When I rebranded my blog to "Unintuitive Discourse: Literature for Humanist Activism" a year ago, I set out with a singular, ambitious goal: to bring humanism to the forefront of mainstream liberal politics. It was a lofty aspiration, but one I embraced with determination, though the path to achieving it wasn't entirely clear. But as time passed, moments of deep reflection and introspection led me to a newfound clarity, a clearer understanding of how to weave humanism into the fabric of political discourse and activism.

Today, at 43, I find myself at a crossroad in life, marked by personal growth and newfound clarity. I'm embarking on a step that feels both exhilarating and momentous. It's exciting because I now see a clear path unfolding before me. And it's significant because it's a lifelong commitment, a daunting yet invigorating prospect at this stage of my life.

The advent of AI last year has been nothing short of transformative. As an early adopter, I've harnessed its potential to augment and enhance my capabilities in profoundly life-changing ways. This AI-driven acceleration has enabled me to accomplish a few years' worth of work in mere months, reshaping not just my writing but also many aspects of my personal life, including organization, time management, and even my family office investments. It's an exhilarating ride into the future, and it's only just begun.

As I embrace this journey of growth and evolution, I'm introducing several new categories to the blog. This expansion signifies more than the addition of topics; it's a deepening of my exploration into humanism and its integration into mainstream politics. We're not merely exploring established ideas; we're actively crafting the narrative of political humanism, leveraging its profound potential for societal transformation. This endeavour is not just a journey but a commitment to defining how humanism intricately weaves into the political fabric, setting the stage for impactful and transformative activism.

In line with this vision, I am not only introducing new categories but also thoughtfully realigning and redefining the existing ones. Each category has undergone a meticulous transformation to encapsulate its core essence better. From exploring the revolutionary impact of Bitcoin to delving into the intricate narratives of humanism and civilization and traversing the expansive territories of science, technology, and free speech, these revitalized categories are designed to reflect a deeper and more nuanced engagement with each theme. This redefinition ensures that 'Unintuitive Discourse' continues to lead the way in intellectual and humanist discourse, fostering a platform for profound thought and meaningful dialogue.

"Activism & Change"

Activism & Change is a category that arose from my deepening understanding of the transformative power inherent in thoughtful activism and the intricate dynamics of societal evolution. This space is more than a mere addition to the blog – it embodies my commitment to delving into the vast possibilities of humanist activism and the profound impact of social change. Here, I aim to dissect the mechanics of societal transformation, unravelling the strategies and principles that underpin effective activism. We will scrutinize the political, social, and economic factors steering our journey toward a society founded on fairness, justice, and equality. This category is intended as a forum for intellectual exploration and practical action, a place where we can engage in deeper, more meaningful conversations about shaping a world that mirrors our humanist values. From grassroots movements to policy reform and the philosophical foundations of societal justice, we'll explore various facets of activism and change.

"History & Insights"

In History & Insights, we embark on a journey through time, unravelling the lessons and narratives of our past to illuminate our present and future. This category is not just about chronicling historical events; it's about extracting insights and understanding the continuum of human experience. We'll look at history through a humanist lens, examining how past events and decisions have shaped our current world and how they might inform our future choices. This space is dedicated to delving deep into the stories of our collective past, drawing out the wisdom and understanding that lie hidden in historical accounts and events. It's about connecting the dots between then and now and using our understanding of history to guide our actions and decisions in the present.

"Religion & Ideologies"

Religion & Ideologies represent a profound exploration into the myriad of human belief systems and their impact on the human experience. This category is a space for dissecting and understanding the complex web of religious doctrines and political ideologies. Here, we will engage in thoughtful analysis and reflective conversations, peeling back the layers of these belief systems to see how they shape our societal structures and worldviews. This is not just an analytical exercise; it's a platform for critical thinking and open dialogue. By exploring these ideologies through a humanist perspective, I aim to challenge conventional thinking and embrace a more inclusive, enlightened understanding of the world. This category is about delving into the nuanced intersections of belief, politics, and society and contemplating their influence on global dynamics and individual lives.

Housekeeping Notes

As part of these exciting new additions, I've taken the opportunity to realign some of our past discussions to their more appropriate categories. This reshuffling not only enhances the coherence of our journey but also adds depth to each exploration. Here's a summary of these movements:

• From "Speech is Free" to "Activism & Change":

  • The Atlas of Nation-State Power: A deep dive into the dynamics of power and governance, now inaugurating our "Activism & Change" category.

• From "Speech is Free" to "Religion & Ideologies":

  • Beyond Islamophobia: A Nuanced Conversation: Exploring the complex narratives surrounding Islamophobia.

  • Bridging Perspectives: Embracing Secular Humanism: A critical look at secular humanism in contrast to Islamic viewpoints.

  • Blasphemy is a Form of Dissent: Discussing the controversial yet crucial role of blasphemy in free speech.

  • New Documentary Questions the Current Origin Narrative of Islam with Compelling Research: Examining new perspectives and research on the origins of Islam.

While "History & Insights" is yet to be populated, I am preparing to introduce a comprehensive piece on the Palestine and Israel conflict, setting the stage for the kind of deep historical analysis and insight we aim to bring to this category.

Conclusion

The introduction of Activism & Change, History & Insights, and Religion & Ideologies, along with the thoughtful realignment of existing categories, heralds more than an expansion of "Unintuitive Discourse." It signals a new chapter in our shared narrative—a commitment to deepening our exploration of humanist activism, understanding the complex weave of our history, and demystifying the vast realm of human beliefs.

As I navigate this new phase, the essence of my mission remains steadfast: to inject humanism into mainstream political dialogue and to redefine the narrative for political humanism. These categories are the emerging chapters of our collective story—a story about understanding, change, and progress. They are not merely repositories of information but forges where ideas are tempered and reshaped into tools for societal evolution.

In "Activism & Change," we will tackle and harness the multifaceted challenges and opportunities of shaping a fairer world. "History & Insights" will act as our compass to the past, offering a wealth of context and wisdom. "Religion & Ideologies" will provoke us to critically examine the multitude of belief systems that govern our societies. These new and redefined categories form a tapestry of human experience and thought, each contributing to a more profound understanding of our world. They are individual yet interconnected realms of exploration, beckoning you to delve deeper and join the conversations that will shape our shared destiny.

This is more than an invitation to read and reflect—it's a summons to engage, discuss, and participate in a dialogue that spans history, philosophy, politics, and the essence of the human condition. As we advance, your thoughts, insights, and perspectives will become integral to this evolving discourse.

So, I invite you to join me in this expanded journey of exploration. Let's venture into these new territories together, bringing our individual perspectives and insights to the fore. Let's inspire and be inspired as we continue to write our story—one post, one discussion, and one insight at a time.

The insights and lessons from the first four decades of my life now serve as the foundation for the next forty years. In this upcoming journey, I aim to distill these experiences into tangible knowledge, sharing this newfound understanding, and seeking deeper meaning through our collective exploration. The wisdom gained in the first half of my life is now poised to be imparted in the next, focusing on the synthesis of past experiences to enrich both teaching and meaningful connections.

Thank you for being part of this journey. The road ahead is abundant with opportunities, and I am eager to discover them with you.

Warm regards,

Muju 6.0

Thank you for taking the time to read my work. My writing is purposed to make us all think together, not to impose my thoughts. If you enjoyed it and found it valuable, there are many ways you can show your support and help me continue writing.

1. Become a patron by subscribing to my premium membership.

2. Share my blog with someone you know who may also find it interesting or useful.

3. Spread the word by sharing this post on your social media channels.

4. Leave a comment with your thoughts or questions to engage in a dialogue and give me feedback.

I deeply appreciate your support and generosity, as writing high-quality content requires a significant investment of my time and energy. One of my primary goals with this blog is to achieve greater financial autonomy and reduce my reliance on traditional employment. While I don't expect to make a full-time income from this, every subscription and every bit of support brings me one step closer to this goal.

Thank you again for your readership and support. Thank you again for your readership and support.

Support My Crowdfunding on Geyser

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Unintuitive Discourse - Geyser Campaign

Dear Readers,

Today marks a transformative phase for Unintuitive Discourse. I am elated to share the launch of our crowdfunding campaign, a step towards our redefined vision: intertwining humanist activism with Bitcoin's transformative power. Our mission expands beyond traditional activism; it delves into the intricate dance between technology, economics, human behaviour, and societal change.

Our Ambition with Crowdfunding

While our core remains unchanged—championing critical thinking, exploring new paradigms, and advocating for global progress—our aspirations have grown. Crowdfunding is not just a means to fund our vision but a bridge to reach approximately 57% of the world's populace. With your support, we can broaden our horizons, making content accessible globally and reshaping the narrative on humanism and Bitcoin's transformative potential.

The Synergy of Humanism and Bitcoin

Our conviction runs deep: The intertwining of humanism and Bitcoin is not just complementary but revolutionary. Humanism, with its foundation in empathy, ethical behaviours, and collective welfare, finds a powerful ally in Bitcoin. As Bitcoin propels us towards a future of hyperbitcoinization, it embodies ideals of decentralization, financial autonomy, and individual empowerment. Together, these two pillars can forge a new paradigm for a global society where prosperity is widespread, and justice is inherent.

How Your Contribution Shapes Our Journey

Your alliance in this mission is invaluable. Supporting our crowdfunding initiative on Geyser is more than a donation; it's a commitment to a brighter, inclusive future. Your contribution empowers us to:

1. Produce literature that fuels global dialogue on humanism, activism, and Bitcoin.

2. Use cutting-edge AI to augment our insights whilst preserving our human-centric approach to content.

3. Create audio essays, making our content more accessible.

4. Carry our voice to global platforms like the Oslo Freedom Forum, enhancing our engagement with global thought leaders.

Embark on this Odyssey with Us:

• Join a thriving community of visionaries and changemakers.

• Foster conversations that redefine global perspectives.

• Play a pivotal role in creating an inclusive, equitable world, enriched by humanist activism and the capabilities of Bitcoin.

Together, Our Potential is Boundless

Unintuitive Discourse is more than just a literary platform. It's a beacon for individuals yearning for societal transformation. Together, we can sculpt narratives, redefine traditional frameworks, and envision a world enriched by both humanist ideals and the revolutionary promise of Bitcoin.

Explore our crowdfunding campaign on Geyser and discover the exclusive rewards tailored for our supporters. Every contribution, regardless of its magnitude, accelerates our journey towards lasting impact.

In Gratitude for Your Continued Alliance

Your unwavering support and belief in our vision have been the backbone of Unintuitive Discourse. It is this collective strength that empowers us to dream bigger and strive for a change that echoes across the globe.

Together, let's redefine boundaries and amplify our global influence.

Visit our crowdfunding campaign here:

Unintuitive Discourse - Geyser Campaign

With profound thanks,

Muju 6.0
Founder and Writer, Unintuitive Discourse - Literature for Humanist Activism

Thank you for taking the time to read my work. My writing is purposed to make us all think together, not to impose my thoughts. If you enjoyed it and found it valuable, there are many ways you can show your support and help me continue writing.

- Become a patron by subscribing to my premium membership.

- Share my blog with someone you know who may also find it interesting or useful.

- Spread the word by sharing this post on your social media channels.

- Leave a comment with your thoughts or questions to engage in a dialogue and give me feedback.

I deeply appreciate your support and generosity, as writing high-quality content requires a significant investment of my time and energy. One of my primary goals with this blog is to achieve greater financial autonomy and reduce my reliance on traditional employment. While I don't expect to make a full-time income from this, every subscription and every bit of support brings me one step closer to this goal.

Thank you again for your readership and support.

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Dear Reader,

Thank you for being a part of the Unintuitive Discourse - Literature for Humanist Activism community. Your support and engagement inspire me to continue this important work. Today, I'm excited to introduce our new referral program, which allows you to share the value of Unintuitive Discourse with your friends and earn special benefits.

Here's how you can participate and spread the word:

1. Share Unintuitive Discourse - Literature for Humanist Activism: Use the referral link provided below or click the "Share" button on any post to share the link with your friends. You can send it via text, email, or share it on social media. When your friends subscribe using your referral link, you'll receive credit for their sign-up.

Refer a friend

2. Earn Special Benefits: As a token of my appreciation, I am offering exclusive benefits based on the number of friends you refer:

• Get a complimentary one-month subscription for referring 3 friends.

• Receive a complimentary three-month subscription for referring 5 friends.

• Enjoy a complimentary one-year subscription for referring 25 friends.

Visit the leaderboard

By referring your friends, you not only help us grow our community but also unlock special access to Unintuitive Discourse - Literature for Humanist Activism for yourself. It's a win-win!

To learn more about the referral program and how it works, please check out Substack's FAQ, linked below.

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Thank you for being an advocate for Unintuitive Discourse - Literature for Humanist Activism! Your support is invaluable in spreading the word and promoting critical thinking and humanist activism.

Together, let's continue to challenge the status quo, explore new perspectives, and drive positive change in the world.

Warm regards,

Muju 6.0
Unintuitive Discourse - Literature for Humanist Activism

Thank you for taking the time to read my work. My writing is purposed to make us all think together, not to impose my thoughts. If you enjoyed it and found it valuable, there are many ways you can show your support and help me continue writing.

