Dear moderately religious reader

Let me just say this outright and get it out of the way. There will be a terrorist attack of unprecedented level on our sovereign nation lead by our very own Dhivehin in the very near future if we keep ignoring and do nothing about the warnings that are staring blankly at our face.

The identity of our country is changing rapidly. We can see that today. This is definitely not the Dhivehi Raaje of a decade ago - perhaps even less. One of the ugliest faces of organized religion is here, infecting our gullible minds, creating unthinking, unfeeling zombies out of our very own people. And the moderates among us are still sitting on their rearends pointing their hypocritical fingers at something else and looking the other way.

I know what you are thinking, dear moderately religious reader. You are thinking that at least you are on a path even though you may not be on the right path fully. The right path being what the ultra-conservative religious fanatics say what the right path is. You don’t have the balls to get up and question or challenge these ideologies. In fact, you realize you don’t know much about religion and therefore whatever crackpot ideas and bullshit stories that they spit out, you are ready to either believe them or just let them be as long as they don’t meddle with your freedoms. I have news for you, my friend. It is their business to meddle with your freedom. But where do these crackpot ideas come from?

Sermon after sermon is given on TV and radio by hetherto unknown faces day in and day out! Some of the bullshit they dribble from their brains is not even qualified to be on the MAD magazine! And yet, there it is. Qiyaamath this, rasool that, naraka this, suvaruge that! Endless madness! And it is always a one-way thing. No one, not ONE attending person has ever, EVER raised a question - let alone challenged these utterly ridiculous stories. We don’t need these one-way sermons. We need real debates. That’s what democracy is about. It’s not about listening like imbeciles to hour after hour of tales from Arabia.

I have a feeling we Dhivehin just love to listen to pretentious wise-old men talking and telling tall tales. Maybe it is something from the holuashi days. Anyway, let me continue.

Here is a real moderate’s opinion of today’s situation:

“I don’t think killing people and going on jihad are allowed in Islam”#1

This was a quote from none other than the president of the Human Rights Commission, Mr. Saleem. This quote demonstrates exactly what I am talking about very clearly and very concisely.

The point is, no one is sure. Everyone’s in the dark. Mr. Saleem is definitely in the dark and there is no light-bulb in sight! We are just sort of nodding to everything.

Jihad is loving your neighbour. Ah, yes, yes. Jihad is not about killing. Ah, right, right. Jihad is killing all infidels. Oh, ok. Jihad is a struggle. Ah, yes, lets struggle. Jihad was a minister. Oh?

And commission member Ahmed Abdul Kareem (isn’t this the guy on the Music is Haraam video?) likes to pass the blame around to the previous government. And then he transforms into one of those wise-old sermon weilding men I mentioned earlier. Select religious sermon voice-type.

“…jihad is carried out for a very noble purpose and it cannot be done just for the sake of doing it.”#2

Excuse me, sir. But whose idea of “noble purpose” are you talking about? Why are you telling this to us?

What is wrong with these people? They sound like they want to powder up their own asses and leave. Nine Maldivians getting arrested in possession of arms in a highly radicalized region of Pakistan should be considered a disaster of collosal proportions for a country that absolutely depends on the Euro-dollar from tourism. We don’t have the volume of people and resources that, say, Sri Lanka has to survive and support and economy even under terrorism’s dark shadow. When terrorism arrives and tourism is gone, we will be gone. It is no time to pass on blame or to give one’s definition of or opinions of Islamic ideologies.

And yet, look at us. Look at you, dear moderately religious reader. Sipping your coffees, pretending to think. What have you done to challenge radicalization lately?

So what’s a confused country to do? We don’t know whether we should be taking the infidel’s beer money or not. We’re not sure whether sheikh so-and-so is right and sheikh was-and-now is not. The reality is that religion, especially Islam, has become a cancerous disease that is mutating a resistance to every anti-biotic thrown at it. And for people like you, dear moderately religious reader, there is no escaping it either.

The outlook, the way I see it, is horrible. We lack a reliable security service, we lack proper jail facilities, we lack expertise in terrorism, we lack laws that will protect individuals: witnesses and opinion formers (private individuals, parliamentarians and commissioners etc), we have infected our constitution with religion on someone’s whim. I am afraid to think the bleak future of our nation: rampant ignorance, gullibility and the diseases of organized militant religion - especially since we are in the neighbourhood of some of the most dangerous countries in the world.

For a start, let us define traitors and bring some nationalism back. Let us love our country before we love our religion. Let us then, by law, condemn Maldivian-Islamic militants as traitors to the nation.

But I suppose, we’ll hear about your definition of jihad now, eh dear moderately religious reader?