Some weeks ago I watched La Charia au Paradis a quite disturbing documentary about Maldives, that small island country in the Indian Ocean. Until then my basic knowledge about these islands could be summed up in these few points.
- An idyllic tourist destination
- One of the places that was hit hard by the 2004 tsunami
- One of those places particularly threatened by the sea level rise (the whole country could just disappear)
I had no idea about the politics of these islands, and though I had the impression that it was mainly a muslim country, I was not aware of particular problems caused by the "religion of peace". Well, I was quite far from the true. In the last years fundamentalist Muslims have taken control of the country and are imposing their madness to the rest of the population. The law system is based on the shariah, and Saudi Arabia has been more than happy to host and train Maldivian guys in the "true Islam" so that they can return to the islands to teach/impose their Medieval learnings to a population that until recently was for the most part rather moderate. Hum, lovely Saudi Arabia, exporting love an tolerance not only to the European "Quartiers Sensibles", but also to peaceful, idyllic islands.
For the moment, given that the whole country lives on tourism, shariah law is not applied to the foreigners that fill the touristic resorts, but that could be changing in the future. Maybe they are planning to replace Western amoral couples with Saudi families. In the meantime, if I were a tourist I would be a bit scared that one day one bunch of beardy Islamist could decide to raid one of the resorts...
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