- Become a patron by subscribing to my premium membership.

- Share my blog with someone you know who may also find it interesting or useful.

- Spread the word by sharing this post on your social media channels.

- Leave a comment with your thoughts or questions to engage in a dialogue and give me feedback.

I deeply appreciate your support and generosity, as writing high-quality content requires a significant investment of my time and energy. One of my primary goals with this blog is to achieve greater financial autonomy and reduce my reliance on traditional employment. While I don't expect to make a full-time income from this, every subscription and every bit of support brings me one step closer to this goal.

Thank you again for your readership and support.

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I recently started using Substack Notes and I’m really enjoying this feature! As a long-form writer, I often have a lot of thoughts and ideas that I want to share with my readers but don’t always have the time or focus to write a full essay. With Substack Notes, I can share my thoughts and ideas with my readers without having to wait for a full essay. It’s also a great way to add some brevity to my writing and make it more accessible for readers who may not have the time or focus to read longer pieces.

I also like how Substack Notes opens up a door for me to connect with my readers in new ways. It’s a great way to share updates, insights and other interesting tidbits with my readers that don’t necessarily fit into a longer piece.

Finally, here are some of my most recent notes in this post so that readers can check them out and then invite them to go exploring my other notes. It’s definitely a great feature for writers who want to share their thoughts and ideas with their readers in new and interesting ways.

Notes is a new space on Substack for us to share links, short posts, quotes, photos, and more.

Go to Notes

How to join

Head to substack.com/notes or find the “Notes” tab in the Substack app. As a subscriber to Unintuitive Discourse, you’ll automatically see my notes. Feel free to like, reply, or share them around!

You can also share notes of your own. I hope this becomes a space where every reader of Unintuitive Discourse can share thoughts, ideas, and interesting quotes from the things we're reading on Substack and beyond.

If you encounter any issues, you can always refer to the Notes FAQ for assistance. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Go to Notes

Thank you for taking the time to read my work. My writing is purposed to make us all think together, not to impose my thoughts. If you enjoyed it and found it valuable, there are many ways you can show your support and help me continue writing.

1. Become a patron by subscribing to my premium membership.

2. Share my blog with someone you know who may also find it interesting or useful.

3. Spread the word by sharing this post on your social media channels.

4. Leave a comment with your thoughts or questions to engage in a dialogue and give me feedback.

I deeply appreciate your support and generosity, as writing high-quality content requires a significant investment of my time and energy. One of my primary goals with this blog is to achieve greater financial autonomy and reduce my reliance on traditional employment. While I don't expect to make a full-time income from this, every subscription and every bit of support brings me one step closer to this goal.

Thank you again for your readership and support.

Tip with Bitcoin

Tip with Bitcoin Lightening

Read Unintuitive Discourse in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

It has been several years since my last blog post, and yet my passion for expressing myself through my words remains as fervent as ever. After an extended absence from public writing and social media, I find myself longing to return to the craft that has been such an integral part of my journey. Writing these new posts makes me feel like I'm rekindling a relationship with an old friend.

The human experience is ever-evolving, and our societies are constantly shifting, making it crucial to approach the world with infinite curiosity and an open mind. Through my hiatus, life has taken me on a journey filled with triumphs and tribulations that have broadened my perspectives and deepened my understanding of the world. As I reflect on my experiences, I feel invigorated to resume my writing, eager to share my insights and observations with an audience who shares my passion for exploring the complexities of our world.

As I continue on my writing journey, I'm eager to explore a wide range of topics that have been on my mind and that I now hold a deep interest in. These topics include my experiences as a political refugee, my thoughts on the societal impact of the pandemic, the broken monetary system that continues to widen the wealth gap and oppress the poor globally, the continued acceleration of technology and its impact on societies, democracy, and human rights, science, the evolving political climate and culture, and the human impact on the environment. Furthermore, I will continue to write about my ideas and perspectives on events in the Maldives.

In addition to these topics, I want to dive deep into my humanist worldview and how those values and beliefs influence my views. I also want to address the problematic nature of tribal "us vs them" politics and how it contributes to the polarization and divisiveness in society. I aim to approach these issues from a more measured centrist stance, grounded in my core beliefs and values. My politics are non-binary - I don't swing left or right, and I prefer to write in a language that allows for more than just two options! As I explore the middle ground between different political ideologies, I hope to find common ground with liberal, libertarian, and conservative talking points that align with my values.

I look forward to sharing my insights and reflections on these subjects, and I hope to spark thought-provoking conversations that contribute to a greater understanding of the world we live in. I am excited to engage with my readers and learn from their feedback and perspectives as I continue this journey.

For those who are new to my writing, let me introduce myself. I started my writing journey 19 years ago, and my passion for writing has only strengthened over time. I am a passionate advocate for important issues, such as secularism, democracy, and human rights. My writing has forced me to endure challenging situations. I have been imprisoned, put under house arrest, and forced into exile because of my opinions. In all instances, my persecutors were both the state and religious fanatics. 

After being recognized by the UN as a political refugee and resettled in Canada through the country's federally run Urgent Protection Program (UPP) in 2017, I am fortunate to have the opportunity to continue using my voice to spark thought and conversation. As I navigated my life unfolding and the trials and tribulations of being an opinionated writer and political activist, my passion for writing has only strengthened over time, even in the face of such adversity. It is through this unique perspective that I hope to share with all of you the lessons I have learned and the experiences I have had. I hope my words will spark thought and conversation, and we can continue to connect and learn from each other in the coming months and years.

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Our experiences define us

My current worldview and how I approach specific topics, such as politics, religion, and human rights, have been profoundly shaped by my experiences in Canada. One of the biggest challenges I faced was navigating discussions about Islam in the West.

As someone who fought against religious orthodoxy and harm to human rights in an Islamic country, I found myself in conflict with the Western liberal issue of dealing with "Islamophobia." I quickly realized that making conversations about Islam was not always allowed, and cultural relativism and racism were touted as reasons. To me, this was problematic because, in the West, one can criticize Christianity without being labelled a bigot, yet discussing problems with Islam often came with a different response. Hypocrisy always left a bad taste in my mouth.

To illustrate this point, I can share a personal anecdote that highlights the difficulties of navigating discussions around Islam in the West. In my first year in Canada, I sought like-minded people to connect with and rebuild my life. I came across the Sunday meetings of the British Columbia Humanist Association (BC Humanists) through the Meetup app on my phone. I started attending the meetings and slowly got to know some members, some of whom have become meaningful friends in my life. 

Over time, I felt comfortable sharing my story about leaving Islam in a hostile environment, becoming an atheist and my struggles for democracy and secularism in the Maldives. I was grateful for the opportunity to speak about my experiences, and my friend Joann, who once chaired the organization, encouraged me to do so. She provided me with the support and guidance I needed to overcome some of my personal struggles with PTSD and share my story with the BC Humanists community.

However, I soon realized that a more radical left-leaning faction of the community, now known colloquially as "the woke," had begun their takeover of the organization. They started censoring content on their website and social media channels deemed "wrong think" according to the ideological beliefs of this group. As the "woke" segment took over the organization, they censored and erased dissenting voices, including those who had fought against religious orthodoxy and harm to human rights in Islamic countries. My story and those of others who had struggled in Islamic theocracies were cancelled and deleted.

Unintuitive Discourse

From Islam to Atheism and a Struggle for Democracy and Secularism in the Maldives – Talk at BCHA

Below is the text of a the talk I gave to the British Columbia Humanist Association on 19th November 2017. The talk is an overview of my life which has made me a refugee in Canada as a protected person in their Urgent Protection Program (UPP). Thank you to the BC Humanists Association for letting me speak to you all and allowing me to tell you my story…

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8 years ago · Muju 6.0

As someone who had suffered under religious orthodoxy, this censorship was hypocritical and hurtful. I felt pained by the experience of being silenced by people who claimed to be fighting for social justice, civil liberties and human rights, especially under the banner of Humanism. The BC Humanists community, which had once been a safe space for me to share my experiences and find like-minded individuals, became a place where my story and the stories of others didn't matter as far as the organization's public face was concerned.

This experience showed me that while it is essential to protect minorities and marginalized groups, we should not shy away from having difficult and nuanced conversations about the harm caused by religion, regardless of the cultural and political context. As a humanist, I believe it is essential to address and bring awareness to these issues, even if it means challenging some of the assumptions and values of Western liberalism.

While I understand that Muslims are a minority in the West and that there are bigots motivated by hatred, it's imperative that we protect them while still having difficult and nuanced conversations about the harm caused by religion. In my case, it was Islam. As a humanist, I found it essential to address and bring awareness to these issues, regardless of the difficulties in navigating conversations.

Additionally, my experiences navigating discussions around Islam in the West were not limited to ideological conflicts. Now a migrant refugee in a foreign and new country, I faced challenges finding employment despite having a wealth of transferable skills and experience. I share this to add further context to this issue of navigating Islam in the West and dealing with the challenges that came with how political liberalism in the West was evolving. 

I repeatedly encountered instances where I was deemed unhirable because of my public criticisms of Islam, despite my criticisms being rooted in a desire to promote personal freedoms, civil liberties, autonomy, self-determination, human rights, women, children and minority rights, secularism, and democracy. These are the very values that liberal democracy in the West was built on.

Even more frustratingly, the fact that I had been imprisoned in the past also seemed to hinder my ability to find employment. It didn't seem to matter that my imprisonment resulted from being wrongfully persecuted by a religiously motivated, deeply entrenched authoritarian dictatorship. My only "crime" was fighting for the values that the West purports to hold dear.

This highlights the unfairness, double standards, and hypocrisy that exists within our liberal Canadian society. On the one hand, we champion the very values that I fought for, yet on the other hand, we deny people who have fought for those same values the chance to integrate and contribute to our society. It is a disheartening reality that demonstrates just how far we still have to go in achieving true equality and justice for all. 

Though anecdotal, my experiences stand testament to how censorship of dissenting voices can lead to the erasure of important narratives and experiences, which is dangerous for any society.

Beyond that, my journey as a landed migrant rebuilding my life in Vancouver went on to expose me to the struggles of immigrant life in Canada. I got to experience some of the challenges faced by the working class from the perspectives of both the conservatives and liberals. As an outsider, I observed and learned objectively, seeking to understand the struggles of this new environment.

Despite multiple attempts to secure employment that matched my qualifications and skill set, I eventually changed tack and settled for any available job. In late 2017, I began working as a sales associate at Roots, a multinational clothing company and one of the most recognizable brands in Canada. I was earning minimum wage, working eight-hour shifts five days a week, with rotating workdays. I went above and beyond what was required, terrified of falling through the cracks of society and having to struggle with rent, all the while not having the comforting security of friends or family in the event I needed any help or assistance. I had to make it work; I had become my own safety net. I might write more details about this stage in a follow-up post.

Another significant event that profoundly impacted my worldview was the government and public health authorities' response to Covid-19. Like many others, I initially supported lockdowns as the disease was novel and much was unknown, including its mortality rate and long-term effects for those who survived. It seemed prudent to err on the side of caution at the time. As more scientific information about the virus became available, I began seeing how fear, irrationality, and even well-intentioned efforts to protect the vulnerable led to more and more extreme measures and mandates infringing on human rights.

As the situation worsened, I found it challenging to reconcile my values of advocating for human rights and democracy with the need to comply with increasingly totalitarian public health guidelines to keep myself and others safe. As a lifelong human rights activist, I understood that the consequences of sacrificing freedoms and democracy for short-term gains would be severe and that regaining what was lost would be unduly challenging. We must strive to protect the democratic and human rights gains we have made so far and continue to build upon them for the betterment of society.

Every ounce of me told me it was necessary to raise the alarm that some of these measures were regressing our long-hard-won human rights standards. Combined with the ongoing struggles of rebuilding my life in a new country added to the weight on my shoulders, feeling overwhelmed and unsure of how to move forward, I found myself struggling to find the words to express my thoughts and feelings, and my blog fell silent. Promptly. I withdrew from active public social media as well.

After I withdrew from social media, I settled into the monotonous routine of life in lockdown. At first, like many others, I thought it would be short-lived. But as the days turned into weeks and months, it became clear that the situation was far from temporary. My employer eventually laid me off, uncertain if there would be any work to return to in the foreseeable future. During that time, I relied on my employment insurance and government benefits to support myself while taking on various online work.

However, as I adjusted to this new reality, the fractures in my relationship with my wife became more apparent. We were both adjusting to life as migrant refugees in Canada, and we were dealing with our own individual mental health struggles. Yet, at the heart of our irreconcilable conflicts was the fact that we could not have children. Despite seeking medical assistance, all our pregnancies had ended in miscarriage before term, and we fell into the 20% of miscarriages that medical science could not explain. In total, my wife and I had gone through the heartbreaking experience of nine known miscarriages.

With the added stress of the lockdown, it became clear that we needed to go our separate ways. We filed for divorce in 2021 on the grounds of mutually wanting separation, which was a difficult decision for both of us. But it was the right thing to do. We soon parted ways, and we remain good friends to this day. I feel fortunate to have the relationship end the way it did; given everything we had lived through and shared along the way, it would have been a shame not to remain friends.

