In a UN speech in 2005 Ahmed Shaheed said: ‘A Constitutional Assembly is in session to draw-up a modern democratic constitution which will embed liberal democracy in the country…’
There cannot be a liberal democracy if there is no…religious freedom. A democracy can be liberal only in so far as it provides certain basic rights, one of which must be freedom of religion.
Let us then not be deluded by political rhetoric: the current constitutional assembly was never in session to have a liberal democracy.
‘100% Muslim country’: our biggest myth
Whether we desire it or not, diversity or pluralism is the outcome of even remotely free societies. Whether we like it or not, this diversity can already be seen in the Maldives.
We have people with a puritan brand of sharia. The recent attack on a group of British, Chinese and Japanese tourists – or in the extremist parlance, ‘the infidels’ – near the Sultan Park is testament to this. So was perhaps the murder of a man in Himendhoo. So was the clash between the Star Force and a puritan group when the latter wanted their own Friday prayer congregation.
It’s not only diverse sharia views we now have, but on internet websites and blogs and in internet social-network groups such as ‘facebook’, we find some Maldivians openly and others anonymously declaring different religious views, from agnosticism to atheism to the parody religion The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
The extent of this diversity cannot be determined in today’s culture of state suppression of different beliefs.
Hence the slogan, ‘the Maldives is a 100 per cent Muslim country’, is just a myth which has lost its political purpose.* The suppressive measures to keep one faith and one brand of sharia have drained of energy. Now the only option to keep one faith and one brand of Sharia is to extend suppression to its logical conclusion: totalitarianism.
So we must choose either freedom or oppression. I am for freedom.
Freedom of religion: a religiously motivated argument
While Islam may be the true religion, everyone should be free to find out whether Islam is the true religion by himself or herself. Islam itself has different denominations and sects or schools of thought. As said we even in the Maldives see variants of sharia. This fact makes it all the more important to provide freedom for everyone to find the true version himself or herself.
Many religious scholars in the Maldives claim the state does not enforce the true sharia, and that it twists and changes sharia for its self-serving political goals. The issue of Qunoot is just one example. If this is true, it shows state cannot be a reliable entity for the protection and enforcement of the true version of religion. Moreover, history shows that state cannot be trusted for this function.
However, more importantly for the religious people, Islam as a faith cannot be imposed on others. Qur’an says ‘There is no duress in religion’. It is believed people should be peacefully convinced into Islam through reason and arguments.
Yet the state's law is always coercive law. If faith is a matter of law of the state, faith loses its voluntary nature.
For these and other reasons there should be religious toleration and freedom of religion.
So why have we forbidden what God has permitted?
Religious freedom and social stability
The main argument for banning religious freedom seems to be that if freedom of religion is provided there will be different religions and the outcome will be social instability and disharmony and disunity.
Different religions and beliefs and ideologies do not necessarily mean there will be disorder and disharmony and disunity. If unity means being united in upholding a single religion then of course there will not be such unity. But a society can unite in the relevant sense of unity even if there are different religions.
The relevant sense of social unity should be a unity in upholding a political conception of justice that will tell how the basic institutions of the society should be governed so that they provide fair terms of social cooperation for free and equal citizens.
The conception of social unity should be civic and political, not religious, ethnic or racial. History is full of examples of the folly of the latter, whether it is the East European countries at the end of First World War or the decolonization's fictitious nations.
Moreover, democratic societies with pluralism are largely stable and peaceful with regard to the relations between religious people. So, even based on experience one may say the Maldives need not be unstable just because there would be different religions and ideologies.
The reply would be that we see religious clashes in some democratic countries. But let’s not forget that one indispensable task of liberal democratic society is to have an ethos of tolerance. It's not religious freedom itself which creates these problems, but mainly the lack of tolerance.
But unfortunately we in the Maldives largely lack religious tolerance in our social ethos. Since there is no religious freedom there is also no principle of toleration, and there is no effort either by the state or by the society and the education system to promote a social ethos of religious tolerance.
Whether we formally provide or not provide religious freedom, diversity will be the outcome if the society is even remotely free. And diversity has already arrived!
Thus, is it not time that we promoted religious tolerance so that people with different beliefs can learn to co-exist and cooperate fairly and peacefully as a society united in diversity?
But the answer to this question has already been given by the constitutional assembly.
Maldives is not going to be a liberal democratic country. How can it be if we - if we want to be Maldivian citizens - are forced to be or remain as Muslims by law?
Perhaps then it is time again to wait for another 30 years?
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*Perhaps it still serves the political purpose of appealing to the sentiments of a majority of us who are hellbent on an exclusionary view of Islam.
(Have also a look at this speech by Abdullah Saeed (a Maldivian) on the subject of Islamic inclusion.)