When stories like this appear, apologists are quick to claim that this isn't the "real" sharia. And the sharia law creeping forward in the U.K. has nothing -- nothing -- to do with this brand of sharia. And yet wherever there arises an effort to impose sharia law more robustly, the same issues concerning the rights of women and unbelievers also appear. But we're always told it's a misunderstanding of the tolerant and pluralistic principles of the "real" Islam.
"Sharia in force on atolls of the Maldives," from AsiaNews, October 20:
Malè (AsiaNews) - It is a natural paradise, an archipelago of more than a thousand islands, but that's not all. The tourists don't realize it, but the Maldives is also one of the few countries in the world that allow only a single religion for its inhabitants: Sunni Islam. The human rights organization Forum 18 has carried out a survey on the situation of religious freedom in the country in view of the second round of the presidential election. On October 28, the population of the archipelago is called to the ballot box to vote on the leader of the Maldives. The favored candidate is Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, in power since 1978.
The tourists should realize it, and take their business elsewhere.
According to the official statistics, out of a population of 300,000 inhabitants, there are no non-Muslims. Nonetheless, ten years ago 50 Christian inhabitants were locked up in the prison of Dhoonidho, and once released continued to live under surveillance, prohibited from meeting together, praying, or reading religious texts not approved by the government.
It is only in the last few years that there have been a few small signs of change in the country. 2007 brought a new movement, called New Maldives. Identifying itself as reformist, the new organization has promoted a campaign on behalf of democratic renewal in the country. Nonetheless, New Maldives has never expressed clear condemnation of the total absence of religious freedom in the archipelago. Also in 2007, attorney general Hassan Saeed resigned in protest against the president, charged with blocking reforms.The first terrorist attack also took place last year, with Islamic militants accused over an explosion in the park of Malè, which wounded a number of tourists.
This past August, when Gayoom announced the implementation of a new constitution, many international observers hailed the event as a first positive sign. It nonetheless emerges from the analysis of Forum 18 that very little has changed in the life of the country, and almost nothing in the area of religious freedom.
According to the revised constitution, in article two, it says that the republic "is based on the principles of Islam." Article nine says that "a non-Muslim may not become a citizen of the Maldives"; number ten says that "no law contrary to any principle of Islam can be applied in the Maldives." Article nineteen states that "citizens are free to participate in or carry out any activity that is not expressly prohibited by sharia or by the law."
Where have we seen items similar to Article 10 above? The constitutions of Afghanistan (Article 3) and Iraq (Section 1, Article 2).
At the beginning of October, the country faced multiparty elections for the first time. Of the six candidates, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom and the leader of the main opposition party, Mohamed Nasheed, made it to the second round: neither of them has addressed the topic of religious freedom. According to the report by Forum 18, this silence discourages the beginning of a real process of democratization in the Maldives.
Sharia is also enshrined in the "Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam" from 1990. For those who don't know it yet: Read it. Know it. Resist it.
http://www.religlaw.org/interdocs/docs/cairohrislam1990.htm
...this silence discourages the beginning of a real process of democratization in the Maldives.
Silence! I kill you!
Global warming can't come soon enough - hopefully, Maldives will be drowned, and all its inhabitants will get to meet Allah via the Indian Ocean waterways
I have been saying this for years.
We only have to wait a few more years with global warming and rising sea levels and the Maldives will disappear, problem solved.
No one should visit the Maldives as tourism would seem to be the only source of income. Islamic economies are notorious failures without an outside source of income.
'"citizens are free to participate in or carry out any activity that is not expressly prohibited by sharia or by the law."'
What a far cry Shari'a is from the idea, enshrined in the US Constitition, that people are free as a given, and that it's restrictions on how and when government may touch such freedom that counts. (Clearly theoretically speaking, of course. Reality turning out quite differently, at this point.)
Interesting paper on the Iraqi Interim Constitition, Duncan Bayne. Yes, I knew it would be downhill the rest of the way for Iraq once I saw that Shari'a was given the nod in their constitution.
For anyone interested in the reality for women in the "new Iraq", this makes interesting reading:
http://globalpolitician.com/25202-iraq
We have the dolts at the University of Pennsylvania Law School to thank for the codification of sharia that was handed to the despots of the Maldives for the oppression of their people. Here is the end game of the multicultural moral equivalence fallacy. By providing a modern codification to the 7th century Islamic ideology all that is accomplished is the ultimate application of lipstick on a pig. This codification provides nothing more than an illusion of legitimacy. Sharia, a primitive tribal warrior code that allocates human rights according to gender and religious belief, is fundamentally at odds with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It can never deliver justice to women or non-muslims, i.e., equal treatment under the law.
