An all too familiar trend emerges in the "peaceful and tolerant" Maldives. "Soldiers storm Maldives mosque," from The Guardian:
More than 50 people have been arrested after hundreds of soldiers besieged a makeshift mosque on one of the small islands that make up the Maldives, it emerged yesterday.
Security forces stormed the Dhar-ul-Khair mosque on Himandhoo island, after a policeman had been captured by "70 masked men" carrying swords and iron rods. In the ensuing battle one soldier suffered head injuries and a policeman lost his hand.
The showdown comes just a week after tourists, including a British couple, were caught in a bomb blast on the capital island Male. Himandhoo is one of the 1,190 islands that make up the tourist paradise of the Maldives and lies 50 miles from Male.
Government officials say that they have become increasingly aware that a section of Himandhoo's population, which numbers just 600, were becoming increasingly radicalised.
"Although the Maldives has practised a peaceful and tolerant Islam we knew of increasing extremism [in Himandhoo] because local resorts were no longer sending tourists there," said Mohammed Shareef, a spokesman for the government.
There always has to be an external factor on which to deflect responsibility. More of that in the final paragraph below:
There have been reports that groups of Maldivians had travelled to Pakistan where they had fallen under the spell of radical preachers. However, Mr Shareef said he saw no "foreign hand at work".
"We are not sure of these things yet. The device in Male was an amateur one. We think it is more local," he said.
The islands are home to 330,000 Sunni Muslims who practise a liberal form of the religion, and authorities said the bomb attack was the first such incident.
Western officials told the Guardian that there were "credible reports of a mosque militia" working in the Maldives.
Political opponents say that President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who has been in power for three decades, has turned a blind eye to the increasing extremism in the Maldives. He has also been criticised for jailing opponents.
Hassan Saeed, the former attorney general who quit his post after he says his warnings about Islamic radicalism were ignored, said: "Although we have a history of moderation the population is not immune from events in Middle East and Iraq."
Update here:
http://www.minivannews.com/news/news.php?id=3718
tourist paradise of the Maldives
How long will that last?
"Although we have a history of moderation the population is not immune from events in Middle East and Iraq."
-- from the article above
The "events" he wishes to allude to are what Muslims, in their breathless list of the world's outrages against Muslims, include "Iraq" and "Palestine" and no doubt, if he thought of it, "Kashmir" and "southern Thailand" and the "hijab ban in French schools" and the "war on Islam" being conducted by big bad America, which so far has spent nearly one trillion dollars trying to do everything it can to keep Iraq in one piece, and "reconstruct" the whole place to boot, and another hundred billion on aid to such places as Egypt, Pakistan, Jordan and, of course, the "Palestinian" territories that since time immemorial have belonged to that "Palestinian people" we hear so much about.
That sentnece cries out for a gloss. Here goes:
"Although we have a history of moderation" means the population considers itself "Muslim" but has no clear idea of what exactly that entails. Most of it is illiterate, and until recent years, the Islma consisted in the main of the rituals of worship, the Five Pillars.
The "population is not immune to events in the Middle East and Iraq" means that some of those easy-going, largely illiterate local Muslims have been subject to the Muslim message disseminated by videocassette, audiocassette, satellite television (Al Jazeera et al.), and of course by the Internet. Muslim missionaries, financed in the end by the Arab money from oil-rich lands, especially from Saudi Arabia, the center of the malevolence, arrive here to spread around money, influence, and Islam -- not an "extremist" Islam, but rather, the full texts of the Islam that has always existed.
In the mosques and madrasas they pay for, and through the imams they choose for those mosques, and those teachers they employ at those madrasas, they make sure that the Muslim men and the boys receive the full message of Islam, the message that stresses the central divide for all of humanity: that between Believer and Infidel. And they do not gloss over, but stress as well, the duty of all Muslims to participate in Jihad, the "struggle" to tear down, in the lands where the Infidels still dominate, all obstacles tothe spread and ultimate dominance of Islam. And then there is that other struggle, within the Lands of Islam, Dar al-Islam, to make sure that Infidels are kept in their place, kept down and kept out.
