Condeming the attack on 29th September in Sultan Park

well its not easy to sit without disseminating my thoughts about the recent criminal act of terrorism in Male'. I just wondered about Maldives and lots of thoughts came to me. First thing which came to my mind was rule of Sultans in Maldives. Our history tells that lots of cruel things were done in Sultans Palace where Sultan Park is now. This included killing people and burrying them in huge earthen ware pots which we call "GULHI".Well then our society transformed from the Sultans era to a new modern world, and I thought why this cruel acts again. I could only think of one reason, some of us are still having the thinking we had centuries back. Islam is our respected religion and some of us have grown in to radical fundamentalists over the years. I recently met 2 young fellows who are studying to become lawyers and had a chat with them. I was suprised by their arrogance against west and non muslims. They even claimed that non muslims money and wealth are to be grabbed and they are our enemies. I have to debate with them for hours instead of my busy schedule, and they were so much drenched in this they refused to beleieve anything I told. well in the end I have to vanish from the scene as a kafir ( anon beleiver in Islam). I was so outraged.

Yes of course our beloved prophet Muhammad(PBUH) was born in a desert and his followers were mostly nomadic Arabs. But the religion he brought was to the whole world. So it doesnt mean we have to bring sand from desert to our islands and live a desert life. Fundamentalists view are such that we have to live such a life. Of course for the love of prophet we can do things he had done and surely we wil get blessings for that. But we should know the limits of it. By doing things exactly the way it was done thousands of years ago will not be very relevant at this modern age. Consequently Countries like Saudi are also not following such age old traditions. How can we say that sending childrren to schools doesnt agree isalmic views. Its totally wrong as our prophet asked those non muslims caught in War of Baduru to teach muslim children. He never said non muslims cannnot teach muslims. By not sending our children especially girls to school our economy will get affected as we will not have enough man power to boost our growing economy. Besides keeping women confined to home will elevate poverty and hence such familys will become more and more poor leading to more social problems. The root cause of all this problems is socio economic. As peopple with such extremist views arent earning enough their deprivations lead to frustrations which they show as anti ssocial behaviour against societies well mannered people.

We have to curb these fundamentalist ideologies from our society without any delays. It is spreading like fire in the society. These fundamentalists usually target school leaving age children and teenagers. So we need to satrt an awareness campaign to school leavers. There are 2 problems we need to make school leavers aware, thats is DRUGS and FUNDAMENTALISM. We also need to give career guidance to students. I sometimes wish we could have open day awareness programmes for schools in such issues. Our Education Ministry needs to be more proactive to promote hidden curriculum in schools.

I wish a beter Future for my beloved Nation, the peceful and serene Maldives.