Beauty and Truth

By  Latheefa Ahmed Verrall

The heat of the day dissipates and I walk cautiously along Chandhanee Magu, towards Jumhooree Maidhaan. A crowd gathers. The road leading to the police headquarters is cordoned-off. I am told that Mariya Did is held there, to give information, ‘regarding a matter that the police are investigating.’ Mariya Didi? I recall instantly. The image of this woman, speaking at a pro-democracy gathering, has stayed with me. Courage, combined with a social conscience, is a potent mix which never fails to impress.

Beside me a woman begins to have a conversation with a young policeman; a young boy really, perhaps younger than my own children. He is separated from the crowds by a fragile stretch of yellow tape. ‘It’s not that I hate the police,’ the woman declares to the world. ‘My brother-in-law is a policeman. I just object to the fact that he is made to do things like this. He shouldn’t have to take  orders from a baagee government.’ The young man smiles. He has no answer. It occurs to me that he is as helpless as the woman who wants her opinion heard. The victim and the victimiser are trapped together in someone else’s web of ambition.

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Sharia and the death penalty: how Islamic is ‘marah maru’?

 

Government…can’t be trusted to control its own bureaucrats or collect taxes equitably or fill a pothole, much less decide which of its citizens to kill.

—  Helen Prejean, ‘Dead Man Walking’ 

by Azra Naseem

On July 1, a Maldivian lawyer was brutally murdered, his body stuffed into a dustbin. On June 4,  militant Islamists tried to murder Hilath Rasheed, the country’s only openly gay rights activist and a rare voice advocating secularism in the Maldives. On 30 May,  a 65-year-old man was killed on the island of Manafaru by robbers after his pension fund. On the same day, in Male’ a 16-year-old school boy was stabbed multiple times and left to bleed to death in a public park. On April 1, a 33-year-old man was stabbed to death in broad daylight by two men on a motorbike.  On February 19, a twenty-one-year-old life was taken in a case of ‘mistaken identity’.

Amidst the increasing violence and decreasing value of life, calls for restoration of the death penalty are growing. It is normal for a society experiencing unprecedented levels of crime to demand the death penalty as a solution. In the Maldives, however, the whole debate is framed within the precincts of religion, touted as a return to ‘Islamic justice.’

This is not to say other ways of looking at it are completely absent from the discourse.There’s Hawwa Lubna’s examination of the death penalty within a rule of law framework in Minivan, and Mohamed Visham’s somewhat confused and confusing analysis of its pros and cons in Haveeru, for example. Such discussions are, however, pushed to the fringes as the theme of ‘Islamic justice’ takes precedence.

My question is, how Islamic is this call for ‘Marah Maru’ [death for death]? Is revenge what underpins provisions for the death penalty in Sharia?

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Waheed says Nasheed planned a public massacre on 6/2

by Azra Naseem

“Nasheed was planning a massacre on the night of 6 February so that he can resort to emergency powers”, the President’s Spokesperson Abbas Adil Riza has said.
I know I’ve already talked about Abbas Adil Riza and his habit of denigrating Nasheed and routinely describing him as ‘a terrorist’ on social media platforms. But, what he’s telling people now, as the President’s Spokesperson, makes Abbas Riza’s words worth pondering over again.

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