The beginning of Extremism in Maldives

Maldives, an island nation is surrounded by neighbours with a numerous ethnic and religious conflicts. Maldives is a purely Islamic nation but not Islamic state. However, Islam is considered as a state religion. A Maldivian has to be a Muslim according to the recently revised Constitution. Islam has played a huge part of day to day life of a Maldivian citizen. Years ago, it can be viewed that there was homogeneity in the religion where the faith and belief were intertwined to the traditions and customs of the Maldivian society. The reason for this may be because the society had fewer accesses to the outer world or government interfered in the religious affairs. However, things started changing when Maldives started experiencing the aspects of modernity and foreign influences. While a section of society accepted the western values and ideology, others opposed this and attached themselves with the religion. They also started using the traditions of Islam (also hadith and Qur’an) to oppose the views of so called foreigners. They sort of started finding evidences from traditions to strengthen their stands. However, Maldivians do not speak Arabic language and if I am not wrong there are less than 10% who can understand Arab language. Hence, the group of people who themselves termed as a ‘revivalist’ or ‘traditionalists’ interpreted the verses and hadith according to their motives. Most of them educated in neighbouring India, Pakistan, and Malaysia or in Middle East. One of my lecturers, Irfan Ahmad wrote in one of his articles that ‘the interpretation of Qur’an has a many limit and the meaning often influence ‘the condition and the biography of the person reading the text’. This happened in Maldivian society as well. When government started losing its power and power vested it in the so called civil societies, various groups calling for implementation of rights emerged. As consequences of this, people started interpreting the hadiths and radically these interpretations were purely human made. On the other hand, Maldivian society accepted these views blindly because some lack the knowledge or some are too lazy to do research or some can be easily brain washed due to their grievances. Eickelman (2000) argued that religion can retain its influence only by conforming to norms such as ‘rationality’ and ‘relativism’, accepting secularization and making compromises with science, economic concerns and the state. He also contended that the clash of civilisation within other religion is not between the West and homogeneous other but it is between the rival carriers of tradition within the same nations and civilisation.
My point is that it is not a time to blame each other neither time to expose ourselves, but it is time to find the social evils existing in our society and rehabilitate before it is too late. Otherwise we will be seeing more September 29 attacks, himandhu incidences and more radicalised brothers and sisters. Islam does not entertain conflicts neither called for Jihad against innocent civilians, however due to the actions of few lunatics the whole society is going to suffer. These people are not trying to implement 7th Century society but they are so radicalised that they are using religion as a weapon to achieve their selfish agenda. We will never want our society to be like our neighbouring societies where everyday thousands are killed in ethnic clashes. Surely we will not tolerate the religious violence in our society when there existed a common faith.