PPM condemns Nasheed

The Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) has strongly condemned the remarks by former President Mohamed Nasheed while speaking at a university during his recent visit to Denmark, in which he criticised Islam.

Several other local groups have also accused Nasheed of making demeaning remarks towards Islam and the Prophet, in a question and answer session during the lecture in Denmark.

In a statement issued tonight, PPM said that such demeaning remarks mocking the Prophet and Islam by a former President of the Maldives, a hundred percent Muslim country, is shameful for the Maldives in front of other Muslim countries. PPM said that no Muslim should make such remarks.

PPM said that Nasheed, also during his presidency, criticised Islam in order to get the approval of non-Muslims, and put up monuments representing other religions and encouraged the use of drugs.

PPM said that to allow such a person to return as President of Maldives would be a disappointment for the country as well as Islam.

During the lecture by Nasheed, he was asked by a member of the audience whether he could try to explain the struggle between progressive and reactionary thinking in Islam.

Nasheed said that the increase in momentum of the ideologies is due to the liberal Muslims’ inability to provide an “alternative narrative” to counter the radical Islamic viewpoint.

Nasheed said, “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.”