP activists against Ahmed Inaaz, the Minister of Finance, and of which I have spoken earlier, was another example that shows the mentality at the core of this party.
On the morning of 24th December, the day following the mass protest, I had my breakfast with a friend of mine, who told me that “the mass protest of 23rd December was a very valuable lesson for MDP on how to conduct protests and oppose that which they do not accept”. How very right he was.
Salute the MPS
The Maldives Police Services did an excellent job in keeping order in Malé on 23rd December. The protesters faced no objection from the police whatsoever when they attended the Victory Square, and the Police were seen very much considerate and mindful of the rights of the people. It was a heart-warming seen, to say the least.
When the counter-protest “gathering” held by MDP at Artificial beach was over at about 5:30 pm, a group of MDP activists marched towards the Victory Square, swearing and uttering foul and obscene words and shouting out warnings. However, the Police, seeing an inevitable clash, stopped them and refused to let them pass the police barrier lines. Had the Police let them into the Victory Square, they would, almost definitely, have started bloodshed.
Ordinary Members of MDP Love Islam
What became clear on the 23rd, when President Nasheed and about 1500 of MDP members gathered at Artificial Beach, was that the ordinary members of the party were not on the side of the leaders. The Media described MDP’s “gathering” as the weakest MDP demonstrations ever. Moreover, a large number of MDP members were seen at the Mass Protest wearing t-shirts, carrying placards, and wearing head-bands expressing Islamic slogans, and calling Allah Akbar.
Of the people who were at MDP’s “gathering”, a huge majority wore Islamic dresses and chanted slogans expressing their love of Islam, proving that they were not against Islam but merely caught in the web of the Government’s deceptive lies denying their agendas against Islam. What did MDP leaders think? That those people would never realize the truth about their deception and their deep hatred of Islam? If so, then it is folly, although history shows us that it is not an uncommon folly among men.
Demands of the Protesters
The Mass Protest was held against the Maldivian Government’s continued, and evidently calculated, disrespect, disregard, and derision of Islam. The protesters repeatedly and clearly stated that all they wanted was the Government to change their policies. The protesters read out 5 demands on the Victory Square, each of them justified, and none of them violating any of our friendly nations or peoples of the wider world or any international laws that is binding upon the Maldives.
The first demand was to cleanse Addu City of what we Muslims believe to be idolatrous statues of false gods (I do not have any intention of hurting non-Muslims who take them to be divine) which the government had placed there during last November, allegedly as memorials of the 17th SAARC Summit. The government’s preferred term is “monument”. Religious figures of the country tried from the very first day to convince the Government on the basis of the Noble Quran, the Sunnah, and the 1400 year-old consensus of the Muslim scholarship that placing these idols in the midst of Muslims violated the very basis of Islam; the belief that there is no god except Allah. Muslim scholars explained to the Government that installation of the said idols amounted to association of false deities with Allah, and that any recognition whatsoever of any other deity amounts to outright rejection of Islamic monotheism.
When the idols of false gods became an issue, the Government kept on speaking in multiple tongues. First they said that the “monuments” were installed by SAARC nations. How they could ever think that any sensible Maldivians would believe our friendly nations to be so uncivilized as to force us to do something that is against the basic tenets of our religion is beyond me. The government then said that those “monuments” were installed by Addu City Council and the people of Addu. As people all over the Maldives kept calling and pleading for the removal of those idols, a prominent leader of MDP shouted back at the people with these words: “there the idols are, we have installed them at Addu City, we shall place more of them, what the hell can you do about it?”
The second demand by the protesters was for President Nasheed to apologize for and denounce the mockery of the Islamic Shari’ah ruling against adultery and fornication by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms. Navanethem “Navi” Pillay. It is only fair to ask why the people should require President Nasheed to apologize for something that Ms. Navi Pillay did.
The lady came here, broke diplomatic discipline and etiquette, and challenged our Constitution. Living under our roof and enjoying our hospitality, she played “Robert Spencer” and attacked and mocked the Book that we believe is the Sacred Word of God. Careful consideration of the matter from any angle shows that Ms. Navi Pillay would not do what she did unless she was under instruction from the Maldivian Government. The demand for President Nasheed to apologize for the barbaric and intellectually baseless attacks on Islam by Ms. Navi Pillay was made, therefore, on the reasonable assumption that she was just an instrument used by the Government.
Do the Jews have the right to live in peace in the world? Absolutely yes! Do the Zionists have the right to oppress, enslave, loot, arrest, imprison, hurt, humiliate, assault, terrorize and murder our Palestinian Muslim brothers and sisters? Absolutely NO! That is why we Maldivians have always refused to have anything to do with Israel. It is not because we hate Jews or because we deny anyone’s human rights. Indeed, we differentiate between the Jews and Zionists. Our religion, despite what Islam-haters would blindly insist and ignorant Muslims would wrongly assume, does not ask us to hate anybody. The Maldivian government spat on the already bloodied, innocent faces of millions of Palestinian children, women, and men when they decided to welcome the Israeli El Al airline to this country. That is why the protesters’ third demand was to stop this outrage.