Concurrently, safety and security concerns dominated this period of my life. Multiple death threats were directed at me, resulting in police reports filed with the Vancouver Police Department and Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Working with law enforcement, a trail of reports was established to help ensure rapid response in an emergency situation. An open case file with the RCMP remains active for this purpose. I had essentially given up privacy in exchange for security so that I could protect my one life.

The threats were deemed credible enough that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), Canada's intelligence agency, issued a legally mandated warning. According to CSIS, information indicated that an Islamist terrorist cell was actively seeking to locate me, intending to make an example of a dissenter against Islam, like myself.

Mentally and emotionally, I was exhausted from the life that had been thrust upon me. On top of everything, I was also dealing with mobility issues that stemmed from childhood injuries that worsened over time due to my sedentary work life and the added strain of being on the run as an asylum seeker. Finding myself going through some of the worst times of my life, I found the strength, courage, and determination to keep going by forcing myself to exercise and go on hiking expeditions that lasted for hours on end. I will write more about my fitness journey in another post.

This chapter of my life taught me the power of perseverance and resilience, even in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

Throughout my ordeal, I began to think more about money, what my long-term prospects were, what my life would be like during old age and the sort of expenses I might incur, how I could save money for my future, how I spend it and transport it over space and time. My curiosity led me to Bitcoin, where I spent hundreds of hours studying in-depth to understand its technology, game theory, value proposition, and what it solves. I thought about the incentives that drive human behaviour and shape our lives daily. This exploration also made me question what money is and how it evolved as humans tried to solve social cohesion over time.

I discovered that by understanding money, we can better grasp our collective power as people and what we can do to foster a more just and equal society. We can use our knowledge and resources to advocate for societal justice and human rights globally. It starts with us, and I'm ready to start the conversation.

Through my writing, I want to explore the evolution of my views and share the importance of human rights in our complex and changing world. Although I still want to talk about the struggles in the Maldives, I feel compelled to have a much bigger discourse that is not intuitive to most people worldwide, given that most people are still religious and have notions about the universe and life that are not in line with a scientific consensus. I hope my story and perspectives can contribute to and help create dialogue in a hyper-partisan and polarized political world.

Some housekeeping

As I return to blogging, I've made the decision to move to Substack, a platform that offers more flexibility and opportunities for engagement than my previous WordPress blog. It also allows me to do this, perhaps full-time even, while being beyond any particular source's influence. I'm cautiously optimistic as I embark on this new phase of my writing journey and share my perspectives with a broader audience.

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Below is the text of a talk I gave to the British Columbia Humanist Association on 19th November 2017. The talk is an overview of my life which has made me a refugee in Canada as a protected person in their Urgent Protection Program (UPP).  

Thank you to the BC Humanists Association for letting me speak to you all and allowing me to tell you my story. I wrote a much longer introduction first, but found out that it was eating into my time, so as much as I would like to thank individually everyone that’s helped in making this talk possible, time constraints had to be taken into account. You know who you are and I really appreciate all that you have made possible.

My story is multiple stories in one;

• There is a story of me applying for asylum, becoming a refugee, and then being resettled in Canada.

• There is also the story of leaving religion and becoming an atheist, its consequences and how it’s impacted my personal relationships.

• There is also the story of human rights and secular activism in an Islamist country.

• And also a story of being jailed unfairly in a dictatorship which lead me to want to change the country.

All of these are stories that would take much longer time to tell than the 45 minutes allocated for me to do this talk.

My arrival in Canada is the result of a series of events in my life and that of the country I am from. The domino effects of these events had resulted in my close friends being attacked, murdered and abducted – leaving me and many others heartbroken. These events culminated with me becoming a UNHCR refugee – resettled in Canada as a Protected Person in the federal government’s Urgent Protection Program.

I am from the Island nation of the Republic of Maldives. It is a group of sand Islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean just below the tip of the Indian subcontinent and south of Sri Lanka. It’s an independent nation of proud people, with our own language and history that has been recorded for more than 2000 years. Out of those 2000 years, for the last 900 years, the people of the Islands have been, mostly Muslims. Before conversion to Islam, historical archeological evidence shows the people were Buddhist. The current population of this small country is just a little over 400,000 people living on 200 islands out of 1200 islands that make up the country. These islands are tiny – the capital situated on a small island of four square kilometers. The lack of land meant anything of significant size that requires a lot of space had to be built on their own islands. This geographical makeup of the islands gives the Maldives its unique character with its airport islands and the one island one resort business model.

The Maldives has also had a tumultuous political history. The late 70s saw Maumoon Abdul Gayoom came to power as president. A position he would hold for 30 years of dictatorship. His iron-fisted dictatorial rule went side by side with a drive for modernization of the islands. Tourism was introduced in the 70s and over the years the industry grew significantly into the multi-billion dollar industry that it is today. Locally the tourism industry is known as the goose that lays the golden egg.  It gives the Maldives its international reputation for an upmarket luxury tourism destination, bringing in untold amounts of wealth to the country. But there also lies one of the Maldives’ major problem. The larger public does not see this new found wealth being passed down to them. There is no trickle down. Because of the Gayoom dictatorship, the tourism industry would end up being owned by a cartel-like group of 30 odd families who were extremely loyal to him and part of the inner circle of the president. Current statistics shows the Maldivian tourism industry was annually invoicing more than 3 billion US dollars.

And these islands are also Islamic. By law, one cannot be a citizen without being a Sunni Muslim. This was the another problem of the Maldives.

———————

I am the second child of five siblings born to my parents. I have one sister and three brothers. The middle child in the family is my sister. All my siblings are two years apart. My mother passed away when I was six years old from a brain aneurysm, and my father raised us as best as he could, given the circumstances. My father is a hard working man and by all definitions a “good Muslim.” He prays five times a day and has a very strict worldview informed by the Islamic doctrine he believes to be the universal truth.

And it is that same Islamic doctrine that everyone else around me believed as well. You see, there are only a handful countries in the world that proclaim proudly as a “100% Islamic country”. Maldives is one of them. The others are Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Somalia. Everyone I knew growing up, was Muslim as far as I knew. At least outwardly they were. Later in life, I would learn that this is not true and that it was near impossible to have a large group of people who were homogeneous in their beliefs and character. I would learn that quite a few did not believe in Islam and are burdened by the restrictions the religion placed on their lives, including myself. However, as far as appearances go, everyone nevertheless played along as Muslims. The reason for this being the sinister nature of the religion of Islam and how it is used as a political tool to maintain a false sense of unity as one people.

Throughout most of my childhood, I grew up in a bubble unaware of most of the things that were happening around me. You see, I was born into the previously mentioned privileged group of people that ran the country all this time. It was the privilege of wealth and power that came from being from the elite class. And my privilege made me blind to what was happening in the country as I grew up.

———————

An essential element of my story is that I am an ex-Muslim atheist. In the language of Islam, an apostate. My leaving of Islam wasn’t a decision made lightly nor was it made in ignorance of what some have argued with me was the lack of my understanding of what “true Islam” is.

My journey out of Islam was cemented due to some significant events in my life early on. The first such incident happened at the very young age of 9 years, in a Quran class.

The class was a private class run by a middle-aged couple with 30 to 40 students attending per session. We referred to the woman as “sister” and the man as “brother”. One day in class as I opened my bag, I discovered that I had forgotten to bring my copy of the Quran with me. Which really shouldn’t have been an issue as there were many spare copies of the Quran in the class. But instead of being given a replacement Quran that day, I was severely beaten with a stick by the woman. My torment didn’t end there. For the duration of the class, I was then locked up in an outdoor toilet. The toilet had a large well and some trees. I stayed there crying and sobbing – horrified at the experience, scared of being alone and hurting from the beating I had just received. The added fear of a jinn coming and taking me away reduced me to near paralysis. We grew up being told of the existence of these supernatural beings called Jinns according to Islamic tradition. And these jinns supposedly crossed into the human realm frequently possessing people and doing harm when they cross over. My fear intensified as I remembered stories of naughty children being taken away by jinns.

After an hour and a half – that was the duration of the class,  which to me felt like an eternity – I was lead out of the toilet. The male teacher then proceeded to advise me on being a “good boy” and to remember to bring the Quran next time. I would insist to my father on never coming back to the class again which he agreed. I don’t remember anything being done about my treatment because the experience I just had was considered quite normal.

After all here is what Islam’s prophet says on what is termed as “permissible beating” of children:

“Teach your children to pray when they are seven years old, and smack them if they do not pray when they are ten years old, and separate them in their beds.”

This experience left a mark on me, and I would then forever look at anything Islamic through a negative lens. At the time I didn’t know or understand how to articulate why I didn’t like religion. But I knew deep in my heart something was not ok with religion. I just didn’t know what it was.

———————

The 90s saw the mass introduction of drugs in the Maldives. Heroin and hash oil – was the entirety of the Maldivian drug scene at the time. The drugs were freely available in the country and incredibly cheap. At first, the public didn’t understand the implications of this. I remember most young people in the country thought it was cool to do drugs. And all the popular girls preferred boys who did drugs. This was the grounds for an addiction epidemic. Maldives is also a country where the public is not allowed to drink legally.

By age 13, I was smoking cigarettes, and by age 15 I was occasionally using hash oil, and by age 16 I was introduced to brown sugar, a street name for heroin. I never injected heroin because of a fear of needles and my aversion to pain in general. I still wasn’t using regularly, and I wasn’t addicted, yet. Which made me notably cocky about my drug use. I was safely smoking heroin while others I knew was getting sick. And like everyone else, I didn’t understand at the time how addiction worked. The drug problem in the country over the next decades would spiral out of control into a full-blown epidemic.

The 90s also saw the arrival of Salafi-Wahhabi ideology in the Maldives. “True Islam” they called it. It was significantly different from Gayoom’s version of Islam which he learned during his time as a student in Al Azhar University in Egypt and by now was enforced in the Maldives. Both was equally harsh. The latter was worse.

———————

The other significant event was my trip to Saudi Arabia at the age of 16. My father had begun to suspect that I may be dabbling in drugs. And he was concerned about some of the friends I had. And he thought I could be changed by taking me to Mecca and getting me exposed to more religion.

He planned the trip for both myself and my brother to accompany him for the whole month of Ramadan in ‘96. With no internet, I had no idea what to expect before the trip. As a teenager, I was more excited about a trip abroad which was much more exciting to me than the much-coveted pilgrimage to Mecca to visit the Kaaba and pray. I would see new places and would have stories to tell when I was back. So I agreed and went.

To my pleasant surprise, my brother and I were not the only ones on the journey in our age group being coerced by parents to go because our parents want to influence our thinking with more religion. So I had company.

In Mecca, this was the first time I was attempting to honestly fast and pray. And it wasn’t going very well at the beginning.

The first half of the trip went with me cheating prayers – I attended the prayers as there was no other option available. I was mostly mimicking my father and others in the group in my prayers. I was also eating sneaked food at the rooftop of the hotel I was staying and exploring the city of Mecca. One such day my brother and I got caught by the hotel staff as we were eating on the terrace and were promptly marched downstairs to be handed over to the police. The leaders of our Umrah contingent intervened, and we were not handed over to the police. I cannot imagine what the outcome would have been if we had been handed over to the police.

On this first Saudi trip, I learned a few valuable life lessons;

1. That we are not all equal – even though we are always told in the eyes of God that we were.  
   
   The entire area of the holy mosque and Kaaba in Mecca is called the Haram (not to be confused by haraam which means “forbidden” in Islam). Any prayer done within the boundaries of the Haram is considered as done at the Kaaba and supposedly of equal value. On the edge of the holy mosque is a grand palace within these boundaries. The Palace has a large prayer room (almost a separate mosque if you will) with large floor to ceiling windows overlooking the Kaaba. The Saudi royals usually pray there and only come down to the actual floor level of the Kaaba just when they need a photo opportunity.

2. Lying and cheating is common among those that portray to be more religious than others. Keeping in mind that those that visit Mecca on their own accord are incredibly religious.
   
   Some people who go to Mecca use begging as a lucrative means to earn a living while resorting to trickery and pretending to be disabled or sick just to win sympathy. They use the holy month of Ramadan as an opportunity to earn vast amounts of money, targeting pilgrims to the sacred mosque. And some of these beggars abuse people who don’t give alms. Scolding and yelling in foreign languages – as beggars in Mecca come from all backgrounds and nationalities. I don’t know how much of this has changed today.

3. Religion is not a means to end human cruelty or create more compassion towards our fellow man. But can and is used as the source of cruelty and to control people.
   
   Among the vast number of beggars in Mecca lay hidden something more menacing. Organized crime and human trafficking. Women and children were being used as tools to beg from pilgrims by cartel like gangs. And sometimes those that are used as tools of begging are maimed intentionally to create sympathy from their targets.
   
   I was by far more curious and inquisitive than I even knew about myself. I learned this through befriending some beggars that hung outside our hotel all the time.

4. Religious people are unforgiving in their attempt to find fault with people and seeking to exact revenge and punish those who they see as doing wrong (even if they had not done anything wrong).  