That is what that sentence really means. And all those Infidel tourists who come, with their easygoing ways, their womenfolk too easily mixing with the men, and of course there is the way they dress, or fail to do so sufficiently, and the way they behave, and the way they...everything. For they are Infidels, yet they do not act as if they are inferior to us, do not look down, do not act cowed. All the more reason to go after them, to put a bomb -- not for the last time - in their midst.
What? Those Infidels bring money, the only real money (the Saudis and other Arabs pay for those mosques and madrasas and propaganda fide, but will not contribute anything to the poorer Muslims outside of that) that the Maldives receives? So what? What does that matter? Does money mean much, when Allah commands otherwise?
Just look at the texts. What does the Qur'an say? What do the most authentic Hadith say? What does the entire life of Muhammad, that Model of Conduct, uswa hasana, that Perfect Man, al-insan al-kamil, say? What do the texts support? Do they support what we now hear from others, in what was referred to as "the Middle East and Iraq" -- those others being the best of people, the true carriers of Islam, the Arabs, whose names we wish to take, whose seventh-century behavior we wish to emulate, whose very essence we wish to inhale, to become, if we can, here in the balmy Maldives, veritable Arabs ourselves.
Or do those texts support the "moderates" and those "reformers" who keep telling us to stop saying subjecting Islam to such critical scrutiny, to stop being so bleak about it, lest that get in the way of their enormous, fantastic, truly impressive proejct of "reform" ("Islam can be anything Muslims want it to be" insists one non-Muslim admirer of the "reform" project)?
Well, let's see.
In the 1350 year history of Islam, can you name a single successful "reformer" of anything in Islam who made it less, rather than more, menacing? Name one. And if you can't do that, then name a single so-called would-be "reformer" now who has managed to effectively offer a single change in the doctrine of Islam, one that has a modicum of textual support, and the hint of a whisp of a chance of being adopoted by other Muslims, and by "other Muslims" I don't mean the hundred other would-be "Muslim reformers" who keep getting those generous government and foundation grants to keep up their all-important (and "truly exciting") reform work.
Go ahead.
List just one example.
....a mosque involved in violence....as is often the case....have you seen other religions places of gathering involved in so many cases of violence as mosques are?....
....mosques are military operations centers....
...this dot goes here...this dot goes here...this dot goes here....pretty easy huh?>...
"Although we have a history of moderation the population is not immune from events in Middle East and Iraq."
Huh? No wonder the entire ummah is such a mess-this bunch has to use events far from home that don't even remotely affect them as an excuse to cause trouble. Lame beyond belief!
From article: The islands are home to 330,000 Sunni Muslims who practice a liberal form of the religion...
I did not know there was such a thing as a 'liberal form' of Islam. Maybe on a small Island there is no one to jihad against. But I can see where the 'liberal form' of Islam is getting them in trouble.
They had no jihad, so they had to invent one.
Since apparently no one was killed, no one made it to Allah's brothel in the sky either.
It's interesting that the soldiers chose hand to hand combat with the sword wielding crowd. The Army must have had guns. It should have been 'drop your weapons, or get shot'.
I wonder what Allah thinks of a 'liberal form' of Islam? I am not exactly sure what that is, but Allah knows. I am sure he knows about every variation of his word, and who first made the variation, and who now furthers that variation. For them he has a severe punishment...
...did they find the kidnapped policeman or just his decapitated body?.......
One would wonder why the article's author didn't ask why 'local resorts were no longer sending tourists there', wouldn't one?
The impoverished Maldives and Kashmir...the exquisite natural beauty (and the tourists it brings) are a 'Godsend' and an Allah-take-away.
I'm not sure you're reading the "because" as intended. Minor point, but apparently you took it to say that Shareef is claiming the extremism has been caused by local resorts no longer sending tourists there. When I read the sentence what I gleaned was that he was saying they KNEW of the extremism because of local resorts no longer sending tourists there.
