This is an appreciation of The Maldives Information and Reform Minister’s blog post on ‘Condition of Religion on Citizenship’ and comments posted on it. Reading his posting first is seen important to taking away an informed view of this mega problem (link).

PART 1
If we as a country are just coming out of a cocoon with less than three hundred thousand people punctuated in 200 tiny islets and think that we have what it takes to consider a protectionist approach I wish the decision makers and the affected brotherhood good luck in their endeavour to protect what is good.

But hold-on, what is ‘good’? The Maldives with its youth barely literate, either on drugs or alcohol, living homelessly in makeshift setting in the densely populated capital city or in isolation in one of the many little islands with bare land, employment laws if any are laid to push labour to extreme conditions, underpaid workforce across the board or are jobless and misguided and believe that bribery, cheats, and crime are equivalents of good, if worth protecting - please do so. What good have the predecessors left in the 5000 years in the Maldives, that the population never grew beyond three hundred thousand people mark, building structures came about only two decades ago and while today’s parents are still struggling to push their children out of the tribal system? What politics or laws have we got that its citizens are still struggling to prevent the president from contesting for a seventh five year term in this post-modern time?

Is religion among what is to be preserved in the Maldives? for whom? Many like to assume the Maldives has a population consisting of Islamic radicalists, modern moderates, and the remaining on path to other religions/beliefs, but my interpretation is different to this. The former group of deep-seated moslems around the world justify multiple wives by referring to annals of research that suggest that females are reasonably more in numbers that an extra marriages are a social duty of the able, and seek to consume halal slaughtered meat and poultry from trusted sources. Halal slaughtered meat and poultry (labelled as Halal in bold characters) sometimes turn up very unhygienic and near poisonous. Other major Halal poultry producers in the West that run their HENS through pressurised carbon-dioxide channels that kills them, loud speakers that recite Quran, and assembly lines that chops their heads off at the end. Can this be termed halal food for the confused? The deep-seated Maldivian moslems unconditional settlement for blind and blank wrapped poultry packing falls short of the necessary rigor for the food that goes into their body. Besides, can this group of Maldivians afford a significant premium in exchange for their meat/poultry portion or is a trade off a better option instead? How else do they do away with this provision of halal food that they become righteous Moslems? Are our Maldivian deep-seaters likewise confused that the constitution of a Maldivian is not about their religion alone but a mechanism that capacitates them to be dunked in theirs?

PART 2
Later – may be tomorrow.