Warning to tourists

All foreign tourists coming to Maldives have the right to be well-informed beforehand of the nature of the country that they are going to visit.

Every tourist visiting Maldives should know that the Maldive government has wilfully been active in the promotion of hatred towards foreigners. Even while tourism has been one of the main income earners for the country, and in a manner that doesn’t speak of the courage of its promoters, all this nefarious activity has been perpetrated behind the back of the unwary visitors, but in a way that was very clear to the local people.

Why this double-facedness? Why promote an aggressive and unappreciative spirit? Why not promote enlightenment and industriousness instead of outright xenophobia and loathing of the prosperity that makes our country viable?

What follows is just a sample of President Gayoom’s government’s infamous designs and hypocrisy concerning the way the Maldive state wants its citizens to regard foreign visitors:

Sahitya Akademi secy@sahitya-akademi.org

In 1992, at the height of the boom of the tourism industry in Maldives, the Sahitya Akademi (a prestigious Indian cultural organisation) undertook the task to prepare an anthology of poetry from the nations that compose SAARC (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka).

This anthology was published in a volume called ‘Gestures; Poetry from SAARC countries’ in New Delhi in 1996. (Satchidanandan K. (editor). pp. 308. ISBN 81-260-0019-8 180.00)

In the prologue of the book, Professor Indra Nath Choudhuri, writes:

“…We were fortunate enough to receive poems from all the member countries except Bhutan. The poems were selected by responsible organisations in the respective countries…”

Now let’s just have a look at the poem selected by a responsible organisation in Maldives; its title is ‘I see it happening’ and it was written by Adam Abdurrahman:

This poem is by far the most aggressive in the whole international anthology. These racist and venomous verses were not written by the island version of a skinhead and published on the sly, but by a writer protected and promoted by the Maldive government and its cultural organs.

In addition, the publishing of this poem was endorsed by the Maldive authorities. This poem, which in any civilized country would have landed its writer in trouble for hate-mongering, was actually selected by a “responsible organization” in Maldives and sent to the Sahitya Akademi in India for publication.

What is the reason for commending the writer of such trash instead of scolding him? What is the reason for propagating his venom to the extent of including his poetry in an international poetry anthology? The answer is that the writer is a spokesman for the official ideology of the Maldive government, and that the poem ‘I see it happening’ is spelling the official state ideology of Mr Gayoom and his ruling team word by word. Needless to mention that an average Maldive poet, without high government approval, would not have managed to get his poem published in the Sahitya Akademi’s SAARC anthology.

So, what is the official Maldive state ideology? During the last 27 years the Maldive government has been squeezing foreign exchange out of the tourists, while at the same time insulting them and encouraging its citizens to criticize them and their ways. For the Maldive state, not only doesn’t have laws against criticism of other doctrines, but even the President himself is the main promoter of such a hate-mongering activity. Note that Gayoom’s bashing of the Christmas celebration is not unlike the 7^th verse of the poem above. Coincidence? No way!

One cannot imagine say, the King of the Belgians, criticizing Buddhism, or the President of Korea criticising Islam. And such an activity may not be causing many ripples in a closed country like Bhutan, the hermit kingdom. But in the Maldives, where non-Muslim foreign tourists visit every day, this hate-mongering against the West could have disastrous consequences.

The government’s main ideology during the last 27 years has been raising the level of Islamic hysteria, especially among school children, government employees and tourist industry workers. Meanwhile tourists and international development organizations were there to be milked for funds.

The Arab schools in Maldives, Mawhad and Arabiyya, and the further education in hard-line Islamic "universities" abroad, have been part of a grand strategy by Gayoom’s government to create a country of Islamic hard-liners right at the moment when tourism was booming.

Meanwhile the prosperity brought by tourism, reducing unemployment and bringing in foreign exchange has been taken for granted. The official ideology didn’t promote any gratitude, as if tourists would keep coming regardless of the insincerity of the welcoming smiles.

It is understandable that the government may warn its citizens against social evils, especially regarding drinking alcohol or prostitution, but in Maldives the government with a preacher-president at the helm went many steps further: Employees at tourist resorts have been forced to attend the five daily prayers at the resort mosque, even though in their island they may never do so, for traditionally Maldivians were used to take Islam in their own mellow way. But this local mellowness was never promoted by Gayoom; instead he fought against it fiercely during his long tenure. The local radio and TVM have been propagating Gayoom’s hard-line hate-mongering Islamic ideology, aimed especially at the youth, for the past 27 years. So now the whole country has become a hornets’ nest full of young Islamic hard-liners. Can Gayoom control them now? We think no one can.

The same government spokesmen or other hard-liners who complain that tourists have spoiled the local traditions look the other way when Arab preachers indulge in a much deeper and far-reaching destruction of our Maldive traditions. They don’t complain when some of our youth have been lured into such evils as polygamy and sanctioned murder.

Inevitably, Gayoom’s policies have borne fruit. Some Maldivians have been recruited as jihadists while “studying” abroad and gone to places like Chechnya and Afghanistan to indulge in religiously-approved murder. But that is not a problem for the Maldive state. There they were, those thugs, freshly released from Guantanamo Bay, on TV Maldives being interviewed and made heroes of. We all saw them this year in April.

So what is the government going to do after breeding all those ready-to-murder Christian-West-hating fanatics? Didn’t they foresee that some of them, even though a few, if let loose could wreak havoc on the tourist industry? For most of these students of Islamic ‘universities’ are itching to put into practice what they have learnt: To murder the kafirs in order to extend their fanatical religion.

One of these days anyone among the increasing number of fanatic Islamic Maldive students might well decide to practise their skills on unwary ‘Christian’ visitors to the Maldives.

Therefore, as long as the situation doesn’t change, and it doesn’t seem likely that it will change anytime soon, for both the government and the opposition are engaged in promoting radical Islam with the same enthusiasm, tourists should exercise caution and inform themselves well before they visit the Maldives. We don’t like Maldives to be poor or in trouble, we would like our country to be peaceful and prosperous in the future but the situation now doesn’t look good. Instead of promoting goodwill and enlightened attitudes, President Gayoom has unfortunately been sowing the wind by propagating an intransigent and violent doctrine. When it will be the time for reaping the whirlwind, we as Maldivians, would not want any tourist to get hurt.