The fourth demand of the protesters was for the Government to close down the whorehouses in the guise of massage parlours that are disgracing Malé, our capital. These houses of evil, where immoral, profane and godless sins are perpetrated are even against human rights. It is reasonably suspected that human trafficking is committed in supplying girls to work in these dark places from countries like Thailand, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The chapter on the risk of STDs including AIDS that these places has brought into our society is another, very long, chapter that I do not intend to open here.
The world is full of whorehouses; Those who want to have such places among them, and do not feel any guilt in using women in such a degraded manner, may do so. We the Maldivian Muslims do not have any plans to burn them down and kill the people who run them. But we DO have the right to refuse such evil places to be operated in our country. They are Black Holes that suck any moral and spiritual life that is still left in this nation. That is why we rightfully demanded whorehouses in Malé to be shut down.
The fifth demand of the protesters was to stop the Government’s frantic attempts to open alcohol sellers in some of the inhabited islands of this country. We have a law that prohibits sale of alcohol in any inhabited island, which limits alcohol sellers to resorts where only tourists are allowed them. However, the government has for a long time tried to walk around the law, by declaring land plots on inhabited islands reserved for tourist hotels to be “separate islands”, with the obvious intention of removing the legal barrier to sell alcohol in them.
Do we have the right not to keep idols on our lands? Yes, by all means. Do we have the right to defend the punishment of flogging that we mete out to convicted fornicators and adulterers? Yes, by all means. Do we have the right not to be friends with Israel? Yes, by all means. Do we have the right to prohibit prostitution among us? Yes, by all means? Do we have the right not to sell alcohol among our people? Yes, by all means.
Do any of these violate the rights of other nations in the world? No! Absolutely not! Do any of them terrorize other peoples on earth? No! Absolutely not! Yet, for making these demands, the Maldivian government labeled the protesters as terrorists. Sad, tragic, even funny and amusing, but not surprising! They just hate Islam too much to be able to see reason and justice.
Over the week following the mass protest, the MDP Government behaved in a disgusting manner with regards to the rightful demands of the people; instead of going into the details which would take pages, I would just say this and no more: the Government and ruling Party leaders have sunk so low in mocking Islam and Muslims in this country, that it is no longer possible for human beings to communicate with them.
Islam is the Solution to Our Problems
The USA has an annual income reaching 14.5 trillion dollars. She has about 5760 universities and colleges, and a large number of them are ranked as top in the world. In addition to the extensive governmental efforts at both federal and state levels, the country has a huge network of NGOs working to prevent crime and protect human rights. The American system provides the best medical, psychological, and sociological expertise in countering criminal activities from an “exclusively scientific” perspective. Their legal system is probably the best that man can do without God.
Still, the results are nowhere near to being satisfactory. While 25% of the world’s total prison population is held in US jails, let us have a glimpse at the records of only a couple of crimes in the country: according to the statistics of the American National Centre for Injury Prevention and Control, 4.8 million women in America suffer sexual or physical or sexual and physical abuse from their husbands or partners ever year, and the system is hugely unresponsive to the situation. According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, 232,960 women were raped in the USA in 2006 six alone. This is 638 rapes per day, 26 per hours, and 2 per five minutes.
We see this as perfect evidence showing that man cannot do without God, His Laws and His Guidance. Therein lies the essential reason why we do not want to monkey the godless philosophies and ideologies of anybody, be it Western or Eastern. We Muslims, with the Islamic Shari’ah, created an age when poverty was eradicated. We created an age when our Caliph stood before our judges on the same stand as the ordinary citizen and was judged absolutely according to the merits of his case. We created an age when a woman among us could and did travel alone from her native city or village across miles and visit the Ka’bah in Makkah without having to have any worries about her safety. When we lived Islam, we created the “gentleman”, we launched the Age of Science, and we taught the world justice, mercy, and human rights.
As such, we the Maldivians have stood up to tell the Islam-haters in our Government that we do not want any “sms” in place of Islam. President Nasheed may think that Islam is “1400 year old ignorance from the desert”, but to us Islam is the solution to all our problems. We are frustrated by the ever-increasing social ills, moral degeneration, and spiritual bankruptcy that godlessness has gradually brought into this society. We have stood up to express our firm resolve not to compromise Islam because we believe it to be the only way of life that can eradicate these evils and give us a society that is spiritually and materially balanced.
The Government and MDP leaders have been shouting at the top of their voices that we are trying to establish a Taliban-style state in this country. They deceitfully tell the foreign media that the mass protest was an extremist, terrorist movement. From their behavior, it is clear that they want their Islam-hating friends in the “international community” to fear us, to loathe us, and to use their economic, political, and military supremacy to force us to subjugate unto their agendas to supplant Islam with false ideologies.
However, the mass protest of 23rd December was a message that we want our own “shining city upon the” waves of the Indian Ocean, lit by the light of God and beautified by the moral and human values of Islam. It shall be a City in which rights of the people are guaranteed and protected without rhetoric, justice and freedom are upheld, and human brotherhood is preached. We want to live with the world peacefully, just as Islam commands, and want the rest of the world to respect our right to self-determination. We shall never agree to compromise Islam and replace it with things such as “moderate Islam”. We believe that these are rightful demands, by all means.