5. Religion was boring and monotonous. The praying, the incessant recitation of the Quran and all the rituals were neverending. It drove me out of my mind.

—————————–

After coming back from the Saudi trip – for a few months – I was confused. The first few month I tried to pray but it eventually did not take, and I was back to my old self again. This time more sure about the things I observed there and the lessons I learned from it. Soon I was getting high more frequently, and before long I was addicted.

—————————–

In 1998, I finished my O’level. I skipped Dhivehi Language and Islam in the exams. Soon after doing my O’levels, I went to Sri Lanka. While in Sri Lanka, I attended an Australian Education Fair and found a private college that would accept me for a bridging course that would allow me to skip doing my A Levels and go straight to University. So in January 1999, I was in Perth, Australia enrolled in college. On the flight to Australia, I went into withdrawal and by the time I landed I was too sick to do anything. I cleaned up cold turkey alone in the first couple of weeks because I was determined to get an education. Six months later I graduated from the college bridging course and was enrolled at University studying a Marketing Degree as my father had wanted.

—————————–

After spending a year in Perth, I arrived back in Maldives for a visit in December ‘99 for the Christmas / New Year holidays. It was the year of the big new millennium celebrations. Still in the Maldives, in January 2000 as a 19-year-old, I was taken into custody by the Maldivian Police Service because of a phone call I made.

My trip back home coincided with a Parliamentary by-election. It was still during the height of Dictator Gayooms power. Apparently, there were some arson threats, and as part of ongoing intimidation and fear by the regime, the government had decided to take in people for questioning, and sometimes detention when they were seen outside in groups of more than four people. As things would have it, the brother of my girlfriend at the time was detained during this arresting spree. The phone call I made was to the police was to complain about this. During the call I mentioned something along the lines of how the police was wasting resources doing what they were doing, and all the while the real arsonists were probably about to torch a minister’s house as we speak. Bad idea. Now in hindsight, I was just a foolish young man trying to impress a girl.

During this detention, I spent 20 days in lock-up at the central police station in Male’. It was a general holding cell where everyone that is brought in was kept all together in a cramped space with bunk beds. After the temporary holding cell, I was transferred to a solitary confinement cell in the basement of the main police station in the capital. I was deprived of daylight or any connection to another human being. I spent another 14 days there. At the end of the isolation confinement, I was then transferred to the country’s largest prison facility – Maafushi prison – for another 56 days. I turned 20 while in Maafushi prison. I was no longer a teenager but a young adult.

In Maafushi prison, I was kept in a large warehouse type prison cell with 120 other prisoners sharing three toilets. We were given a liter of clean drinking water each day. The water coming from the taps in the bathrooms had a slimy, muddy scum in it. And we slept on concrete slabs. While in detention, a number of my teeth started to rot, and I developed a skin condition around my waist and groin area which resulted in some scarring. Much later, after the imprisonment, some of my damaged teeth would eventually fall out, and now I have a bridge at the bottom front teeth.

During this entire period of detention in various facilities, there was minimal questioning that was relevant to what was going on in the country or any alleged involvement of mine in any of it.

During this time in prison, I was exposed to the horrors of prison torture in the Maldives. Not to me directly, but to others around me. I met people who were maimed in many ways. I will never forget meeting a guy who was denied much needed medical treatment after prison guards broke his spine in one of their beatings. He was carried around on a makeshift stretcher made out of plywood by other prison inmates.  

Then one early morning while in Maafushi prison, I was told to get ready because I was to be taken to court. After a 2-hour boat ride from Maafushi prison, I was back in Male’ and presented at court on the same day. In court, I was denied access to a lawyer or the opportunity to speak on my behalf. On the same day, I was sentenced to 15 years in prison under the terrorism law of Maldives at the time. The judge also reduced my sentence in the same court session to 150 Maldivian Rufiyaa (equivalent to US$10) fine because I was “a student with no criminal record.” They then let me go.

I would learn that this was a common practice by the regime to sentence people to lengthy prison sentences on trumped up charges then reduce the sentence or suspend it. It was a means of controlling people. Fear of reinstated convictions usually keeps people on a short leash.

I left the country on the same day to Sri Lanka where I got treatment for some of my injuries and then onwards to Saudi Arabia accompanied by my father. My father had made a Nadhr to take me to Hajj if I was released.

A Nadhr is an Islamic vow where a person making it obliges himself to do something as a form of prayer because of something they wanted to happen or achieve. In this case my freedom.

I was relieved to be free from prison, and I happily obliged and went. This time, I even performed the Hajj as it’s supposed to be done – maybe I wanted to show my gratitude for being free.  

—————————–

By the time all this had happened, my University classes were back in session and I applied to defer my classes. After some negotiations with my father, I would change my major and relocate to Brisbane, Australia, to study at the Queensland University of Technology for my Bachelor’s Degree in Film & Television in a broad media degree.

I didn’t come back to the Maldives for my holidays for a while, eventually returning at the end of the 2002 year-end holidays for what I hoped to be a brief visit. On arrival at the airport, I was picked up by the police for what they claimed was for the crime of “drinking overseas”. They had waited for me to collect my bags at the baggage carousel before arresting me and I was then transferred with my luggage to the police station. My family was at the airport to receive me but never got the chance to even speak with me after spending nearly two years overseas, as I was taken away in front of them. I was made to give a urine sample and kept overnight at the station. The following morning I was transferred to house arrest without a specified limit to my detention. Five days passed before I was taken back to the police station for questioning. They wanted to know why my urine sample test had come back negative. I had managed to tamper with the sample with the help of the young police officer who accompanied me to extract the sample. After all, I had a couple of drinks in Singapore before getting on the plane and didn’t want another prison sentence now that I was in custody.  

After some intense questioning at the police station, I was then transferred to another prison on the same day. I spent eleven days in solitary confinement again, this time in Dhoonidhoo Prison, well known and notorious for torture. During my time there I was kept in a single cell building made from concrete, towards the beach of the island. The cell had corrugated metal sheet roofing, and I baked – like I was in an oven in the 30° plus heat during the day and nearly froze during the night. I passed the time reading government-produced religious material which was provided. After 11 days without any questioning, I was again transferred back to house arrest, this time indefinitely. My passport confiscated. During this time, I was told nothing about my extended detention. Any attempts by me to reach out to someone at the police were met with deaf ears as I tried to find respite to my imprisonment. Back in Australia, the new semester started, and again I found myself deferring a semester due to my predicament.

Two months into my house arrest, an aunt agreed to plead for my release with the then first lady of the country. My aunt and the first lady were close friends and relatives. My aunt was informed that I should write a letter pleading to the president to release me; I did, and my aunt delivered the message to the President.

The following day, a police van picked me up and took me to the military headquarters instead of the police headquarters. I was reminded that I had a suspended terrorism conviction and that “my behavior” needed to be improved or the sentence would be carried out. I was also told “the boss” had requested me to be released. After the stern warning, I was freed and my passport returned.

—————————–

I immediately returned to Australia the same week. Since my classes were back in session and I had already deferred my studies for a semester, I used the free time to hang around the volunteers at the local Brisbane chapter of Amnesty International. I did that for a couple of months. It was around this time that I picked up a strong sense for justice, equality, and human rights as something I was extremely passionate about. The next semester, I would resume classes as usual.

—————————–

While things in my life returned to normalcy, a Maldivian prisoner named Hassan Evan Naseem was murdered by prison guards on the 19th of September 2003. The beaten and bruised beyond recognition body of Evan was brought back to the capital Male’ for burial. At the cemetery, his brave mother showed the body to the public – questioning the ongoing and never-ending injustices in the Maldives. This single act of bravery from the mother of the dead prisoner triggered a domino effect that resulted in the formation of the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP for short) and the birth of a real democracy movement in the country. A bittersweet turning point in our recent history.

All this time, despite everything that has happened to me, I never really thought I should do something about what’s happening in my country or get involved in politics or activism, but the brutal way in which Evan was murdered made me rethink it.

The same year I would start a news website called Dhivehi Observer. It was my first entry into the Maldivian political landscape.

While working at Dhivehi Observer, I would write an editorial titled “Is Calling for the Resignation of the President Unconstitutional?” (which is available on my blog). This editorial put me back on the map of the Gayoom regime, and my father was summoned for questioning as I was still in Brisbane.

My ongoing disobedience and by now the rising star of my father’s own political career angered President Gayoom enough to arbitrarily and illegally freeze our family business bank accounts and change ownership of one of the two resorts the family owned. The resort was at the time closed for renovation, with our family owned construction company’s workforce, equipment, and machinery heavily utilized on the island to rush through a three months renovation project to open the island in time for the peak tourist season during the Christmas and new year holidays. Another resort we owned was used as collateral for the funds needed for the renovation of the first resort.

The domino effect of the government’s actions would later go on to bankrupt our family businesses.

By the end of 2004, I graduated from university. It was the same year of the great tsunami in Asia. The disaster resulted in the death of 82 people in the country as the massive waves washed over the islands, briefly submerging the whole country under water for a moment. After all, the highest point in the natural formation of the islands is just a mere two meters above sea level.

Salafi-Wahhabi activists used the opportunity to intensify their activism fueling a new wave of religiosity in the country.  

In January the following year, I got married to my first wife in Sri Lanka, because I was unable to go to the Maldives, fearing arrest. I would move to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia after my marriage. I quit working on Dhivehi Observer in October 2005 when my son was born.

While I was in Malaysia, my father continued to negotiate with the government for me to be able to return to the Maldives without reprisal or consequence. By now, the opposition to the Gayoom regime was formidable, and most exiled politicians and activists overseas were coming back to the country. Late 2005, my father got confirmation that I would be allowed back in the country.

—————————–

I returned to the Maldives with my new family in January 2006. I stayed away from politics and activism during the whole first year that I was back. While my father focused on his growing political career as an MP, I was working in the family businesses along with my father’s business partner, an uncle of mine; not that there was much left of it. I tried to revive the family business without much luck.

2006 also saw my 3rd visit to Saudi Arabia for another month. This time, my infant son and his mother also accompanied me. I was going back as a responsible adult because I needed closure to my struggle with Islam. It was around this time; I finally read the whole Quran with an effort to understand it. By the time I came back I was firmly in the atheist camp. The last vestiges of Islam was my fear of hell, ingrained in my mind since childhood. What if I was wrong? This was no longer the case. I was no longer afraid of hell. And it was remarkably freeing. I could now focus on just living my life and making a difference in the world.

However, I didn’t start using the “Atheist” label to describe myself until I got a little help. My reading of The God Delusion by Professor Richard Dawkins was the final nail in the coffin of Islam for me.

Unfortunately, 2006 ended badly for me in my personal life, as my first marriage ended in divorce soon after my son’s first birthday. And in early 2007, the family business declared bankruptcy. It was a chaotic and painful time.

—————————–

In the 2008 elections, former Amnesty International prisoner of conscience and international climate change darling, Mohamed Nasheed became the first democratically elected president of the Maldives. The defeat of the 30-year-old Gayoom regime signaled the long-awaited arrival of democracy in the Maldives.

After Nasheed’s MDP and the coalition won the election, my father would be given the portfolio of Minister of State for Home Affairs. I also went for a job interview at the Press Office of the president’s office. I did not get hired because I hadn’t completed high school Islam and Dhivehi which is a prerequisite for non-political civil service in the Maldives. Which was a shame. No crying over spilled milk, I worked at for changed the party level.

—————————–

Changes were slow moving because even though the country was now a democracy, the system was still entrenched with members of the old regime, and hard to root out without resorting to authoritarianism. This hurt progress in the MDP government.

After the transition to democracy in 2008, the country as a whole began to face a new problem. Salafi-Wahhabi Islamic supremacists, who were mostly until now politically dormant in the community, began to abuse democracy and free speech rights opened up by the new government. They used the new environment to penetrate Islamist ideas and radicalization on the pretext of free speech, free political activity and religion. The work was done through traditional media such as newspapers, TV, and Radio, and later on social media.

Maldives has the most number of social media users in South Asia with estimates as high as 80%. Mobile phone penetration is much higher at 140%. 46% of the population has smartphones, and 80% of all cellular connections are at the minimum 3G connections. The proliferation of internet connections has vastly helped in the racialization efforts.

But some of the most impactful work by the radicals was done offline. Radical imams began to spend time in the outer islands for months at a stretch preaching their extremist views and indoctrinating a mostly undereducated population in the islands.

It didn’t help matters that Nasheed in a misguided move allowed the Islamists to infiltrate the democratic government by forming an Islamic Ministry which didn’t exist before. Nasheed would later admit to this as a mistake.

—————————–

Also in 2008, I would get married for a second time. This time to my current wife. She is is here today.

By 2010 I was extremely frustrated at the slow pace of progress in the country.

And then something happened that would start a new chapter of my life. It began when my youngest brother opened up to me about being gay and his secret founding of the Rainbow Maldives movement.

And as a flamboyant and effeminate young man, he was getting harassed and bullied almost on a regular basis whenever he went outside.

My brother was six months old when my mother passed away. When we were children, I was never a particularly good brother to my siblings – largely due to my own personal issues that I was battling with and I sometimes bullied him. But as an adult, I felt remorseful for my behavior as a child and was overcome by a sense of duty towards him. I had to do something to help him out of the situation he was in. The events that followed made me closer to him, and I would end up being one of his staunchest supporters as he navigated through his experiences.

