Sea, sun and jihad

Islamist extremism rears its head in the tourist paradise

A RECORD number of tourists, some 650,000, visited the Maldives' upmarket and otherwise uninhabited island resorts last year. But from the populated parts of the Indian Ocean archipelago the news is more worrying. On a January visit to one of its 1,200 white sand and coral islands, President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom was rescued from a knife attack by a boy scout. The would-be assassin's shout of “Allahu Akbar!” was the latest evidence of growing Islamic extremism in the 350,000-strong nation of Sunni Muslims.

Last September terrorists detonated a bomb in the capital Male's Sultan Park, injuring 12 tourists. Foreign concern mounted in November when a video posted on an al Qaeda-linked website called for more attacks. The almost simultaneous police revelation that the “masterminds” of the Sultan Park attack had received training in Pakistan heightened fears. But the Maldives government insists there is no evidence that international terror networks have infiltrated the country.

Instead it blames homegrown extremism. Scholars who studied in Pakistan and the Middle East in the 1980s and 1990s returned imbued with a conservative strain of Wahhabi Islam, and found the Maldives' young population receptive. In the past ten years more and more women have started wearing headscarves or burqas. Young men have tended to boycott government-licensed mosques.

The richest country in South Asia in terms of GDP per head, the Maldives has widespread internet access, in Male at least. “There is a tendency to imitate foreign terror groups, even if there are no formal links,” says Mohamed Nasheed, the information minister. The government long ignored these developments. Indeed, President Gayoom promoted Islam as the cornerstone of Maldivian national identity. The explosion in Sultan Park, however, led to promises of immediate action to defend the vital tourism industry.

But after 30 years of strong-arm one-man rule, Mr Gayoom is embattled. In 2003 street protests following a series of custodial killings almost toppled his regime, forcing him to promise democratic reforms. The country's first multi-party election is due this year.

With the president's future uncertain, his government has descended into tried and tested repression. The police have reacted with characteristic gusto to Mr Gayoom's call for a “no-nonsense” approach to extremism. The Maldivian Detainee Network, an activist group, says that more than 300 suspected religious dissidents have been detained since September. Men wearing the short trousers and long beards associated with Wahhabism are subject to random security checks. Most suspects have not reached the courts.

Attempts to impose a state-sponsored moderate Islam have fallen flat. The Supreme Council on Islamic Affairs, a scholars' body led by a Gayoom loyalist, has refused to ratify his ban on women veiling their entire body or to allow a fast track for the licensing of moderate preachers. With an eye on the election, the main opposition Maldivian Democratic Party has forged an alliance with the conservative religious Adhaalath Party, isolating the government politically.

Mr Nasheed complains that the reform process is impeding the government's ability to act decisively. But Mr Gayoom's high-handedness seems as much to blame for the failings of the counter-terrorism effort. Supreme Council rulings have been countered by ministerial decrees and political objections ignored. Denied access to legal recourse, religious radicals increasingly appear the victims of an arbitrary government. As elsewhere in South Asia, political uncertainty is providing a space in which Islamist extremism can grow.

Source: economist.com