If Islam-hating friends of MDP Government in the President’s Office and the “international community” think that this is barbarism, funny; because we think that continued wars against other nations, bombing and burning of innocent children, women, men and their homes for oil, political hegemony, religious jealousy and racial hatred, exploitation of the poor peoples of the world for economic greed, hypocrisy and double-standards in preaching and practicing human rights, oppressing and terrorizing of nations in the name of democracy, the punishment of imprisonment, the culture of promiscuity, and the culture of godlessness, etc. are the things that are truly barbaric.
The message of 23rd December for the Maldivian Government – controlled by a handful of local Islam-haters and backed by foreign Islam-haters – is this: We love Islam. The propaganda, which draws Islam as terrorist, reactionary, narrow-minded, oppressive of women etc. are dirty lies that we shall not fall for. The MDP Administration is foolish to think that they can, by filing complaints with the Islam-hating forces of the world, cow us into forsaking Islam and turning our backs on God. We shall not blacken our souls and become ingrates who deny the Love and ni’mah of God for trophies such as bridges, towers, and skyscrapers.
The base of this mass protest was Malé, the capital of the country. Dutifully abiding by the laws that prohibit protests in a way that would cause disturbances and disruptions to everyday life in Malé, the protesters gathered in the large open area at the eastern shore of the island, which is as far as one can get from the daily life of the public in the jam-packed City.
The mass protest, officially called “Maldivians in Defence of Islam”, was organized by the Union of Civil NGOs with the participation of some of the major political parties in the country. In Malé it was lead from a mounted stage-like podium by the leaders of the Union and leaders of the political parties that supported the protest. Prominent among them were Abdullah Muhammad, the Deputy President of the Union, and Sheikh Imran Abdullah, President of Adhaalath Party, who named the area where the protest was held “Victory Square”.
Thousands of Maldivians at the Victory Square proved beyond any shred of doubt that this nation deeply loves Islam. The time for sunset prayer struck while the protest was going on. The adhan was given there, and thousands of men and women did their ablution; some with small bottles of drinking water, and others by stepping down to the shoreline and using seawater. Then began a congregation of prayers that may well have been the largest that the Maldives has ever seen. Ranks upon ranks of the faithful bowed and prostrated before the Lord of the Universe, as the prayer leader repeated – Allah Akbar, God is the Greatest – creating a spiritually charged ambience that reached deeper into the heart than any music ever could.
The Largest Protests So Far
The Associated Press, news wholesalers to international news agencies, reported that the number of protesters was approximately 3000. It is probable that this figure was a deliberate misinformation supplied by the Maldivian Government. It may also have been a more innocent mistake; be that as it may, this was a gross understatement of the total number of protesters.
In reality, nearly 100,000 people across the Maldives came out for the mass protest. This figure was provided by the Union of Civil NGOs, which headed the organization of the protest. In Malé, more than 20,000 people gathered in the Victory Square according to the estimates of the Union.
An Inspector at the Maldives Police Service revealed to us, on condition of anonymity, that the official figure the Police had recorded in Malé was set at nearly 24,000, an independent count which implies, at the superficial level, that the Union’s estimate was very conservative at best. This number turned out after and during, we should not forget, the Maldivian Government’s relentless propaganda against the protest and its organizers, accompanied with threats and press releases, state-sanctioned bullying, and constant labeling of protest organizers, supporters, and sympathizers as extremists, terrorists, murderers, etc.
Throughout the last decade, we have seen demonstrations organized by the governments of the day and opposition sides, may be more than a couple of hundreds of them. However, we have seen nothing like this. In Malé, we have rarely seen even 5,000 people gather in a protest before this. The mass protest on the 23rd of December was simply the largest mass demonstrations that this country has seen, as far as recorded history tells.
Why Couldn't They Digest?
The Union of Civil NGOs and those who worked with them announced the mass protest approximately a month before 23rd December. Interestingly, but not entirely surprisingly, the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) started an instant campaign against the protest.
The Union did not announce a rebellion to overthrow the Maldivian Government. It was not a protest against MDP. From the very beginning, it was made very clear that 23rd December would be a day for the Maldivians to express their disapproval of the Government’s unrepentant disregard and disrespect of Islam. The Maldivian people have watched their Government install what they believe to be heathen idols on their soil, its contempt and disregard of the Noble Qur’an, its frantic efforts to establish ties with the terrorist state of Zionist Israel blindly ignoring the latter’s continued violence against the beloved, oppressed people of Palestine. The mass protest was organized to tell the Government and the world that the Maldivians did not approve of these policies.
Why should MDP then come out tooth and nail against the protest?
MDP, the de facto ruling party of the Maldives, and its Government continued taking measure after measure to upset the planned protest. One such act was summoning the organizers of the protest to the Committee on National Security of the People’s Majlis. The Committee is one of the Standing Committees in Parliament whose majority is held by MDP. Preposterous questions, such as whether the protest was supported by the now-deposed Taliban of Afghanistan, were put before the organizers by the leading figures of MDP sitting in the Committee.
