ABSTRACT
The Conclusion summarizes the key arguments and offers some generalized suggestions that may be relevant for the study of democratization in other Muslim contexts. Based on the key argument that the strand of reformist Islam that existed in the Maldives in the space of politics in the Maldives was linked to modern nation building that led to Islam’s emergence as modern forms of political religion (i.e., Islam as a modern institutional and discursive political religion), the book suggests that irrespective of the strand of Islam, when Islam is functionalized in the space of politics (even for ostensibly ‘liberal’ ends), it tends to transform Islam as a potent political frame of reference. This, in turn, could nourish other forms of political Islam (e.g., Islamism) and potentially intensify controversy, instead of settling issues, related to religion vis-à-vis the state and individual rights. That is why the Conclusion suggests the calls for ‘reformation’ of Islam, and its deployment for achieving ‘liberal’ ends (as the reformist Islamic approach assumes) do not guarantee those ends, and, worse, could sometimes be counterproductive.