One day my brother introduced me to a quote by French philosopher Albert Camus.

It read;

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”

My brother told me that it inspired him. I also found the quote resonated with me at a deep level – no surprise there. My entire life and that of my brother would go on to become an act of rebellion advocating for peaceful revolutionary change every moment and every opportunity we got.  

Pretty soon, I began working independently with marginalized groups in society who were shunned by mainstream politics. I came to know a lot of Ex-Muslims, atheists, and members of the LGBTQ community in the Maldives.

My brother and I quickly worked up a plan to bring out to the mainstream, the plight of the marginalized in our society. By then we firmly believed this to be the right course of action given the situation. And also because everyone was talking about “human rights” and “democracy” after all. I viewed human rights more broadly, outside of the Islamic context as universal – as it should be. There should be no space for exceptions or cultural relativism when it came to human rights.  

One such plan was organizing low-key blogger meetups in the country. We needed to find like-minded people who were brave and determined enough to be part of what we were doing.

During this process, by Mid 2010, I would meet some incredible people whom I would go on to build enduring relationships. Hilath Rasheed, Ahmed Rilwan and Yameen Rasheed were among them and were some of the more noteworthy of those we met at the blogger meetups. They were liberal bloggers, committed human rights activists, and free speech advocates. We clicked on a fundamental ideological level with common interests and a passion for changing the country. I cannot speak for someone else’s religious belief, so I won’t – I can only speak for my own. But this group of guys would go on to form a de facto leadership of a new wave of secular activism in the Maldives. There are others, but I won’t be naming names for their security as some of them still live in the lion’s den. Others are overseas, but not acting openly.   

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Early activism by group include running a petition asking the government to end religious groups from influencing government policy.

We also held the first protests in the country calling for religious tolerance in the Maldives. We held two protests on the international Human Rights Day – December 10th – in 2011 and 2012. We called the events Silent Solidarity. Islamic gangs who viewed our activism as “anti religious” attacked us on the second protest, seriously injuring some of us. The police refused to investigate attacks.

—————————–

Events in local politics soon brought to end the first democratic government in a coup d’etat carried out by the Police and Military of the country on February 7th, 2012. Due to time constraints, I am skipping through a lot of the details.

On the day of the coup, several government supporters and key political figures were attacked by rogue police, the victims of which sustained severe injuries. My father was among those that were targeted. He ended up with three broken vertebral columns.

The same week of the coup, my father would leave the Maldives to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for what would end up being neverending medical treatments. This was a permanent relocation out of the Maldives for my father. After multiple operations, today he is fortunate to walk. But his legs still swell up at the end of the day, and his medical problems never went away. Any remaining money in the family savings would now go towards his medical treatment.

In the middle of 2012, Hilath Rasheed, by now a close friend, was attacked by Islamist thugs, and his throat was slashed with a box cutter while outside his home in the capital. He was also a journalist and a blogger. Being gay himself, he was also one of the very first LGBTQ activists in the country. Miraculously he survived the attack. Emotionally and mentally he would never recover, and Hilath would later retire from public life. He disappeared without being in touch with anyone in our activist community.

The post-coup government would refuse to acknowledge that the attack on his life has anything to do with religious extremists despite him having reported many threats since the Silent Solidarity protests to the Maldives Police Service.

By now, I was also starting to receive similar threats. Because of the risks to my life for participation in the protests and my vocal social media persona, I left Male’ city around the middle of 2012. I took a job developing a tourist guest house project in one of the islands. I ‘tried’ to stay out of direct politics during this time and focused on the work hoping it to be a distraction.

However, whenever I was back in Male’ during weekends or for any other reason, I would still end up joining the protests – staying away from politics as I had originally intended was next to impossible.

—————————–

On December 22nd 2012, exactly a little bit more than a year on from the 2nd protest calling for religious tolerance – I founded Secular Democratic Maldives Movement (Secular Maldives for short) as an internet only activist movement. The movement exists to this day on Facebook and Twitter.

With the birth of the Secular Maldives, I was now focused on secularism, minority rights, its related politics and activism. Gays, liberals, secularists, atheists, agnostics, and persons of other religions are deemed an abomination by Maldivian society. And in my view that had to change for there to be any meaningful progress in the country.

They are treated as an underclass with little or no access to justice or state redress and are heavily persecuted and ostracized in society. Therefore it came as no surprise when Secular Maldives was formed; it was met with opposition. Its popularity among the local youth further enraged the detractors.

At the same time, I was also helping out with Rainbow Maldives movement projects. I soon became a key heterosexual ally to the gay community in the country.

—————————–

After launching Secular Maldives, realizing that the Maldives was no longer safe for me I quietly relocated myself to Kuala Lumpur in January 2013.

In the years that followed the coup, a lot of the activism went online due to security reasons. The trend of the rise of radical Islam had increased almost exponentially since the coup. However, our online activism was slowly but steadily countering that extremism. A lot of other independent but related pages and groups sprang up on Facebook.  

The Maldivian Freethinkers, Maldivian Atheists, and Women’s Rights Maldives are some just to name a few – there are many more than I can list here. All were operating under the same modus operandi, each dedicated to their own unique cause – online and anonymous. I was a collaborator on the pages that I just mentioned here. Advising, guiding, coordinating, sharing my experiences and sometimes creating content.

My involvement with the Maldivian Freethinkers page was with its founder Naail Naseer. In September of 2014, he was found dead on the beach of one of the islands in an extremely suspicious drowning. A couple of weeks before his death Naail told me that someone might have found out that he was running the Freethinkers page. Writing his eulogy was one of the hardest things I did in my life. It is available for anyone to have a read on the page as the last post ever made. I am currently the only admin left, and the page is controlled by me today. The page does not publish anymore.

Pretty soon, the Maldives Police Service began investigating the Maldivian Atheists page. It continues to be under investigation by the police.

Just to give you some stats, Secular Democratic Maldives Movement has 5600 fans on Facebook and 590 followers on Twitter. Maldivian Atheists page has 3800 fans on Facebook. Women’s Rights Maldives has 2800 fans on Facebook. Maldivian Freethinkers has 1560 fans on Facebook. Rainbow Maldives has 835 fans on Facebook. Just the pages I had any involvement in was commanding a sizable audience in the Maldives. And there was still my own social media accounts as well.

All this added momentum, to the Secular Maldives movement and another online social discussion forum called ‘Colourless’ – also on Facebook.  

‘Colourless,’ was a Facebook group created by a friend of mine on 7th February 2012 on the same day of the coup d’etat, to promote harmony and public conversation amongst a hugely politically polarized population. The group was not anonymous and the administrators of the group, though openly visible, did not intervene at all, but let the discussions flow freely. With more than 5000 members, the group took its own form and was well known in Maldives for the unmoderated exchange of ideas in the group. In a natural progression, by June 2014, the group had moved on from politics to discussions about human rights, social cohesion, and ultimately religious beliefs.

The group created the stage for the anonymously run pages to directly advocate against extremism and converse with newly recruited extremists about the flaws of their ideology. This then actually started to make a difference and young individuals were once again becoming less radicalized and began turning away from the mullah scaremongering.

As a response, militant extremist groups acting anonymously and gangsters in the country took control of the group. After that they started a witch-hunt of sorts against what they called “secular undesirable faggots”.  

The same week, the people involved in the take over of the group were photographed in a meeting with the country’s home minister (who is also the head of the police force) and also the Islamic minister of the time.

The following day, vigilantes took to the streets, armed with machetes and knives. They kidnapped perceived atheists, homosexuals and secularists who they called ‘laadheenee’ (an Arabic word meaning irreligious) and took possession of their smartphones in an attempt to unveil the admins behind the new wave of unprecedented online activism. The individuals were coerced to read “the shahada” – the two fundamental declarations of the Islamic faith and ask to repent for their sins. The treatment received by these individuals were horrid: they were beaten up, lit cigarettes were put out on their flesh, and they were tortured into fear and submission. These individuals to this day, have not come out with their stories for fear of persecution. One of them is a very close and personal friend. They are acutely aware that they live in a society where they are ostracized, persecuted with complete state complicity, with no access to justice or redress. Those individuals now tread very carefully on the streets of Maldives and have stopped their online activism. At this time, I do not know the extent to which the identities of the admins have been compromised, but it is safe to say that other individuals, who like myself, who have been very open in declaring our commitment to universal human rights and secular humanist views have only been unhurt because we live overseas or use anonymous social media accounts. They would just need access to the account of one contributor, and the whole veil of secrecy will disappear. It is not unlikely that this has already happened. These kidnappings occurred, and the witch hunt went on from mid to late June 2014.

In August of the same year, Ahmed Rilwan famously known by his Twitter handle @moyameehaa, goes missing. The official account of his disappearance is deceptive.

The established facts around his disappearance are:

1. Rilwan was a blogger, social media commentator and journalist critical of Islamic radicalization, the religious gangsters, social hypocrisy and the Gayoom brothers. He was well known for his secular and humanist views.

2. His last known investigation was regarding the funding, pragmatics, and logistics of dissemination of jihadist individuals from Maldives to Syria. Because he was a good friend of mine and involved in our secular activism, we spoke frequently. I talked to Rilwan 3 times the week he disappeared. He told me of the latest work he was involved in.

3. He was last seen on the 8th of August on CCTV footage, boarding a ferry from Capital Male’, bound to nearby Hulhumale’ where he lived.

4. His neighbor reported hearing loud screams from his flat and witnessed an abduction in a red car on the night he went missing.

5. The police retrieved a knife from the scene of the abduction.

6. His family reported him missing on 13th August.

Around the same time, a government cabinet minister was tweeting about a government-led war against “un-Islamism,”. Soon after Rilwan’s abduction, my other friend and co-collaborator Yameen Rasheed would begin a relentless campaign to find his best friend, Ahmed Rilwan.

More details of his abduction, efforts to find him, related news media about him along with a timeline of events are available on

http://findmoyameehaa.com/

 if anyone wants to learn more about him.

While the search was going on, a well-known government-sponsored social media commentator and online activist tweeted to stop looking for Rilwan because he has been killed – drowned to the bottom of the ocean.

Around the same time, the then Islamic Minister was accused of connections with the Islamic State, which he denies. Maldives Police Service and the Maldivian National Defense Force was also accused of being involved with radical Islamist activities. By now Maldives had already become a hotbed for recruiting to the Islamic State and has a large number of fighters in Syria and Iraq. By some estimates, there are 250 Maldivians fighting in Syria making the Maldives the highest foreign fighter contributor on a per capita basis.

In this new environment, Islamists and Jihadi groups were also targeting social and cultural activities in the country as well.

Despite all this, the government’s official stand was two-faced, talking about combating radicalism overseas while allowing them to fester and grow at home.

—————————–

By the end of 2016, my frustration was building because none of the secular activism was making any progress. The problem that I identified was, none of these activities had a face, no personality was attached to it. It was time for me to start a new approach to the activism.

On November 20th, 2016, I launched my own Facebook page as a Public Figure and began my own Youtube web video series in the name of FikuryIngilaab. Fikury Ingilaab, the words, means “Thought revolution.”

—————————–

In March of this year, with my visa expiring in Malaysia, I flew to Colombo, Sri Lanka on the 17th with plans to settle down in Sri Lanka.

A couple of days after I arrived in Sri Lanka, Salafi-Wahhabi activists accused me on social media of running the Maldivian Atheist page. The same week, a prominent sheik in the country, Mohamed Shafiu issued a fatwa for my beheading.

The Fatwa issued by Sheikh Shafiu was brief and straight to the point. It read: “Those who mock Allah and the prophet shall be beheaded. That is the Islamic way.”

The sheik went on to elaborate further: “Muju Naeem has disrespected the Prophet Mohammed repeatedly, much more than Abu Jahl did. Pious believers would not stay quiet and calm when someone disrespects Allah and his messenger. We are not writing this just because. If you don’t know the rulings regarding this matter, please look it up and educate yourself”.

Soon as the fatwa was out, I received a phone call from someone claiming to be working at the Embassy of the United States of America in Sri Lanka. After verifying the person was who they claimed they were – I was introduced to some more people operating in Sri Lanka, helping in the media and human rights space to expand my support network while being advised to proceed with applying for protection and asylum at the UNHCR office in Colombo, Sri Lanka. I am skipping through details here for privacy and security reasons of the people involved. By the end of March, I had applied for asylum with the UNHCR.

While waiting for my asylum application to be processed by the UNHCR, my time in Colombo would become a hellish nightmare after Islamist social media accounts started posting about me being in Sri Lanka. This put me at imminent risk in Sri Lanka.

Because of security concerns, I was frequently moving around Sri Lanka with the help of a network of Sri Lankan human rights activist. While in Sri Lanka, I slept in 17 different places – sleeping on floors, couches and in beds whenever possible. I was soon running out of money, and I applied for assistance for funding from various organizations that helped those of at risk in media, blogging and journalism space. Freedom House granted me respite by approving my application for financial assistance.