It did not stop at the Committee on National Security. The MDP Administration kept on making all kinds of baseless accusations against the protest organizers. According to them, the protesters were extremists, terrorists, murderers, and much, much worse.
Not a week after the announcement for the mass protest, a message containing death threats against “enemies of Islam” were posted on a special website launched by the protest organizers. The government desperately tried to capitalize on this and prove to the whole country and the whole world that the protest was a movement of murderous Muslim fanatics. The organizers denied the accusations against them, and repeatedly said that the messages were the doing of hackers. The greatest proof of their truthfulness was that they never, either before or after the appearance of the said messages, encouraged or perpetrated violence. They always promised a peaceful protest and fulfilled their promise. Furthermore, the fact that the website was hacked and vandalized a total of five times in the week leading up to the 23rd of December gave testament to the poor security measures the webmaster had implemented.
After trying to use all kinds of political pressure against the protest, MDP finally announced a “strong counter-protest” on the same day, at the same time, based on a decision of its Council. This resolve naturally created fears of a bloody collision. It was too much even for some of the leaders of MDP (though they were a handful), who spoke against the decision asking about the purpose for which MDP should go so far against a protest intended at protecting Islam.
MDP leaders later decided that they would hold “a gathering” as opposed to a demonstration, leaving many people wondering what on earth that would mean. Obviously, neither did the handful of dissenting members among MDP leadership understand what that meant, as we never heard them agree with the new idea of “a gathering that would not be a demonstration”.
In retrospect, all dissenting opinions within the MDP had either been quelled—or the dissenters had given up their symbolic opposition to the Council decision.
MDP’s “gathering” against the mass protest was held several hundreds of yards away from the Victory Square, in the Artificial Beach, which also lies along the eastern coast of Malé. President Nasheed, despite calls from all quarters of the country, was present at the “gathering” of not more than 1,500 people. Addressing the paltry crowd, he accused the protesters of demanding for such things as allowing marriage of 9 year old girls, female genital cutting, and the practice of having concubines; most probably the first things to pop into his head when the word "Islam" is mentioned. Thus, he demonstrated how little he knew about Islam, and how little he cared about understanding what Islam was about. What most of us overlooked, in the first shock, was that he also blatantly misrepresented the protesters’ positions and demands with his diatribe.
The organization of the mass protest continued for about a month, and the protest itself continued from around 4 pm until about 12 midnight on the 23rd of December. Never was there such a call as claimed by the President in his speech, from any of the organizers of the protest or from any protesters. Why would our President tell such a big lie? Doesn’t he know that lying is very, very bad?
It should be noted that MDP's "gathering" was styled as a call for "Moderate Islam". I do not intend to go into the details of what that is, for it would make this article, which is already of a burdensome length, even longer. Suffice it to say that the tag of "Moderate Islam" was in itself a direct attack on the religion of Islam, among many other such attacks by the Maldivian Government with the support of their Islam-hating friends; and that President Nasheed and his friends are grossly mistaken if they think God needs them to edit His religion!!
The “gathering” of MDP at Artificial Beach began at the same time as the mass protest, but it was disbanded only after little more than an hour and a half.
On the other hand, the mass protest continued for some eight hours. All the while, Channel One of MNBC went on waging a blind and deceitful war of propaganda against the mass protest. They shamelessly aired wrong information about the number of the protesters, misrepresented their purposes, and continued spreading lies such as the claim that the protesters were, in exasperation, preparing to burn down the houses of government officials.
MNBC, or the Maldives National Broadcasting Corporation, is a Government corporation that illegally continues to hold onto and operate the State Television and Radio by the use of lawless force, in direct violation of statutory law. The corporation is run and directed by a group of MDP activists and pro-government individuals, whose common, and usually only, qualification is having a colorful history of Maumoon-bashing. While the other television networks in the country were covering the protest, as a newsworthy event and in full detail, the MNBC One had set President Nasheed’s speech at MDP’s counter-protest “gathering” from that evening on loop.
A Scene of Crime
At about 11 pm during the night of the protest, while still the mass protest was ongoing, MDP leaders and a crowd of activists gathered at the Party Activity Centre at Ameenee Magu. In the gathering, MDP leaders thundered from the soapbox, issuing repeated warnings against the protesters from within the Activity Centre, giving ultimata and threatening to attack them and break their ranks with violent force if the protest continued beyond midnight. They threatened to conduct a counter-protest that even the Police would not be able to control. Specific threats against the lives and property of some of the leaders of the mass protest were frequent, and while MDP leaders all sounded extremely hateful, furious and violent, Interim Chairperson Moosa “Reeko” Manik was a step ahead, as usual.
According to Haveeru Daily, one of the leading news agencies in the country, a turbaned gentleman passed by the MDP Activity Centre while this gathering was going on. Haveeru reporters described MDP activists running at him, attacking and bringing him down.
Why, one may ask.
