| DATE: 2007-10-15 | HNS
MALE, October 15, 2007 (Haveeru News Service) -- Dialogue and legal action need to go hand in hand in combating Islamic extremism in Maldives, the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs said.
In an interview with Haveeru Daily and Haveeru Online last week, the Council\'s President Sheikh Mohamed Rasheed Ibrahim said that the Council has continuously given the Government advice at every turn on how to combat extremism.
The Council does not have any mandate to take legal action but can advise people to return to the moderate path, Rasheed said.
He said that legal action should be taken against people who undertake extremist acts, and that when and if they come to their senses, the role of advising them to come to the moderate path can take place.
Extremism first surfaced in Maldives about 20 years ago when a group of people started holding Juma (Friday) prayer congregations separately in a house as against at officially established mosques, Rasheed said.
He said that he met the group a few times to try to bring them back to the correct path but that over the years, such breakaway groups have emerged from time to time.
Rasheed blamed a South Asian country, without naming it, but which Haveeru believes was a reference to Pakistan, for being a breeding ground for extremists.
\"Six months after they are educated\" at the madrassas, \"they suddenly become Islamic scholars. One of those involved in the September 29 bombing of the Sultan Park which injured 12 foreign tourists had just returned from there,\" Rasheed said.
He said that the people who get “enlightened from a close SAARC country” then preys on the minds of children as young as 12 to 14 and brainwash them to embrace an extreme form of Islam.
Rasheed said that sometimes extremists do not heed the Government but try to provoke and confront authorities.
For instance, he said that when it was found that people were congregating illegally in a house in Male, which sources have identified to Haveeru as Zeeniyaamaage in Maafannu ward, he tried to contact and seek compromise from the group but that they wouldn\'t budge.
\"Some people have pasted many posters on the walls of Ibrahimi Mosque. Some have even made a temporary partition (with a cloth) on the first floor of the mosque. When we send our officials, they are confronted. We have now referred this matter to relevant authorities,\" Rasheed said.
Even about five years ago, Rasheed himself met such a breakaway group and tried to advice them to embrace the moderate path -- to no avail.
\"Advice has to be accompanied by legal action,\" Rasheed concluded.
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