This is in reply to a few observations made by meekaaku in reply to the last post.
Come the day Christianity ousts Islam in Maldives, the public will have to accept it (this author certainly will). The mosques can be taken down and the Qurans in the libraries replaced with Bibles, but the people will have the right to practice their religions in seclusion (it is a belief system after all, so who can stop people from believing?).
This is the right Christians and people from other religions have. There are plenty of non-Muslims practicing their respective religions in private gatherings. This is not to say that they cannot work towards converting the majority of the country (oppressing these efforts would be tyrannous).
As liberties go, there are few greater than agreeing upon a common belief system which enables optimal communal performance. This liberty was served when the Special Majlis declared Maldives an Islamic state in the new constitution. Consider the consequences of having declared it a Christian state.
Keeping democracy in check is what MoIA and the rest of the government's gestapo-factions are already doing. The Majlis is ineffectual in holding the government accountable because it is constitutionally compromised. The current state of affairs in Maldives can already be summed up as tyrannous. Through this tyranny the government has started seeding the notions of theistic plurality.
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3 comments:
have you considered a secular state. cox thats what we need!
"There are plenty of non-Muslims practicing their respective religions in private gatherings."
Maybe for expats, but for Maldivians it is illegal. Well by definition, you have to be a mulsim to be a citizen. Hence a maldivian practicing a different religion is by definition not a Maldivian! And yet the state lets them keep their passports and other benefits that a mulsim Maldivian gets. So why don't we just get rid of that requirement of being muslim to be a maldivian. Lets put a stop to this recursive definition.
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"This is not to say that they cannot work towards converting the majority of the country (oppressing these efforts would be tyrannous)."
And oppressed it is. No one can preach (let alone openly) another religion legally here.
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"This liberty was served when the Special Majlis declared Maldives an Islamic state in the new constitution. Consider the consequences of having declared it a Christian state."
Liberty was served by denying the liberty to choose one's own religion?
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"Keeping democracy in check is what MoIA and the rest of the government's gestapo-factions are already doing."
Keeping democracy in check by suppressing free speech, invading privacy and surveillance? Yeah, Big Brother is watching us.
Shaafiee,
"Come the day Christianity ousts Islam in Maldives..."
Have you read anywhere in recent history the above having occurred anywhere in the world? And you call this the "right" people of other faiths have? A right that is by all realistic means an impossibility.
Have you read the constitution lately? It outright strips citizenship from those Dhivehin that practice other religions.
This is essentially a dangerous tool that has enabled the oppression of people of other faiths as well as Muslims. Case in point: Gayoom was taken to court accused of apostasy.
"...the government has started seeding the notions of theistic plurality."
And you link to an article on allowing non-Islamic marriages for tourists.
I wonder if a "Shaafiee" living the seventies when tourism was established said the same about selling alcohol.
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