A turban is sometimes worn in this country by people who claim to strictly adhere to the Sunnah of the Noble Messenger Muhammad peace and blessings be upon him. From what little information we have, it is possible that the man may have been a Sikh or one of the Brelavi missionaries operating in that area of the island, with the permission of President Nasheed to do so, with absolutely no connection to the protest. The poor gentleman, who was an innocent passerby for all anyone could see then and there, was attacked by MDP activists obviously because he seemed to them to have been a possible sympathizer of the mass protest. This attack reminds us of the ones in the US during the months that followed 9/11.
The incident was not reported by any other news agency, and any word of it may have been immediately quelled. The identity of this gentleman remains unknown.
Strangely, and somewhat amusingly, after all the said terrorist threats against the peaceful protesters, and the barbaric, terrorist attack on an unsuspecting civilian, Imtiaz Fahmy, an MDP parliamentarian and senior leader of the party, who spoke at this gathering had the nerve to yell the words, “we do not communicate with terrorists”. Terrorists—a reference to the religious-conservative protesters who had not yet broken out into a frenzy of threatening violence and bloodshed that MDP was already displaying.
Who are the Real Terrorists?
On the night of 27th December, MDP activists kidnapped the Minister of Finance Ahmed Inaaz, and took him by force to the Party Activity Centre at Ameeny Magu. There, tens of them surrounded him harassed, terrorized, and bullied him, and gravely violated his constitutional rights to personal security, dignity, freedom of movement, etc. They prevented onlookers, including a handful of police officers, from helping him. They swore at him with the most foul and obscene words and phrases that Divehi language can offer. The Minister, who had been criticized for being blindly docile to the President and his Party and negligent of the real interests of the nation, was thus humiliated, disgraced, and terrorized by MDP activists in an exceedingly shameful manner. His crime? They spotted him in a car conversing with an opposition leader.
If such use of violence and intimidation to achieve MDP’s political goals, to express their unprincipled hatred of opposition politicians, and to give vent to their uncontrolled rage at people who get on the wrong side when dealing with them, cannot be defined as terrorism; then nothing can.
Since organization of the mass protest began, the MDP Administration frequently called the protest organizers, sympathizers and supporters "terrorists". Why would such a term be necessary? The Maldivians were never known for their support of ideologies that advocated violence. The pulpits of the Maldivian mosques, if President Nasheed ever visited them, would only confirm a message of peace, human brotherhood, deep thought and devotion. Two isolated incidents have marred our record: a botched bombing at Sultan Park; and a video, made in Pakistan, of a proud suicide bomber making a farewell speech before he headed to his death. But these were only isolated events that should not, as any man of reason and justice would agree, be used to draw a general picture of Maldivian Muslims. What remains, then, to warrant the MDP Administration’s description of Maldivian Muslims as terrorists? Is it their expressed love and adherence of Islam, or their disapproval of the Government’s continued mockery of Islam? Or is it simply the fact that they are Muslims?
Being called terrorists is nothing new for Muslims. We have heard that artless, boring, hateful song for a very long time. The Westerners, who have backed the MDP Government, have led this campaign of vilifying Muslims, ironically forgetting that it was they who perpetrated such terrorist, murderous, genocidal crimes such as the crusades, the inquisition, the reformation violence, the witch-hunts, the Christian Identity Movement, the conquests of the New World, the Atlantic Slave Trade, the two great World Wars, the attacks on Japan with atomic bombs, and the Bosnian Genocide. We Muslims have not bombed nations, burned children, and destroyed innocent lives for oil, economic and political hegemony, racist hatred, and religious jealousy. We Muslims have not operated ghettoes, pogroms, concentration camps, open-air prisons, Abu Ghuraibs and Guantanamo Bays. Those among us who breach Islam and do such things are almost always the friends of the enemies of Islam.
While the MDP Administration has had the nerve to accuse Maldivian Muslims of terrorism, it is another irony that they are apparently desperate in establishing a friendly relationship with the murderous, genocidal, and terrorist state of Israel. The government has made its willingness to establish diplomatic ties with Israel very clear. The President himself and ministers of his Government talked about “stronger relations with Israel to be favorable to Maldivian interests” during September 2009, according to a diplomatic cable leaked by the whistleblower Wikileaks in 2011. A secret visit of Israeli ambassador to India to the Maldives and a trip to Israel by the then defence Minister Ameen Faisal deceptively put forth as a trip to Amman, Jordan, during the 2009, were incidents showing how the Government tried to develop an illicit relationship with Israel behind the backs of the Maldivian people.
The Maldivian delegation to the 36th General Conference of the UNESCO left the meeting before 31st of October, the day during the Conference which was set to see a vote to grant full membership to Palestine. Having left the Conference just before the vote, the MDP Administration did not give the same excuse for the decision twice; proving not only that this was a calculated decision to uphold Israeli interests, but also that they did not care at all about what the Muslims in the Maldives, Palestine, and elsewhere would feel or think about it. The fact that a diplomatic cable leaked by Wikileaks had told us, some months before the vote, that there was an understanding between the Maldives and the USA, whereby the Maldives agreed to be absent in cases where it had to choose between Israel and Palestine in votes at the UN, should not be overlooked.