Why stop there? Why not update and perfect the codification of the Nuremberg Laws? Why is it that doing this would not be tolerated in a modern world but the codification of the barbaric sharia is not only tolerated but promoted?
Holger Dansker you´re so right!
SaracensAtTheGates, what a damned document you posted on codifying Shari'a!
'Drafting a new penal code is always a difficult task, but this project promised special
challenges. It required a synthesis of Islamic law, Maldivian values and internationally accepted norms and standards - all brought together in a modern penal code format.'
'One final question, from the other direction, was should Westerners committed to
liberal values involve themselves in drafting a penal code based upon shari'a, given that shari'a can conflict with those values? Some Westerners felt the project would legitimise the most extreme and, to many Western eyes, the most unjust aspects of Islam. Daniel Pipes, for example, objected to the project with an 'appeal to Professor Robinson to reject the Maldive commission. The Shari'a needs to be rejected as a state law code, not made prettier'. Our view was that the project was worth pursuing because it could bring greater justice to Maldivians.'
In their orgiastic enthusiasm for getting a chance to "codify Shari'a", these authors proceed to bend themselves into pretzels to do so.
We ordinary, workaday, folk rarely get glimpses into what our paid intellectuals are up to. Thanks for the peek. It's not a pretty sight.
You Islamphodic have no right to tell tourst where they can go. First no tourst have to worry about criminal rob then like in america, or rapeing they daughter like in some place in america.
I guess our resident troll needs another does of reality:
Immigrant Rape Wave in Sweden
From a posting above... (Why do I even bother?)
What a freaking idiot, but I suppose that's expected from idiots indoctrinating their idiotic children with an ideology based in idiocy.
My God! Long live the cretins.
"Islamphodic"? Sounds melodic, and maybe doesn't carry the negative connotation that Islamophobic has (for some)?
Oh, and what's a "tourst", DefenderofIslam?
Why would any non-Muslim in his right mind visit -- at this point -- a Muslim country? If the year is 1920, and you want to take a cruise down the Nile, then go back to Shepheard's Hotel accompanied by a Coptic dragoman, with the carriages going by and a syce running alongside, that's one thing. But today? Are there not plenty of things to see in the non-Islamic lands? And if you must go, why not limit yourself to Istanbul, where you will soon find that the exoticism of the Suleimaniya Mosque and a few other similar sites pall quickly, and you find yourself drawn to what remains of Christian Constantinople, to the frescoes, mostly still intact, unlike the vandalized religious art of the Hagia Sophia -- at what Turks call the " Kariya Djami," and then there is the Hippodrome, from classical antiquity, and the Roman cistern, and the Museum of Archeology in the Topkapi Complex. But why risk your life in Algeria, or Egypt, or Pakistan? Christian tourists have been kidnapped, and killed, there and in many other places. No tourists, no aid workers, no soldiers, no nothing. Dar al-Islam cannot be completely sealed off, but contacts can be reduced to a minimum that has not yet even begun to be attempted to be reached. Attempt.
According to the revised constitution, in article two, it says that the republic "is based on the principles of Islam." Article nine says that "a non-Muslim may not become a citizen of the Maldives"; number ten says that "no law contrary to any principle of Islam can be applied in the Maldives." Article nineteen states that "citizens are free to participate in or carry out any activity that is not expressly prohibited by sharia or by the law."
Where have we seen items similar to Article 10 above? The constitutions of Afghanistan...and Iraq...
............................
Exactly. I just checked, for another thread, what the U.S. Department of State had to say about official Afghan law:
The Constitution proclaims that "followers of other religions are free to exercise their faith and perform their religious rites within the limits of the provisions of law." However, it also states that Islam is the "religion of the state" and that "no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam."
........................
Then they wryly add: "The right to religious freedom was not respected in practice."
Why exactly are we in Afghanistan, again? We are fighting and dying, and spending prodigious amounts of money, to defend a Shari'ah state.
Here's a link:
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2007/90225.htm
graven image:
Well said. We have no business being in Iraq, or Afghanistan or any other islamic state. By being there we are buying into the Big Lie that islam is composed of good guys and bad guys, when in fact EVERY moslem is a bad guy. If he weren't, he wouldn't believe mein koranf, which explicitly orders him to eliminate all us kufrs on the way to establishing the global caliphate. Let's pull all our soldiers out of there and encourage the disciples of the religion of peace to slaughter each other as they see fit. Sell (conventional) arms to all sides in order to speed up the process.