I believe we just opened a military base there, for staging UAV ISR counter-piracy & Al Qaeda missions...?
Puzzling....
"Originally the Maldivians were Buddhists who converted to Sunni Islam in the mid-12th century. Sunni Islam is now the only accepted religion, though there are small numbers of others" (LINK)Having noticed that, I searched for an alternate new source and found that in "Graft, politics, militant Islam shake Indian Ocean island" (LINK) which included these excerpts:
Nasheed's opponents have adopted a hardline style of political Islam to savage his religious credentials.The Dhivehi Quamee Party (DQP), run by the urbane former attorney general Hassan Saeed, issued a pamphlet accusing Nasheed of attempting to undermine Islam by bringing in Christianity, establishing diplomatic relations with Israel and of doing business with Jewish businessmen.
"It was a critique of the government's religious policy, and it must be read in that context," Saeed told Reuters in his law office near the Male port.
"Our main problem is the business relationships with Jews of Nasheed and members of his cabinet."
But while the political fray goes on with all eyes on the 2013 presidential election, Maldivian intelligence officers and Western officials say hardline Salafist and Wahabist groups are gaining political ground in the more distant atolls and making a beachhead in Male.
"It's potentially a tropical Afghanistan. The same forces that gave rise to the Taliban are there -- the drugs, the corruption and the behavior of the political class," a Colombo-based Western ambassador who is responsible for the Maldives told Reuters on condition of anonymity.