Nasheed has forgotten that Maldivians are Muslims: Adhaalath

Adhaalath Party has said that former President Mohamed Nasheed has forgotten that all Maldivians are Muslims.

The party made these remarks through a statement released today regarding the former President’s statements towards Islam during a lecture he gave in the middle of this month in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The party stated that Nasheed’s rage against Islam is most apparent when he visits the missionaries of other faiths in the west.

The former President’s recent remarks in Copenhagen University in Denmark, implying that the people of who live by Islam are radicals were made appease the people of other religions, Adhaalath said.

“The people from whom he is trying to gain votes to come to power again, it is as if he has forgotten that these people are Muslims. Even during his recent visit to Denmak, the statements he had made describing the people who live by Islam as radicals, (were made) to appease the people of other faiths and prove to them that he is a great warrior fighting against Islam, he had mocked Islam and the people who obey the principles of Islam,” Adhaalath Party statement read.

The party also stated that the former President has always had a secular agenda and that the repetition of such actions from Nasheed is not surprising. However, they said that it disheartening that a portion of the public continues to work alongside Nasheed and his companions’ in their efforts to brainwash the Maldivian Muslims.

Local sentiments were spurred following remarks by the former President in a question and answer session during his recent lecture titled “The Maldives: Will democracy prevail,” on 16th April 2013 in Copenhagen, Denmark, where his critics have said he had made demeaning remarks towards Islam.

A video of the session being circulated in social media networks shows a member of the audience ask the former President whether he could try to explain the struggle between progressive and reactionary thinking in Islam.

Former President Nasheed answered that the radical Islamic thinking is not Islam, but rather Hejaz or Saudi thinking. He said that it is their idea to impose the radical culture upon all Islamic societies, and that the spread of this radical ideology is very rapid.

He said that the increase in momentum of these ideologies is due to the liberal Muslim's inability to provide an “alternative narrative” to counter the radical Islamic viewpoint.

Former President Nasheed had continued to elaborate and said that, “what the radicals are doing, they have an answer for everything, anything. You can ring up in the middle of the night and say “Sheikh. I’m not able to sleep.” And then the Sheikh would give you a Hadith, and a revelation on what the Prophet did, and what God has prescribed on sleeping in the middle of the night. Then you go back to sleep. We don’t have a help line. We don’t have an alternative narrative.”

The public reactions on social media networks remarked that Nasheed had implied that an alternative should be sought for the Prophet’s Hadiths and God’s revelations in the Holy Quran.