Many people in the Maldives are pushing for a change; as if a mere change, by magic, would bring about an improvement in their situation. They just don’t like the present ruler, which is understandable, for he has been ruling by fear and such rulers are seldom loved. But, sadly, not much thought is given to how the present ruler ended up becoming a tyrant in the first place.

Presently the Maldives is a religious dictatorship. The ruler is the head of the state and a religious leader at the same time. As head of state, the President has absolute power, while as supreme religious figure he puts on a characteristic smug air while providing guidance in theological matters for all the citizens. Despite being called a ‘republic’, this is a very old system. It is a vertical system where no one can check the excesses of the Maldive president.

Therefore it is very strange that all voices in the Maldives now seem only to be bent on changing the ruler, but no one seems to talk about a thorough overhaul of the archaic system that produces such rulers.

The present system relies on religious hard-liners to prop itself up and give itself legitimacy. But we are appalled when we see that the opposition also counts on a different set of religious hard-liners to rule in the future (Farooq, Fareed, etc.). Just have a look at the new cabinet proposed by the opposition-leaning sources and you will see that it keeps the religious hard-liners in positions of privilege.

Koran: 5:33: The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and his messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the hereafter

It is disheartening to read that among the people belonging to the opposition, to the so-called Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), there are many religious hard-liners, the kind that wants to re-establish the Caliphate. Their aim would be to make the Maldives a fully-Islamic state, like Afghanistan in the time of the Taliban, for in their irrational thinking, they view the rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan as 'progress', as one of the few true Islamic governments since the time of the prophet.

Seen from a distance, the religious hard-liners seem like creatures out of a nightmare. We find it hard to relate them to normal human beings, made of flesh and blood, with average daily routines like ours. But closer up one can see that they are also ordinary people, with vulgar, and sometimes absurd, tastes. They are people who are under a spell, with an extraordinary lust for power and ambition. Their views are narrow and extreme, and they see the Koran as a 'constitution', a law to rule the world. Their morale is very high, for they think that the whole world is about to become Muslim any minute from now.

Usually we are unable to perceive the two realities that make up the religious hard-liner –the daily one and the extraordinary one– at the same time. For it is difficult to have a complete and all-encompassing glimpse of this most singular type of people.

Like their religion, they are against defining themselves. In their eyes nothing is outside their meddling. They want to be arabizing and nationalistic at the same time. They tell us that they want Islam in power in order to build up a decent society. By saying so, they pretend to have the highest moral standards, but the reason why they are so jealous of their privacy is probably that they could not stand close scrutiny. However, masks fall as soon as they reach their goal and rule, for once they are given power they predictably become corrupt and cruel.

These are people who have carried selfishness to outrageous ends: they like to have all the advantages but don’t like to give even the smallest advantage to anyone else. The religious hard-liners demand every right for themselves, but when others on the same basis, ask for the same rights, they blatantly deny those very rights to them.

For example: In the 1980s in Malé the (then brand-new) religious hard-liners demanded that their daughters should have the right to wear Arab headscarves as part of the school uniform (note that this was not even a Maldive custom, for before 1983 there was not a single Maldive female wearing the Arab headscarf!). Then, the secular schools of Malé, like Aminiya, EPSS, and others, obliged and provided an alternative uniform for those girls, the daughters of the hard-liners.

However, any Maldivian who disliked the obligatory headscarf of the Arab schools, Mawhad, or Arabiyya, had no right to demand that his daughter be allowed not to wear the headscarf. These Arab schools, outdated even at their birth, were the organs of the hard-liners in Maldives and were carefully protected and promoted by President Gayoom and his government. With characteristic arrogance, these schools would never provide an alternative uniform for the daughters of parents who would have thought it important to preserve the Maldive tradition of wearing the hair uncovered.

Let’s stop fooling ourselves: A leader who talks in the name of religion, or who continually has to evoke religion to lend legitimacy to his utterances is usually a crook. We cannot think of any ruler of integrity who was displaying openly the fact that he is religious. An honest and straightforward politician lets the religion for the mudhimus, instead of displaying it in such a shameless manner as Mr Gayoom does.

But we Maldivians, when we are in front of one of those phoney sheikhs who quotes a few religious verses, we become stupid and just open our mouths wide as if he were an angel or something. But enough of this. If we keep letting those gangsters rule us, we will never have a proper government and we will never have democracy. Let’s stop looking up at those religious people and think that they are so good, because the truth is that they are no better than you or me, and in most cases they are much worse.

It is useless to look whether Maldive laws are secular or religious, because the whole system is religious. For crying out loud! We have had a whole team of el-Azher people ruling our country for nearly twenty-seven years! What else could they produce? This is as good as it gets with the Islamic system. The result is widespread corruption, rule by fear, heavy drug-trafficking and consumption, police brutality, torture, and so on and so on. We didn’t have that before in our country, but that is the Islamic system, like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, and so on.

We are guilty because we opened our door wide for all that darkness and backwardness to come into our country. If you want to be backward, the road is wide open, but when you end up badly, don’t complain because you wanted to go backwards instead of forward in the first place.

Let’s not look more within Islam, because that is all that there is in it. Islam is incompetent to rule a modern country. With its outdated set of rules of the Ages of Darkness it just cannot do any better in a country in modern times, with all the complexity of economical, social and ecological problems.

Now suppose you have a plumber advertising himself as the best plumber in town. Then you have a leak in your home and call him. Suppose that after doing his job in your home the leak gets worse. You may feel like complaining, but he gets annoyed, he keeps saying that he is the best plumber on earth. Then you keep calling him, and he keeps coming, but he keeps making a mess in your house and the leak is now so large that it is bothering even your neighbours. Finally after twenty-five years of suffering he keeps telling you he is the best plumber in the world. Will you believe him? Will you give him again the job of repairing your house?

Therefore it is of the utmost importance to remove all the religious hard-liners from positions of power if we want to have democracy. A democratic goverment has to be perforce secular. If a politician is dishonest in his dealings, there should be a legal way to make sure that he is impeached or voted out of power.

Everyone in the Maldives should read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights charter. The equality among citizens cannot be overruled in any case nor under any circumstance, whether in the name of custom or in the name of religion.