Israel is a nation with an unusually bloody history of terrorizing and murdering innocent civilians and a notorious record of violating international laws. From the King David Massacre, to the Sabra and Shatila, the Deir Yasin, and the Gaza War, Israeli massacres, state terrorism, and war crimes against the Palestinians are a shame on humanity itself. The United Nations has passed resolutions criticizing and condemning Israeli aggression against and violation of the rights of Palestinians and neighboring countries such as Lebanon and Syria, more than the Organization has against all other countries in the world combined. UN Security Council alone passed 79 resolutions against Israel by January 2010, for violating the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions, and tens of other international conventions on terrorism, war and aggression, and human rights.
Yet, the MDP Government has shown a special interest in becoming friends with Israel. Possibly, they are under some kind of delusion as to the truth about the terrorist State of Israel, probably due to their more-than-once displayed contempt for Islam, Muslims, and Arabs. It is also probable that what we see here is a natural connection between those who hate Islam. The bottom line is, it was a bad joke when the Maldivian Government accused the protesters in defence of Islam of terrorism.
A Lesson for MDP
The mass protest conducted by Maldivians to express their deep love of Islam on the 23rd of December was, by all standards, exemplary.
It was by far the biggest demonstrations that the country has seen. While nearly a 100,000 people (about 33% of the Maldivian population) took to streets and squares in almost all the islands of the archipelago, in Malé alone, almost 24000 people (about 25% of the City’s population) gathered at the Victory Square.
The protest continued for 8 hours, from 4 pm to 12 midnight. About 20 leaders of the protest, belonging to the Union of Civil NGOs and a number of political parties, addressed the crowd. Criticism and strong disapproval of the MDP Government was voiced out, naturally and justifiably, for its Islam-hating policies. However, we heard no words of abuse or hatred against any Government figures or anyone for that matter.
The Government had repeatedly accused the protesters of having murderous, terrorist intentions. However, not a single call for such activities was heard, either from the podium of protest leaders, or from among the thousands of protesters. Not a single person demanded any kind or degree of violence against the persons, property, or liberty of any. The mass protest which, if it moved, would have, in the words of an Inspector at the Maldives Police Officer “broken our ranks and gone as far as they wished, and done anything that they willed” began, continued, and ended in perfect peace and harmony. Islam means “peace” and the mass protest was a very good live-up to that ideal.
This came in stark contrast with the protests that MDP has conducted during the last decade. Warnings against the person, property and liberty of anybody they see as a hindrance to their agendas, threats of death and painful vengeance against the leaders of former government, mockery and shameful ridicule of anyone who opposes them, foul and obscene language against anyone they hate, are characteristic of MDP protests.
One perfect example was seen on the 20th of October 2011. MDP activists, led by some of their prominent leaders and parliamentarians and in compliance with a Party Council Resolution passed that very day, broke express provisions of the country’s laws in gathering right in front of the Supreme Court to protest. Utterance of obscene words, threats against the judges, and furious yelling went on for more than an hour. MDP has always portrayed this outright violation of the country’s laws as a “struggle to reform the nation’s judiciary”. However, the obvious reality was that it was a cowardly attempt to exert undue influence through intimidation on an ongoing court hearing involving one of MDP parliamentarians.
After the said hearing came to a close for the day around 4:30 pm, MDP activists left the Supreme Court area and marched their way to the gates of Enderimaage, the private residence of Maumoon Abdul Qayyoom, former President of the Maldives. They attacked Enderimaage, threw stones and logs at the house and caused much damage to the property, and terrorized the residents of the house. The Government took absolutely no action to stop them. Death threats like “we shall cut you into pieces with machetes” were repeatedly heard. I myself saw them, and heard them uttering terrible threats, and obscene words, repeating which in public would be against the moral laws of decency.
The barbaric and shameful attack by MDP activists against Ahmed Inaaz, the Minister of Finance, and of which I have spoken earlier, was another example that shows the mentality at the core of this party.
On the morning of 24th December, the day following the mass protest, I had my breakfast with a friend of mine, who told me that “the mass protest of 23rd December was a very valuable lesson for MDP on how to conduct protests and oppose that which they do not accept”. How very right he was.
Salute the MPS
The Maldives Police Services did an excellent job in keeping order in Malé on 23rd December. The protesters faced no objection from the police whatsoever when they attended the Victory Square, and the Police were seen very much considerate and mindful of the rights of the people. It was a heart-warming seen, to say the least.
When the counter-protest “gathering” held by MDP at Artificial beach was over at about 5:30 pm, a group of MDP activists marched towards the Victory Square, swearing and uttering foul and obscene words and shouting out warnings. However, the Police, seeing an inevitable clash, stopped them and refused to let them pass the police barrier lines. Had the Police let them into the Victory Square, they would, almost definitely, have started bloodshed.
Ordinary Members of MDP Love Islam
What became clear on the 23rd, when President Nasheed and about 1500 of MDP members gathered at Artificial Beach, was that the ordinary members of the party were not on the side of the leaders. The Media described MDP’s “gathering” as the weakest MDP demonstrations ever. Moreover, a large number of MDP members were seen at the Mass Protest wearing t-shirts, carrying placards, and wearing head-bands expressing Islamic slogans, and calling Allah Akbar.