—————————–

While I was waiting for my application for asylum being determined at the UNHCR, one of the most hurtful thing in my life happened. All this time my father and other relatives were unaware of my atheism. Sure they knew I wasn’t particularly religious, but deep down my father had always hoped that it was a phase that I would eventually get over. He could not understand why I had a fatwa for my beheading and why I applied for asylum. With the fatwa on my head, and the social media networks in the Maldives buzzing about my atheism, it was no longer a topic that I could avoid when he confronted me, and I told him everything. He promptly declared that I was no longer his son. He would not accept me as a non-Muslim. While he is a complicated man to deal with, I loved him dearly, and it hurt me a lot. Today I leave a door open to him for reconciliation, which I hope he would take. But for any reconciliation to happen, he would have to accept me for who I am. I hope he does.

Previously when my brother told my father he is a gay atheist; he was also disowned. My brother is now also a refugee in New Zealand.

—————————–

As soon as I applied for asylum, on the 31st of March, a Maldivian model, and medical student studying in Bangladesh, Raudha Athif, was found dead in her room. News media immediately reported that the death was a suicide. With my background knowledge of extremist activity in the region, I was the first to call out the possibility of Islamist murder and started blogging about the incident.

I blew the story wide open and got local media and the international media to take notice. You can read about her murder on my blog if you would like to know more about the incident.

—————————–

What happened next was the most unforgettable and heartbreaking event in my recent memory. While waiting for my refugee status to be determined, my dear friend and longtime collaborator Yameen Rasheed, who headed the #FindMoyameehaa campaign, authored The Daily Panic blog and regularly featured on my Youtube Channel was murdered on 23rd April 2017. He was found stabbed to death, by the staircase of his apartment building in the early hours of Sunday morning. The news sent me reeling, and it felt like the world just got pulled under from my feet. I loved Yameen like a brother, and I had the utmost respect for him. I have said this before, and I repeat it again, I have never known a better human being than Yameen.

According to Yameen’s father “his throat was slit, he had been stabbed in 35 places, and part of his skull was missing,”  The authorities in the country hid the facts around his murder and continue to obstruct justice.

The details about his murder, news coverage, efforts for justice and a timeline of events can be found on

https://weareyaamyn.com/

Just two days before Yameen’s murder, I was sent a message on my Facebook, by an anonymous account. The senders profile was full of Islamists material.

It read and I translate; “If you want to live in this world, stop posting different things. I can’t even breathe properly with you alive. Where are you? You are such a coward that you can’t even reply to the message after reading it? I think you will be the next person to disappear from the Maldives. If you have so much guts, just tell us where you are. I want to know where you are. The day I see you may be the last day of your life. You think you are posting stuff because you will not die? You donkey even have your picture (on your profile). We are now looking for you. We will find you, Insha Allah. No. I will even pray for calamity to befall you every time I pray. Allah will grant me my dua (prayers). You will get a disease in this world with my prayers. That you will die a death of misery. There is nothing prayer can’t do. You father is extremely sad, isn’t it? That you and your brother is acting like this. I know who your father is. Because of that, it would be easier for me to find you. Don’t be too happy about things. Your father was an MDP member, isn’t it? I know who he is. You are very afraid, aren’t you? We will kidnap your father and family members till we find you (or you give up)”

—————————–

While waiting for my asylum application to come through, things continued to escalate further.

I was invited to appear on a video podcast with “The Secular Jihadists of the Middle East.” By doing so, I had openly talked in public about my predicament and what was happening in the Maldives. The Maldives police service promptly issued an arrest warrant for me. Every newspaper in the country carried the story as headline news.

—————————–

Early in June, our refugee application was granted by the UNHCR in record time – two months since the application was made. Our case file first went to the Americans, which promptly bounced because of President Trump’s refugee ban. Then it was passed over to the Canadian embassy in Colombo. We had two meeting with the embassy. The first meeting was for an interview which lasted for 3 hours. We were informed after the interview that we were being placed in the federal government’s Urgent Protection Program and being resettled in Vancouver. The second meeting was to get our passport stamped with a Temporary Resident Pass. After an anxiety-laden airport process with the International Organization for Migration officials (they take care of refugee transit on behalf of the UNHCR) we landed in Vancouver on June 22 of this year. From application to resettlement it all happened just under 3 months.

This week, we became permanent residents of Canada.

—————————–

The security risks posed for anybody as seriously involved in the online secular movement as me in the Maldives cannot be underestimated. The problem is the complexity of the matter.

We are dealing with a country which was ruled by a dictator for 30 years, and went through a democratic reformation process in the dictator’s last years of rule and saw a democratic government for three years before a coup d’etat reversed the process.

Throughout the last 40 years, Maldives has been caught up in the global trend of Islamic radicalization primarily funded by Saudi Arabia, with Maldives becoming a hotbed for terrorist recruitment by 2012.  With heavy political infighting in the country between actors with no determined political ideology other than fighting over who gets to control the lucrative tourism industry – Islam is used as a tool of control and fear. All the while politicians pay lip service to Islamists, so they can continue to plunder the wealth of the nation.

Secularists, atheists, agnostics, gays, people of other faiths in the country see no end to the situation. Moderate Muslim Maldivians who constitute the vast majority of the population continue dreaming and hoping for a better day. No politician could actively advocate secularism for fear of losing popularity amongst their base. The lack of honesty by prominent political actors continues to make the situation worse for everyone. Anybody that tries to uphold universal values of human rights or call for secularism are targeted and persecuted with violence, harassment, and economic duress, by a mix of government complicity and/or government incapacity, Islamic extremists sects and social conservatism.

Today, I am a member of a small ostracized minority group in the Maldivian society. Perceived as ‘atheist homosexual secularists,’ I am not only being persecuted for my views on LGBTQ rights, politics, and religion, but I am persecuted for a combination of all of this which boils down to the question of my identity – in essence, who I am.

My very existence questions the status quo in a heavily Islamicized conservative Maldivian society which is officially known as a “100% Muslim country”.

References (My asylum declaration documents to the UNHCR);

• http://bit.ly/muju-detailed-overview-work

• http://bit.ly/threat-report-muju

Thank you for taking the time to read my work. My writing is purposed to make us all think together, not to impose my thoughts. If you enjoyed it and found it valuable, there are many ways you can show your support and help me continue writing.

1. Become a patron by subscribing to my premium membership.

2. Share my blog with someone you know who may also find it interesting or useful.

3. Spread the word by sharing this post on your social media channels.

4. Leave a comment with your thoughts or questions to engage in a dialogue and give me feedback.

I deeply appreciate your support and generosity, as writing high-quality content requires a significant investment of my time and energy. One of my primary goals with this blog is to achieve greater financial autonomy and reduce my reliance on traditional employment. While I don't expect to make a full-time income from this, every subscription and every bit of support brings me one step closer to this goal.

Thank you again for your readership and support.

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After my appearance on a podcast with “The Secular Jihadists of the Middle East”, the Maldives police service issue an arrest warrant for me.

My podcast recording:

https://mujunaeem.wordpress.com/2017/05/21/my-conversation-with-the-secular-jihadists-from-the-middle-east/

I had also recently written an open letter addressed to the President and the government of Maldives.

https://mujunaeem.wordpress.com/2017/04/29/open-letter-to-the-president-the-government-of-the-maldives/

Police arrest warrant was tweeted:

Media coverage of arrest warrant:

Dhivehi coverage:

https://mihaaru.com/news/18010
https://vaguthu.mv/news/528133/
https://avas.mv/34243
http://www.vnews.mv/84590
http://vfp.mv/f/?id=61161
https://oaga.mv/20808/
http://haftha.mv/archives/23592
http://www.sun.mv/90478
https://dhuvas.mv/47629
http://www.miadhu.mv/article/read/26119
https://raajje.mv/news/11076

English coverage:

http://maldivesindependent.com/society/police-summons-issued-to-liberal-bloggers-with-threat-of-trial-in-absentia-130891
https://advox.globalvoices.org/2017/05/30/police-threaten-maldivian-bloggers-abroad-with-arrest-over-twitter/

The text of the warrant reads;

“Muzaffar Mohamed Naeem (age 37) of M. Velidhooge, K. Male’ is wanted for an investigation the Maldives Police Service is carrying out.

Since we have information that Muzaffar Mohamed Naeem is currently living abroad, he is asked to present himself to the Maldives Police Service within 14 days to respond in his defense to accusations against him in our investigation.

If Muzaffar Mohamed Naeem doesn’t present himself to Maldives Police Service within these 14 days, we will be forwarding evidence against him in our investigation to the Prosecutor General of the Maldives to proceed with prosecution in his absentia. This notice has been issued to inform Muzaffar Mubeen Naeem of this matter.”

The document doesn’t say which crime I am being investigated for or what evidence they have against me. 

Copy of the arrest warrant below;

Arrest Warrants were prompted by the ruling party parliamentary leader Ahmed Nihan’s call to arrest and prosecute all “irreligious” people in the country to the full extent of the law.

The call was condemned by Dr. Ahmed Shaheed, UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief.

Meanwhile, the Home Minister met with radical preachers in the country earlier this week;

These links provide more context for my arrest;

My current predicament was documented in the Sri Lankan publication roar.lk in the following feature article.

https://roar.lk/reports/what-the-murder-of-one-maldivian-blogger-means-to-another-in-exile/

By now the environment in the Maldives had gotten extremely toxic.

http://maldivesindependent.com/feature-comment/next-is-you-more-death-threats-follow-bloggers-murder-130468

The Sun online in UK has also covered my situation in this article;

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3557390/maldivian-blogger-muju-naeem-death-threats-isis-maldives/

Ongoing witch-hunt for secularists in the country;

Police also issued arrest warrants to others;

Arrest Warrant for Hani Amir;

Arrest Warrant for Dr. Azra Naseem

Arrest Warrant for Aisthath Velezinee;

Thank you for taking the time to read my work. My writing is purposed to make us all think together, not to impose my thoughts. If you enjoyed it and found it valuable, there are many ways you can show your support and help me continue writing.

1. Become a patron by subscribing to my premium membership.

2. Share my blog with someone you know who may also find it interesting or useful.

3. Spread the word by sharing this post on your social media channels.

4. Leave a comment with your thoughts or questions to engage in a dialogue and give me feedback.

I deeply appreciate your support and generosity, as writing high-quality content requires a significant investment of my time and energy. One of my primary goals with this blog is to achieve greater financial autonomy and reduce my reliance on traditional employment. While I don't expect to make a full-time income from this, every subscription and every bit of support brings me one step closer to this goal.

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I have refrained from updating my social media and blog this past couple of weeks after being advised by those assisting me with my asylum process. But I could not sit back and not say anything after having the misfortune of seeing the image of the brutalized body of my friend Yameen Rasheed. So I thought I would say a few words to express how I feel after seeing what can never ever been unseen again.

Just to be clear, at this time I do not intend to post the picture on my social media channels or my blog, taking into account the sensitivity of the matter, the extremely violent and brutal way that he was killed and the feelings of his family and those of his friends and loved ones.

But I feel it's important that these pictures are made public and remain as part of the public domain. It is the undeniable and the inevitable evidence of the brutality of the Maldivian political and religious violence, we are subjected to on such a regular basis now. Seeing the images brings home the reality of the violence in a way that nothing else can. It is this understanding of the reality that can push us to work for the change we so desperately seek. Keeping our society cushioned like the little snowflakes that we like to be from the brutality of such violence only empowers those who commit the violence. Because they know and understand that the public would always be protected by the horrors of their actions. And in this protection, they get the impunity to carry out more violence.

Those of us that are outraged at Raajje.mv for making the picture public (they deleted it soon after publishing), should take a step back and rethink their positions. I do not believe they published the image because they wanted to sensationalize Yameen's death like a tabloid would, as so many of you are quick to accuse them of. They have intended, as I mentioned above, to bring home the reality of this violence so that we may actually do something about it.

I do want to remind those of us among our secular circles who face the daily struggle of dealing with the extreme Islamization of the Maldives who are also against making these pictures public, to ask yourself why you are so outraged? Are you outraged that you see yourself one day in the same position that Yameen ended up? Is that what you are afraid of? If you are, then stop being complacent and actually do something about.

When the situation was different, back when we all were fighting against the Gayoom regime, were you all not involved in your complicity when pictures of brutally murdered Evan Naseem, and others were made public which resulted in the domino effect that eventually toppled the Gayoom regime? What has changed about you all since then?

And for the record, Yameen's views on this issue is something I would have to really consider before making the image public. Our friendship and activism weren't always based on mutual agreement. We talked it out and made compromises when we had to. Our podcast recordings on YouTube is a testament to that.

So as I contemplate whether to post the picture or not, I do extend once again my deepest sympathies to Yameen's family, his friends, his loved ones and those that love him for what had been done to our friend. 

No human (or animal for that matter) ever deserves to be butchered like the way he was. It is indeed a cruel cruel world that we live in. But losing hope for humanity would get us nowhere. We need to be strong and face the challenges of reforming our society and combatting the ideologies that empower the deterioration of our society.

Below is the text of the now deleted Raajje.mv article that accompanied the picture of Yameen's body.

