ABSTRACT
Religion has been central to Maldivian politics since records began. In the twelfth century, a Buddhist king converted to Islam and ordered all citizens to do the same. Eight centuries later, the constitution demands the same, forbidding both nonbelief in Islam and belief in any religion other than Islam. Consequently, the Maldives is the only “100 percent Muslim” country in South Asia, a status that is crucial not just to its national identity but also to its politics. Until recently, the Islam practiced in the Maldives was a syncretic Maldivian Islam that had evolved over many centuries, its Buddhist cultural roots and early Sufi beginnings still identifiable in many religious customs and rituals. This Islam is now on the verge of disappearing and is being replaced by Salafism which has been aggressively promoted and spread across the country since the new millennium. Salafism, with its goal of reviving “true Islam” by returning believers to life as it was lived in Islam’s first three generations, is at odds with democracy, which the Maldives adopted as its preferred system of governance in 2008. This clash between Salafism and democracy dominates not just Maldivian politics but how life is lived by its citizens in the twenty-first century. This chapter provides a brief history of the relationship between religion and politics in the Maldives and shows how the power relations between and around them has enabled Salafism to define and shape its present.