Of the people who were at MDP’s “gathering”, a huge majority wore Islamic dresses and chanted slogans expressing their love of Islam, proving that they were not against Islam but merely caught in the web of the Government’s deceptive lies denying their agendas against Islam. What did MDP leaders think? That those people would never realize the truth about their deception and their deep hatred of Islam? If so, then it is folly, although history shows us that it is not an uncommon folly among men.
Demands of the Protesters
The Mass Protest was held against the Maldivian Government’s continued, and evidently calculated, disrespect, disregard, and derision of Islam. The protesters repeatedly and clearly stated that all they wanted was the Government to change their policies. The protesters read out 5 demands on the Victory Square, each of them justified, and none of them violating any of our friendly nations or peoples of the wider world or any international laws that is binding upon the Maldives.
The first demand was to cleanse Addu City of what we Muslims believe to be idolatrous statues of false gods (I do not have any intention of hurting non-Muslims who take them to be divine) which the government had placed there during last November, allegedly as memorials of the 17th SAARC Summit. The government’s preferred term is “monument”. Religious figures of the country tried from the very first day to convince the Government on the basis of the Noble Quran, the Sunnah, and the 1400 year-old consensus of the Muslim scholarship that placing these idols in the midst of Muslims violated the very basis of Islam; the belief that there is no god except Allah. Muslim scholars explained to the Government that installation of the said idols amounted to association of false deities with Allah, and that any recognition whatsoever of any other deity amounts to outright rejection of Islamic monotheism.
When the idols of false gods became an issue, the Government kept on speaking in multiple tongues. First they said that the “monuments” were installed by SAARC nations. How they could ever think that any sensible Maldivians would believe our friendly nations to be so uncivilized as to force us to do something that is against the basic tenets of our religion is beyond me. The government then said that those “monuments” were installed by Addu City Council and the people of Addu. As people all over the Maldives kept calling and pleading for the removal of those idols, a prominent leader of MDP shouted back at the people with these words: “there the idols are, we have installed them at Addu City, we shall place more of them, what the hell can you do about it?”
The second demand by the protesters was for President Nasheed to apologize for and denounce the mockery of the Islamic Shari’ah ruling against adultery and fornication by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms. Navanethem “Navi” Pillay. It is only fair to ask why the people should require President Nasheed to apologize for something that Ms. Navi Pillay did.
The lady came here, broke diplomatic discipline and etiquette, and challenged our Constitution. Living under our roof and enjoying our hospitality, she played “Robert Spencer” and attacked and mocked the Book that we believe is the Sacred Word of God. Careful consideration of the matter from any angle shows that Ms. Navi Pillay would not do what she did unless she was under instruction from the Maldivian Government. The demand for President Nasheed to apologize for the barbaric and intellectually baseless attacks on Islam by Ms. Navi Pillay was made, therefore, on the reasonable assumption that she was just an instrument used by the Government.
Do the Jews have the right to live in peace in the world? Absolutely yes! Do the Zionists have the right to oppress, enslave, loot, arrest, imprison, hurt, humiliate, assault, terrorize and murder our Palestinian Muslim brothers and sisters? Absolutely NO! That is why we Maldivians have always refused to have anything to do with Israel. It is not because we hate Jews or because we deny anyone’s human rights. Indeed, we differentiate between the Jews and Zionists. Our religion, despite what Islam-haters would blindly insist and ignorant Muslims would wrongly assume, does not ask us to hate anybody. The Maldivian government spat on the already bloodied, innocent faces of millions of Palestinian children, women, and men when they decided to welcome the Israeli El Al airline to this country. That is why the protesters’ third demand was to stop this outrage.
The fourth demand of the protesters was for the Government to close down the whorehouses in the guise of massage parlours that are disgracing Malé, our capital. These houses of evil, where immoral, profane and godless sins are perpetrated are even against human rights. It is reasonably suspected that human trafficking is committed in supplying girls to work in these dark places from countries like Thailand, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The chapter on the risk of STDs including AIDS that these places has brought into our society is another, very long, chapter that I do not intend to open here.
The world is full of whorehouses; Those who want to have such places among them, and do not feel any guilt in using women in such a degraded manner, may do so. We the Maldivian Muslims do not have any plans to burn them down and kill the people who run them. But we DO have the right to refuse such evil places to be operated in our country. They are Black Holes that suck any moral and spiritual life that is still left in this nation. That is why we rightfully demanded whorehouses in Malé to be shut down.
The fifth demand of the protesters was to stop the Government’s frantic attempts to open alcohol sellers in some of the inhabited islands of this country. We have a law that prohibits sale of alcohol in any inhabited island, which limits alcohol sellers to resorts where only tourists are allowed them. However, the government has for a long time tried to walk around the law, by declaring land plots on inhabited islands reserved for tourist hotels to be “separate islands”, with the obvious intention of removing the legal barrier to sell alcohol in them.