Not that my interpretation would be entirely benign either. It would mean that the authorities are not monitoring the situation at all, and the only way they detect the growth of subversive groups is by watching the behavior of the tourist industry. Like a park warden who says "Yeah, we know'd there must be a rabid bear in there because over the last several weeks none of the hikers who went in came out alive...no, we didn't go check on it ourselves. No point!"
President Musharraf of Pakistan has received a lot of criticism from the US Dhimmicrat Left for storming the sit-in at the Red Mosque. Don't they have the right to peaceful protest? ;) Oh, they forgot to mention the Red Mosque's cache of explosives and automatic weapons. Or the fact that the women and children were held hostage, on pain of death.
I have actually heard that many Pakistanis praised Mushy for storming the Red Mosque. They wondered why he did not attack that terrorist haven sooner. But you won't hear that on the MSM.
Moderate moslem....one reading of the quran away from jihad.
Well lets strike the Maldives off as a holiday destination by moi. It is a pity that such beautiful islands are already overrun by Muslims.
Global warming is likely to finish the Maldives off completely. Not a single island is higher than 10 feet above the Indian ocean.
'Moderate moslem....one reading of the quran away from jihad.
Posted by: interestinconundrum"
...Moderate Muslim....one who has not killed you yet....
Posted by: exsgtbrown
....a mosque involved in violence....as is often the case...this dot goes here...this dot goes here...this dot goes here....pretty easy huh?...
Doesn't seem to be so easy
NYPD Confronted Radical Islam In 1972
Now this is a story that needs to be posted on. It's one that I, regrettably, had no idea about:
http://illustratedpig.blogspot.com/2007/10/nypd-confronted-radical-islam-in-1972.html
Why would any European, Australian, North American, New Zelander or any other non-Muslim want to go to an Indonesian, Thai, or Malaysian tourist trap? There are plenty of worthwhile, attractive tourist traps closer to home and none of the locals will try to kill you because you eat bacon.
These places must be relatively cheap and the vacationer gets bragging rights over those who can only afford Myrtle Beach.
Also, the above story demonstrates that it's okay to storm mosques - something that Infidel governments everywhere would do well to do when dealing with such problems.
"who can only afford Myrtle Beach.
Posted by: Pelayo "
...there are no sword swinging Muslim activists rampaging on Myrtle Beach (or at least, not yet)...Myrtle Beach is ok...
"policeman had been captured by '70 masked men' carrying swords and iron rods"....from headline.
Only hoodlums and gang members wear masks and carry weapons, not Muslims promoting their "religion of peace". Are they sure that these are Muslims they're talking about? Peace loving Muslims? I'm numb with shock.
(not)
"Moderate Muslim" the biggest oxymoron of our day and age!
Maldive was a Hindu society till the mid eleventh century when Arab muslims landed there.
Within less than a hundred years it became a Muslim country. How did that happend does anyone know.
How did a small number of Muslims succeed in coverting hundreds of thousands of Hindus to Islam in less than a hundred years?
We need to find out so that we can fight back before it's too late.
Hugh wrote:
(The) largely illiterate local Muslims have been subject to the Muslim message disseminated by videocassette, audiocassette, satellite television (Al Jazeera et al.), and of course by the Internet. Muslim missionaries, financed in the end by the Arab money from oil-rich lands, especially from Saudi Arabia...
.............................
Much of this dates in its current form from the aftermath of yet another mosque seizure and siege--the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979. As a sop to the radicals who took the mosque, the Saudis vowed to fund mosques, and madrassas, and da'wa of all kinds.
From the article:
"Western officials told the Guardian that there were "credible reports of a mosque militia" working in the Maldives".
Western forces are always loathe to enter a mosque--partly from the reasonable fear that Muslims will see any presence of infidels as further provocation to violence--but also from the unease at entering a place of worship, which they are always reluctant to believe can be a place that foments violence, preaches hate, shelters kidnappers and criminals, and can serve as a weapons cache. It is indeed difficult to imagine a church or synagogue in this light.
