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Former Maldivian president Mohamed Nasheed feared for his life after receiving a death threat from Islamist extremists while visiting Britain, his office said yesterday. |
The former leader, who was toppled in what he claimed was a coup backed by Islamic radicals in February 2012, received the latest death threat while attending last week’s Conservative Party convention.
“This threat is one of a line of threats from Islamist extremists,” his office said in a
statement.
It said the telephoned threat followed an attack on the headquarters of his Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) as well as his home in the 2sq km Maldivian capital island of Male.
“Nasheed has reiterated his concerns of growing fundamentalism and intolerance in the Maldives and more recently an attempt by Islamists to use criminal gangs to pursue crimes of this nature,” the statement said.
It accused Maldivian police of failing to crack down on violence linked to religious extremists.
Nasheed’s office said Britain’s Metropolitan Police were investigating his complaint.
Maldives is known for pristine beaches and secluded coral islands popular with honeymooners, but the nation of 330,000 Sunni Muslims is also plagued with rising religious
intolerance.
Nasheed has accused leaders of the religious conservative Adhaalath Party of radicalising and indoctrinating youth to carry out vigilante action in the name of Islam, according to a Minivan News report.
“Don’t do this to our youth. Don’t make them do all these vile deeds after picking them out individually and leading them astray,” Nasheed said at a MDP last month.
“It’s difficult to say ‘extreme’ Islamic principles. They are not Islamic principles. Islamic principles are not hard or soft. They are moderate. Islam is always moderate,” he said, adding that the religion was being misused for “undue advantage and political gain and youth were being made to commit “many vile deeds.”
“Harming people in the name of religion, abducting people in the name of religion, and killing people, I know for certain that – and you don’t have to be a religious scholar – that is not how it is in Islam, that we all know Islam is not a violent religion,” he said.
Earlier last month, Nasheed told the Independent newspaper in the UK that the vast majority of Maldivians fighting in Syria and Iraq were former military soldiers.
Following the MDP’s claim in May that extremist ideologies were prevalent in the security services, the defence ministry dismissed the allegations at the time as both “baseless and untrue” and intended to “discredit and
disparage” the military.
Last month, MDP lawmaker Eva Abdulla received a text message threatening a suicide attack during the next MDP gathering. The message threatened to “kill off” MDP members and to fight “to the last drop of blood.”