Thank you for taking the time to read my work. My writing is purposed to make us all think together, not to impose my thoughts. If you enjoyed it and found it valuable, there are many ways you can show your support and help me continue writing.

1. Become a patron by subscribing to my premium membership.

2. Share my blog with someone you know who may also find it interesting or useful.

3. Spread the word by sharing this post on your social media channels.

4. Leave a comment with your thoughts or questions to engage in a dialogue and give me feedback.

I deeply appreciate your support and generosity, as writing high-quality content requires a significant investment of my time and energy. One of my primary goals with this blog is to achieve greater financial autonomy and reduce my reliance on traditional employment. While I don't expect to make a full-time income from this, every subscription and every bit of support brings me one step closer to this goal.

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On a daily basis I get accused for attempting to spread atheism in the Maldives so I felt it was important that I go on record regarding the issue.

So, let's get a few things straight here.

1. I don't preach  to convert people to atheism or anything else for that matter. My social media is very public. Anyone can go and check the exact content of what I have shared to verify this. 

2. I have shared my views on things which I believe to be important. Some of those views of mine may have been in conflict with deeply held views of religious people of different faiths. The things I have shared are mostly science based content and ideas which addresses verifiable facts and truth about the natural world. This isn't an attempt to destroy someone else's beliefs. I try to educate people about the natural world as much as I can and will continue to do so. It's religious people who seem to think that somehow me sharing facts is anti-religious and preaching atheism. This is very dishonest of the people that accuse me to spin it this way.

3. I am not delusional to even attempt to change people who hold strong positions of faith in religion. To even attempt something like this would be madness. This is also a false accusation. Muslims, in their various denominations and sects, number is 1.4 billion in the world, I am just one. It's an unfair contest, and I don't participate in such activities.

4. I love science. And I am a self described science popularizer. It's just the best way to understand the world and everything around us. I share my passion for science with my followers on social media because I think its of value to my audience. People who don't like science have no business coming around my social media. If they do, they are just creating their uncomfortable feelings themselves. I can't do anything about it.

5. I am genuinely concerned about Islamist extremist violence and I think we should have an honest conversation about it. People are dying every day in the name of religion and it has to stop. Starting a conversation about it is an honest attempt to address the issue.

6. I support secularism because I think not doing so opens up space for abuse of religion for political purposes. Secularism in merely the seperation of the state from religion. Its not a religion itself. In the specific case of Islam, it has 72 sects/mazhabs, and a single group attempting to use the legislating bodies or use violence to impose their view on the rest would be bad for everyone. In such an environment, Muslims can't be the Muslim their conscience wants them to be. Its is mostly the Salafi's and Wahabbi's who are pushing this violent agenda and calling them out for it is not an attack on Muslims. It is them who are the loudest and seek to twist the narrative as somehow I am attacking Islam.

7. Asking me about trying to prove the existence of God or disapprove the existence of god would not get a response from me. I can't do neither. At this point in time, I am not qualified for such a task. My talking points are clear and open for everyone to see on my social media.

8. Calling for the rights of all people is important in my view. Human rights is universal and should be for everyone. Athiests, LGBT persons, ExMuslims and people of other beliefs and faiths are also humans and their lives also matter. Calling for beheading people and killing people is wrong and I am making stand on the issue. Human Rights is also not like pie. Where if you give other people their rights, that you somehow loose out on your own rights. This is very narrow kind of thinking.

9. I am practical and honest about the kind of people that live in my country. I have met Maldivians of all faiths, non-belief and different sexual orientation as well. They exist regardless of what everyone else says. Saying the Maldives is a 100% Muslim country and maintaining the lie doesn't help anyone. In fact some of these non Muslism that I have met are even in 2nd generation  or even 3rd generation. Blasphemy and apostasy laws shouldnt apply to them. That is cruel and inhumane.

10. I talk a lot about the issues that impact people regularly. Healthcare, education, housing, a living wage, transportation and freedom of movement are some of the issues to name a few that I am passionate about and care deeply. This is the politics that I engage in. I find it useless to be part of the partisan politics that is ruining our country which refuses to address the issues that matter to the people.

Making dishonest claims about me to discredit me with abuse, slander, and threats of violence only shows the type of person you are.

By now everyone who is paying attention to the Maldivian social networks space would know that are is an organized smear campaign being carried out against me. Along with this smear campaign, I have to fend off death threats almost non-stop all over the Internet for the last two days as I have been accused of running the Maldivian Athiest page by Islamists in the country as part of their smear campaign to silence my voice.

So I would like to highlight some points for consideration of my readers;

1. The Atheist page publishes content daily, around the clock (day & night) non-stop. The amount of commitment and dedication required for something like that is immense. It's highly likely they even have paid staff to do the work.

2. Their content is original (not taken from somewhere else, made for that page). It would take a considerable amount of time to come up with concepts, design the work and publish.

3. The research work that goes into that page is incredible. Someone or group of people are organized and going through Quranic and Hadhith content to reference their content. It requires someone who has knowledge in Islam and other related subjects. Possibly someone professionally trained in Islam.

Now for some other points to consider;

1. My videos are done entirely by me. I script them, record them and edit them myself. It's time consuming work. Most of my videos are long form going past 1 hour of viewing time.

2. My videos are in high resolution and data heavy. A large number of videos require a fast internet connection for uploading. A typical uploading session lasts for more than an hour on a fast unlimited data connection. And each video gets uploaded to both YouTube and Facebook. Which means each videos uploading time gets doubled by the time it's available online.

3. On top of doing the video work I also do freelance work doing online marketing. This is how I make a living, paying rent, paying bills and food money. This is also time consuming. I usually work  on average 12 hour days. I also try and spend time with family and friends on a regular basis as much as possible.

4. Last couple of months I have started exercising, because of health reasons. I dedicate about two hours every other day to make sure I do my exercises. This is time consuming and eats into my organized schedule.

5. My mental health issues relating to my early onset Alzheimer's sometimes leaves me overwhelmed as I struggle to remember things I need to do on a bad day. This gets in the way of me being productive on some days despite my best efforts.

6. I can't type in Dhivehi. I never studied Dhivehi language in school either. I was fortunate enough to be exempt from attending Dhivehi classes while was I school. In fact my command of the Dhivehi language is so poor to the point of embarrassment considering I am a native born Maldivian. Why is this important? Because the original content on the Atheist page is in Dhivehi language.

7. I didn't study Islam in highschool either. It was a subject taught in Dhivehi language and I requested the same exception that had for Dhivehi language classes. These can be verified at my old highschool records in Ahmadhiyya School.

8. My Dhivehi is so bad, even my train of thought is also in English.

So in light of these facts, it is near impossible for me to be doing anything related to the atheist page. So I reject the accusations made against me as slander and an organized witch-hunt because of my open support for a secular Maldives.

On a closing note, I would like to add - if anything happens to me, my life or to a loved one, please be informed that the accusations lies squarely on Mohamed Siruhan who runs the Siru Arts page who is self declared Islamist extremist and jihadi promotor and recruiter who openly threatens people who he disagrees with. If I end up dead, you all know who you are looking for already.

Below is my video on the same topic;

Edit: Since I made this post, a person reached out to me claiming to be the admin of the Athiest page. I posted screenshots on my Facebook page.

Despite all this, Siruhan continues to harass, intimidate and incite violence against me. Below are some of the threats he has made so far. All images are linked to the original posts. If one looks at the comments and the shares on these posts, the amount of death threats that he is inciting is unbelievable.

-----

Edit: March 25th. 

These so called Sheikhs are now issuing Facebook fathwa's calling for my beheading. Maldives is overrun by these crazies like it was the wild wild west. The government is either helpless to stop it or they are involved along with these jihadi nutjobs.

What they are basically trying to do is inspire lone wolf type attacks. Secularist and Democrats in the country should be vigilant of these psychopaths and attempt to lock them up in a changed political scenario otherwise we as a country stand to loose our freedom and drive progress back to the stone ages.

The commenter is asking the Sheikh if he will take responsibility for my death in the event someone murders me after reading his fatwa. And she is also asking about due process of Islamic law before such a fatwa can be issued.

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The clock on the wall read six AM in the morning. I flick the remote control in my left hand one more time to see if there is anything good on television. I should know better, there never is anything good at this hour. Maybe it is my miss-spent youth or the excessive amounts of marijuana that I smoked at the time, but Sesame Street is usually filled with belly aching laughs. But not today.

As the early morning rays of the sun streamed into the room from the half drawn curtains, I cannot keep my mind straight, it keeps wandering towards my present surroundings.

I look around the room one more time. It feels like I have been here all my life. The room was adequately furnished. Nothing too fancy, but not in bad taste either, except I didn’t like the colours on the wall; too pink/beige for my liking. Maybe if it was a nice cool blue it would have been very atmospheric. Very different from my home.

I took the remote control in my hand and flick the channels once again on the TV. MTV was showing Miss Universe beauty pageant. The very cute Miss Venezuela had just made her spiel about how she wants world peace. It’s always the same story with these beauty queens. World Peace. I changed the channel again.

This time I stop on the BBC world news. The world is full of loonies, crazies and half wits. Somebody was always bombing something, killing some diplomat or kidnapping somebody and demanding ransoms or something. The list goes on and on.

My mind starts to wander again. This time to my own predicament.

I am sitting on a small metal chair in somebody’s living room, my right hand handcuffed to the chair. If this was any other day, this might even have been a bit erotic – that is if you have a thing for kinky sex. Not on this particular day. There is hardly anything one would consider sexual in this situation. Or pleasing for that matter.

It had all started with a phone call.

----------------

Time is 10.27pm. I am laid out on the couch not really watching television. The surroundings are more familiar and homely. I am feeling like I am in the zone.

In my zone I don’t do much. Mostly chillin’ or just hanging out with friends. This was the first day since my holidays started that I was doing neither. I tried to relax and tried not to think about what was bugging me.

If I was going to be bored and lonely I was going to get stoned. The problem was I was broke and I had no stash. The situation was becoming worse because I had no way of getting any either. At the rate I was going, all I am going to be doing is just simply thinking about it for the rest of the night. Ahh, the curse of an addictive personality.

Don’t get me wrong I am not a junky by any standards. And the indulgence was never a crime. A life learned from mistakes is a better description. A product of circumstances if you will.

While I was wallowing in self pity and finding justifications the phone rang.

“Muju, what are you doing? You busy?” said the voice on the other end.

“Who is this?” I said trying to figure out who the voice is on the other side.

“Steven”

Aaah good old Steven. Always reliable when you need a friend. Not that he was my friend. He was a business partner of my father’s, not that I let such a minor detail like that get in the way of my wheelings and dealings.

“Steven, man…..how you doing? What’s up?” I responded enthusiastically.

Steven was a man who can get you anything you wanted. He had connections that went all the way up the Malaysian government. He was the only person whom I know who can carry a fire arm and cross state borders into Singapore. He was a member of the Malaysian Intelligence Department and a businessman.

“You got some time to go get something to eat… have a chat?”

There was a hint of oddness in his voice. As if his invite was a forced gesture.

I wasn’t paying much attention to that. I had something to do now.

“What? Now? …Ok. Where do you want to meet?” I said.

“How about the 24 hour eatery down the road?”

“Sure. I’ll see you there in 10.”

I was at the time staying in an apartment building in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. A place where there is a price for every thing. A place where police officers could be bought and sold if one has the kind of money. A city of endless nooks and cranny’s to seek the pleasures of the soul, available mostly 24 hours a day. A haven for the decadent wandering soul. Knowing where to look for is very important. Having a friend who knows is easier.

Things were starting to look good for the night.

-------------------

The handcuffs where starting to dig into the flesh. I took a look at my hand and saw the skin on my wrist starting to redden despite my dark complexion.

The front door opened and two men entered the room with a few parcels of take away food. I had not eaten since yesterday afternoon and my attention was almost suddenly drawn to that fact. Whatever was in that parcel was going to be just fine. After all I am in no position to make demands.

“Hungry?” the larger of the two said.

I nodded in consent.

The man came over and placed a small table in front of me and put the now opened parcel on it. It contained plain white rice. I had never tasted plain rice before that day. Did you know that rice by itself tasted like nothing. It was a revelation to me. That didn’t stop me from devouring the food within a few minutes. ‘Nothing’ never tasted so much better than that day.

-------------------

After waiting at the eatery for half an hour for Steven to arrive, I decided to take stroll outside to get some fresh air. There were no cars or people to been seen anywhere.

I walked a few minutes and stoped at the edge of the river that runs through the heart of KL central and lit a cigarette.

I sucked in a lungful of noxious tobacco fumes and smiled in silence. I needed that.

“I wonder what’s keeping Steven” I thought to myself.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a maroon coloured sedan approaching me slowly. I didn’t pay much attention to the car until the head lights went off and the car still kept slowly creeping forward. It was like a scene out of a movie.

My curiosity got the best of me that day, I have to say. I could have easily walked away and ran home to safety and it would have been all over. Like nothing had ever happened. I could have been back home, lying on my couch doing what I do best. I chose to stay and see this through. Look at it this way, I wouldn’t be telling you a story today if hadn’t stayed.

The car came to a halt about 20 meters from where I was standing. I was still not looking directly at them, but taking stolen glimpses of what was going on.

