For 30 years, former autocratic ruler President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom successfully sold the idea of a 100% Sunni Muslim nation to ensure conformity. Educated in the Al-Azhar University in Egypt, Gayoom also introduced an Arabised version of Islam, putting an end to several-centuries-old traditions and customs practised as part of the Sufi-style folk Islam prevalent in the atolls until then. However, despite often employing religion in his politics, Gayoom was widely considered a religious moderate. For decades, he cracked down on hard-line interpretations of Islam; some preachers would later claim to have been tortured in his prisons, with at least one of them getting his beard shaved off with chilli sauce used as a substitute for shaving cream.
Ironically, when the media found itself a little freer towards the end of the Gayoom regime, the once-silenced extremists suddenly found a podium and a sympathetic audience. Riding the wave of anti-Gayoom sentiment, formerly incarcerated firebrand preachers, such as Sheikh Ibrahim Fareed, began addressing massive congregation of thousands. The countrys new constitution, prepared at a volatile atmosphere charged with religious rhetoric, explicitly decreed that only Sunni Muslims could become citizens of the new republic. The current government then introduced the Ministry of Islamic Affairs to supersede the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs, and handed control over to the religiously conservative Adhaalath Party which is now no longer a part of the coalition government, but still exerts control over the Ministry. And in a taste of things to come, the government ushered in its first New Year with a ban on local DJs and several local websites, which it deemed anti-Islamic.
If Gayoom planted the seeds of religious intolerance, the harvest is now in full bloom under President Mohamed Nasheed's government. Controversial preachers like Bilal Philips and Zair Naik, who have been turned away from other shores, were brought in to preach at heavily publicised and nationally televised public lectures. Where there was once a vague fear of Christian missionaries, there is now a full-blown paranoia and open hostility towards non-Muslims, visible in the form of a strong backlash to the mildest of provocations. In October 2010, an expatriate school teacher was forced to move off an island after parents complained of a 'cross-shape' the teacher had drawn on the blackboard. (The drawing turned out to be of a compass.) Earlier this year, an Indian teacher was deported after a rosary was discovered among his personal possessions. And as late as a week ago, monuments erected in Addu City to commemorate the recently concluded 17th SAARC Summit were petrol-bombed, torched and destroyed amidst allegations that the ancient Indus Valley seals gifted by Pakistan and the lion, the Sri Lankan national symbol, were idols of worship.