Do we have the right not to keep idols on our lands? Yes, by all means. Do we have the right to defend the punishment of flogging that we mete out to convicted fornicators and adulterers? Yes, by all means. Do we have the right not to be friends with Israel? Yes, by all means. Do we have the right to prohibit prostitution among us? Yes, by all means? Do we have the right not to sell alcohol among our people? Yes, by all means.
Do any of these violate the rights of other nations in the world? No! Absolutely not! Do any of them terrorize other peoples on earth? No! Absolutely not! Yet, for making these demands, the Maldivian government labeled the protesters as terrorists. Sad, tragic, even funny and amusing, but not surprising! They just hate Islam too much to be able to see reason and justice.
Over the week following the mass protest, the MDP Government behaved in a disgusting manner with regards to the rightful demands of the people; instead of going into the details which would take pages, I would just say this and no more: the Government and ruling Party leaders have sunk so low in mocking Islam and Muslims in this country, that it is no longer possible for human beings to communicate with them.
Islam is the Solution to Our Problems
The USA has an annual income reaching 14.5 trillion dollars. She has about 5760 universities and colleges, and a large number of them are ranked as top in the world. In addition to the extensive governmental efforts at both federal and state levels, the country has a huge network of NGOs working to prevent crime and protect human rights. The American system provides the best medical, psychological, and sociological expertise in countering criminal activities from an “exclusively scientific” perspective. Their legal system is probably the best that man can do without God.
Still, the results are nowhere near to being satisfactory. While 25% of the world’s total prison population is held in US jails, let us have a glimpse at the records of only a couple of crimes in the country: according to the statistics of the American National Centre for Injury Prevention and Control, 4.8 million women in America suffer sexual or physical or sexual and physical abuse from their husbands or partners ever year, and the system is hugely unresponsive to the situation. According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, 232,960 women were raped in the USA in 2006 six alone. This is 638 rapes per day, 26 per hours, and 2 per five minutes.
We see this as perfect evidence showing that man cannot do without God, His Laws and His Guidance. Therein lies the essential reason why we do not want to monkey the godless philosophies and ideologies of anybody, be it Western or Eastern. We Muslims, with the Islamic Shari’ah, created an age when poverty was eradicated. We created an age when our Caliph stood before our judges on the same stand as the ordinary citizen and was judged absolutely according to the merits of his case. We created an age when a woman among us could and did travel alone from her native city or village across miles and visit the Ka’bah in Makkah without having to have any worries about her safety. When we lived Islam, we created the “gentleman”, we launched the Age of Science, and we taught the world justice, mercy, and human rights.
As such, we the Maldivians have stood up to tell the Islam-haters in our Government that we do not want any “sms” in place of Islam. President Nasheed may think that Islam is “1400 year old ignorance from the desert”, but to us Islam is the solution to all our problems. We are frustrated by the ever-increasing social ills, moral degeneration, and spiritual bankruptcy that godlessness has gradually brought into this society. We have stood up to express our firm resolve not to compromise Islam because we believe it to be the only way of life that can eradicate these evils and give us a society that is spiritually and materially balanced.
The Government and MDP leaders have been shouting at the top of their voices that we are trying to establish a Taliban-style state in this country. They deceitfully tell the foreign media that the mass protest was an extremist, terrorist movement. From their behavior, it is clear that they want their Islam-hating friends in the “international community” to fear us, to loathe us, and to use their economic, political, and military supremacy to force us to subjugate unto their agendas to supplant Islam with false ideologies.
However, the mass protest of 23rd December was a message that we want our own “shining city upon the” waves of the Indian Ocean, lit by the light of God and beautified by the moral and human values of Islam. It shall be a City in which rights of the people are guaranteed and protected without rhetoric, justice and freedom are upheld, and human brotherhood is preached. We want to live with the world peacefully, just as Islam commands, and want the rest of the world to respect our right to self-determination. We shall never agree to compromise Islam and replace it with things such as “moderate Islam”. We believe that these are rightful demands, by all means.
If Islam-hating friends of MDP Government in the President’s Office and the “international community” think that this is barbarism, funny; because we think that continued wars against other nations, bombing and burning of innocent children, women, men and their homes for oil, political hegemony, religious jealousy and racial hatred, exploitation of the poor peoples of the world for economic greed, hypocrisy and double-standards in preaching and practicing human rights, oppressing and terrorizing of nations in the name of democracy, the punishment of imprisonment, the culture of promiscuity, and the culture of godlessness, etc. are the things that are truly barbaric.
The message of 23rd December for the Maldivian Government – controlled by a handful of local Islam-haters and backed by foreign Islam-haters – is this: We love Islam. The propaganda, which draws Islam as terrorist, reactionary, narrow-minded, oppressive of women etc. are dirty lies that we shall not fall for. The MDP Administration is foolish to think that they can, by filing complaints with the Islam-hating forces of the world, cow us into forsaking Islam and turning our backs on God. We shall not blacken our souls and become ingrates who deny the Love and ni’mah of God for trophies such as bridges, towers, and skyscrapers.
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