The only incident involving a church that comes to mind is the recent case of an illegal alien, Elvira Arellano, taking "sanctuary" in a church in Chicago when facing deportation. Many people, myself included, considered this largely a publicity stunt. Ms. Arellano had made no efforts to legally obtain a green card or become a citizen, nor was she facing any danger in her home country.
Still, Arellano was not in any way a dangerous person. She had no violent past, nor was she planning anything violent. Even the most radical church people had no violent intent toward authorities (although some no doubt hoped that the police or immigration would forcibly enter the church to arrest Arellano, and hoped the resulting images would embarrass the government and aid their cause).
The incident ended peacefully, with Arellano finally leaving the church and being deported to Mexico. The case (of course) is under appeal.
Still, can you imagine one of these mosque sieges ending in such a peaceful manner? The Grand Mosque, the Lal Masjid in Pakistan, this latest incident in the Maldives--Islam, practiced in its purest form, is not a peaceful religion.
Don't think I'll be traveling to "paradise" any time soon.
"Maldive was a Hindu society till the mid eleventh century when Arab muslims landed there.
Within less than a hundred years it became a Muslim country. How did that happend does anyone know."
...they forgot to Ban Muslim Immigration..
"Although the Maldives has practised a peaceful and tolerant Islam we knew of increasing extremism [in Himandhoo] because local resorts were no longer sending tourists there," said Mohammed Shareef, a spokesman for the government.
"Although we have a history of moderation the population is not immune from events in Middle East and Iraq."
Assuming that tourists were being steered away from Himandhoo because of the danger posed by radical Islam, why isn't sauce for the goose also sauce for the gander?
First, it's not safe to send tourists to an island because of the danger of radical Islam (what happened to religion of peace?). Then the radicalization is explained by saying that the population isn't immune to events in the Middle East and Iraq, which had nothing to do with them.
So why can't a Westerner look at events in the Middle East and events in Bali, London, Madrid, New York, etc. and view all Muslims with suspicion without being called names?
I guess only countries that are still in the process of being conquered by Islam qualify as "restive".
Maldives "adopted" Islam (or was it the other way around?) in the 12th century, so it is described as "peaceful and tolerant", not "restive".
CTYankee said
I find both of those statements suspect.
Maldives Law requires that all citizens practice - this is something that not even Saudi Arabia has. As a result, there are no infidels, and hence, Maldives looks peaceful and tolerant because all traces of non-Islamic culture have been wiped out. - Infidel Pride
Just shows to prove that once the Islamic snake runs out of victims it turns in on itself and starts by swallowing its tail. Too bad, I had heard nice things about the Maldives. How about the Seychelles? Or Ko Samui? Any nice places left in the sunny tropics? Bali got hit too... So sad, but so Muslim to self destruct with fear and hate, those primitive loathsome barbarians of Allah. Boycott them, lock them back into the caves their primitive world came from, like we did the Neanderthals. Islam is headed for extinction, and good riddance to those poisonous devils of Allah.
Let's see. Muslim extremists violently attack a policeman going about his duty in the Maldives because of U.S foreign policy. Or perhaps its all Israel's fault. Poor Israel, blamed for Muslim violence in every remote corner of the world.
Mal- French word for "evil" or "ill".
Dives- English slang for "rotten places", or "real dumps".
Maldives- well-named.
"Although we have a history of moderation the population is not immune from events in Middle East and Iraq."
More Muslim psychotic rationalization
When the British Army and the IRA were at each others throats in Nothern Ireland, I don't recall the violence coming across the Atlantic. What country besides Ireland has the highest Irish population?
There is really no need to print an answer.
We do Brits and Aussies insist on visiting these unstable muslim lands with beaches?
Pelayo,
You shouldn't include Thailand with the other countries. Thailand is not a Muslim country, and away from the "restive" south, it is a peaceful country.
Maybe THAT is why the south provinces are "restive". The tourist agencies do not send people there.