The men stayed in the car for another fifteen minutes before I heard the doors open and shut. Two men in dark clothing were approaching me slowly, almost in a stroll.

“Is your name Muju?” the bigger man of the two asked in a calm voice.

“People call me that… but it’s not my real name. Why?” I replied cautiously. “What can I do for you gentlemen?”

After thinking about it for a second, “Wait a minute… how do you know who I am?” I finished.

The men produced ID cards that stated the fact that they were undercover police officers, they asked me to come along with them for some questioning to the station. When I refused to go so easily the smaller man revealed the handcuffs that was in his pockets.

Calmly I replied that I need to make a phone call before I can accompany them. With their permission I called Steven as I did not want to alarm any member of my family. He picked up the phone even before the first ring and I proceeded to tell him of my situation.

“If they have ID cards, its best not to challenge their authority. I suggest you go with them and I will immediately look into the matter.” He advised.

“Can I have a word with one of the police officers and I will let them know who I am and everything should be alright… I promise I will sort this one out for you… you be calm, don’t loose your cool”

I passed my phone to the large man, whom I found out was called Hashim. He was now talking on the phone in a solemn voice in Malaysian, almost as if taking instructions.

I should have suspected that this was going a bit strange and that cops don’t have chats with people when they are arresting somebody. My trusting nature, I guess, got the best of me.

I got into the car without being forced and sat quietly in the back seat. After a drive that seemed like forever we arrived at a police station on the outskirts of KL city. The gate was open and we drove straight through. Two men dressed in military fatigues closed the huge gate shut.

All lights in the building were turned off accept for a single room. A light can be seen coming from a lone window.

The men took me inside and I was greeted by an even larger man. He appeared to be having difficulty moving as his gut seems to be getting in the way. The man introduced himself simply as ‘the chief’.

I was briefed that I was brought in on suspicious of narcotics use, sales and importing / smuggling. He painted for me a picture that was a fantasy of conspiracy and international crime that paled in comparison to the life I lead. A life of a sloth that does little else other than looking for the next party.

I refused to comment on the allegations and I requested a phone call to a lawyer. I should have noticed that I was never formally booked or charged with anything. I should have also noticed that as soon as I asked for the phone call, he said I could call Steven if I wished to. The fact he mentioned Steven’s name should have been enough to convince anybody that I was stuck in the middle of a well orchestrated charade of conspiracy.

Another interesting thing I also noticed was that Steven, now on the phone with me, wanted to know if my father would have ready cash in case “we” needed to buy our selves out a sticky situation. While I wasn’t a person who approved bribery and ransoms, this was different.

This wasn’t a movie. This wasn’t happening to somebody else. This was me. And I was getting frightened not knowing what exactly was going on.

I am a person who prides in having the situation under my full control or at least being on the side of the person who had things under control. A situation like this does not scare me too much as it would not be the first time. That I would leave for another story. This was beginning to frighten me.

After I spoke to Steven, again it was asked of me if he could talk to my captors. After another lengthy conversation with ‘the chief’ in Malaysian he hung up.

The chief informed me that things were being organised for me to not be locked up, and I shall soon be moved to a safe location.

Very weird indeed.

----------------

11 am. My bum had been sleeping for some time now. Sitting in a single position for so long has left me with no feeling around the general area. I was too busy organising my thoughts, assessing the situation to worry about minor inconveniences like that.

The conclusion I had arrived was I had unwittingly walked right in the middle of an extortion plan that was being carried out like a well oiled machine.

At eleven fifteen the small man entered the room again and unlocked my handcuff. I rubbed my wrists letting the circulation flow.

“We are going to go for a ride now” he said.

I stood up without saying anything and stretched my limbs. It felt good to be standing up, being able to move.

I nodded in agreement to the little man whom I still don’t know the name of. I followed him silently out of the room and through a hallway and into a lift. We went down in to the car park. The man opened the passenger side back door and I got in the car. Hashim was in the driver’s seat waiting for me, the engine was running.

The drive felt like we were going in circles. We drove for half an hour and we were not getting close to the city centre but we were not going away either. What was happening was, it was vital that I didn’t know exactly where I was brought to despite the lack of blindfolds or anything else to that effect.

After what seemed like forever, the car slows to a halt at a street corner. People were everywhere going about their daily business of mundane lives. The outside was blistering hot compared to nice cool air-conditioned interior of the car. The brightness that you don’t feel when you look out through a tinted window blinded my eyes. Hashim turned around and looked at me and gestured with his head for me to get out.

I stepped out of the car without saying anything and looked around surveying the surroundings. The little man drew his window down a bit and handed my mobile phone back to me.

“It ran out of credit last night when you were calling your people… I put some credit in this morning. You should be able to call for someone to give you a ride home” with that the window went up, the car sped off.

I stood there looking at the back of the car. It was the same maroon sedan as last night. The only thing different was the number plate.

I lifted my hand and looked at the phone in my hand. The time on the clock read 1.36pm. It had all happened in less than 24 hours. I dialled home.

End.

--------------

Self portrait taken in December 2003. Titled "That feeling again - Losing myself in a nightmare of my own making."

This short story originally published in an old blog of mine here way back in 2004.

After two years of building, perfecting and running Travel News Maldives, I have decided to sell it off.

The proud new owner is Roshan Jude. I wish him all the success in the world as he takes over the reins at TNMV and look forward to much success for the website and its new owners.

I thank all those who worked with me on the project and contributed their time and effort to TNMV, without which it would not be the website that it is today.

I have been blogging on the Tumblr platform for more than an year now, and I have great affection for the platform. Its ease of use is second to none. But with the blog and its short form style came many limitations. It simply was not customizable enough for my liking.

But I stuck with Tumblr because its not an easy thing to change your blog. Migrating all your content to the new platform is a considerable task and not one to be taken lightly.

But I have finally gotten around to it and moved on to a Wordpress blog.  The am very happy with the new design and its features, especially the Responsive Web Design which makes viewing my blog on any screen size a real pleasure.

With the new blog, I have featured prominently, my Services, because I am slowly looking to take freelance consultancy work doing online brand management for companies that really need the help. After all there are many businesses out there that would benefit from some solid marketing strategies designed to increase customer engagement, sales and brand value.

Image by Raphaël Quicksil7er

It has recently come to light that I am being labelled as thief who stole from the owners of Stingray Beach Inn hence my “dismissal” from the job as they calls it.

My question to the owners of Stingray Beach Inn is, if I have stolen from you all at all, please tell me how much I stole from you. And how was it stolen?

I have with me a full copy set of all documents of the business including their accounts statements and so forth. These accounts document all transactions that took place that the management wanted to document. All accounts that they obviously did not want to be documented was left out.

A lot of the expenses at Stingray Beach Inn during construction was not documented and spent as and when necessary without accounting them properly.

It is my belief that these records were badly kept for purposes of cheating a Russian based foreign investor of the hotel.

Regardless, what remains to be seen is that, myself and my wife are yet to be paid for our work at Stingray Beach Inn.

Working on this project I;

1. Developed brand identity for hotel

2. Developed Business concept,

3. Did all marketing works,

4. Created and managed social media presence,

5. Built and administered website,

6. Listed with booking agents (Agoda.com, Expedia.com, Hotels.com and Venere.com).

I also did the following works;

1. Developed management framework and organizational structure,

2. Developed an administrative systems

All these works were done in the space of less than 3 months.

Estimated cost of work = Appox. MRF 100,00

During this time I did not receive any payments for the work I did.

MY STORY - THE DEAL

I began working on the hotel project with Ibrahim Musthafa (Ibbe) and his brother Ali Muruthala (Ayya) upon their persistent request to help them out with the project. I agreed once they offered me a pretty good deal to take on the job.

The deal was; I manage the property and for that I was offered 10% operational profits to be paid monthly for a period of 1 year. After which it was supposed to be reviewed.

I was also supposed to be provided with accommodation, food, and basic daily expenses. Happy to tell you that this part of the agreement was honored by the owners somewhat reluctantly. The total sum of which comes to MRF 4700 which was paid by both the owners on various dates after constant “gentle reminders”.

During this period myself and my wife spent thousands of our own money to travel to Maafushi, and other basic necessities required to live.

HOW IT ENDED

The agreed date for the opening of the hotel was June 20th 2012.

On the night of 19th June (the night before the scheduled date of opening) Ibbe approaches me very solemnly in a secluded spot on Maafushi Island. He wanted to meat alone on the holhuashi (a seating arrangement on the beach for people to gather and discuss issues and basically hang out as well).

At the meeting he informs me that his brother Ayya feels that it is no longer possible to be working with me. I was shocked and felt almost as if someone had pulled the ground from under me. I had given up other employment opportunities that came my way to work with my presumed friends whom I have known for more than 3 years by now. During this time that I was in Maafushi island, I had no other income source and all my time and effort was committed fully to this hotel project that has become very dear to me.

In shock and disbelief at what I was hearing I asked calmly, what are the reasons for this unbelievable decision. Ibbe tells me that he has no say in this, and that it was Ayya who was deciding this.

At first he was reluctant to tell me what was the reasons for this decision.

At this point I asked Ibbe if it had anything to do with;

1. My working abilities - Reply => No

2. The level of attention that I was paying to the work => No.

3. The amount of attention I was paying to the task => No.

4. My speed at doping tasks => No.

5. My overall performance on the project => No.

So it was non of these. So it must be something else and much more relevant to the work we were doing. I must have really fucked up, I thought. Upon further insisting, Ibbe tell me that I might think the reasons Ayya mentioned might be trivial but they are not for Ayya.

And then he tell me, very reluctantly and softly - I can barely hear his voice. That I had not turned off a light one time. And another time I had left the ashtray in the office. And that this was not all the reasons, and that there were more. Which he wouldn’t say regardless of however much I insisted.

I asked to meet Ayya to discuss what Ibbe has just told me. I called Ayya on his phone and he did not answer. I left an SMS on his phone requesting to discuss certain things that have come to light recently. He did not answer that either.

The following morning. The date where we was supposed to declare the hotel ready for business, I go and meet Ayya. He tells me that he has no time right now to talk with me, and that he would talk to me that evening.

A little later, I over hear Ayya talking with his 20 year old son. They were both making fun of me and my wife. Gloating as if they were the most cleaver people in the world proud of what they have done.

Come evening, Ayya has not had “time to talk to me”. Ibbe tells me later that Ayya has told him that he is “not angry” (Why should he be angry at me? Shouldn’t I be the one who should be angry?) with me, but Ibbe should figure out a way to part ways with me. Ayya was not going to see me at all.

At this point heated exchanges or argument did take place, I must admit. After all I have not done all my work for a place to sleep, food and coffee money.

Ibbe refused to stand up for me and fight for me with Ayya. He was not being my friend. I came to realize that I had been used and abused. And they have a hotel all ready for operations that would potentially earn somewhere around 4 million MRF annually.

SPECIAL MENTION

All interior design works and concepts developed by HamyLathyf.

She did;

1. Designed the hotel brand logo

2. Hand painted 3 wall murals (8 feet by 6 feet each)

3. Made all the bed linens in the hotel - 44 single bed sheets, 44 pillow cases, 22 cushion covers, 10 bed bands (double bed) and 22 single bed bands

4. Picked the fabrics used for the linens in the rooms.

5. Picked color scheme for all colors used in the interior of the hotel. (Note: Exterior of the hotel color was chosen by Ayya)

6. Odd jobs here and there.

Estimated cost of the => Approx. MRF 50,000

She was also not paid for the work.

WHAT HAPPENS NOW?

I am demanding that I be paid for the work that I have done in making this hotel operational.

Until such payment is made, I am holding on to following items;

1. Stingray Beach Inn Facebook Page

2. @stingrayinn Twitter account

3. Company Blog - Originally hosted here http://blog.stingraybeachinn.com/

4. Agoda.com listing

5. Expedia.com listing

6. Hotels.com Listing

7. Venere.com listing

8. Tripadvisor.com page

9. Company email accounts

I do believe its my right to be not taken advantage of that and that my work should be paid for. Its against the Constitution of this country to not pay for somebody for work that they have done.

Until Ibrahim Musthafa and Ali Muruthala makes payment to myself and my wife for the MRF 150,000 owed to us for work that we have done, they are guilty of criminal abuse of the employment law in this country and guilty of breaking the constitution.

WHO IS THIS IBBE?

Ibrahim Musthafa is the ONLY MDP Councillor in Maafushi island. He got elected to the island council under the MDP banner promising justice, equality and development in his island. But he was the only MDP member in the 5 man council and he found it difficult to work in that environment. So he stays home and takes the salary and does nothing on his elected job. Now that he gets paid by the people, he stays home and is developing a hotel as a private business. And even at that, he had me (his supposed friend) come and help him do all the work (he walks around the project mostly fiddling with the electricity - he did the electrical work at the hotel). And then screw me in the end. Its people like him that give MDP and hard working Maldivians a bad name.

More on this story:

• This story on Stingray Beach Inn’s blog

• The Making of Stingray Beach Inn

• The Stingray Room by Hamy Lathyf

Update: I have since handed over control of the things that I kept control of.