Ironic isn't it? Just a little over a week ago, the President of Maldives Mohamed Nasheed announced his intentions of making Maldives a sanctuary for dissenting writers from countries such as Burma. Now, a week later, Haveeru News reports that the Telecommunications Authority of Maldives has blocked 5 sites under orders from the Ministry of Islamic Affairs (MoIA).

Officially blocked

Here are the sites declared not-fit-for-public-consumption along with their approximate blocked date:
1. seedhaahithun.com (29 Nov 2008, details)
2. sidahitun.com (29 Nov 2008, details)
3. gospelgo.com (29 Nov 2008, details)
4. raajjeislam.com (13 Mar 2009, details)
5. randomreflexions.com (15 Mar 2009, details)
6. feydhooschool.info (15 Mar 2009, details)

Seedhaahithun.com, sidahitun.com and gospelgo.com were apparently blocked for "promoting Christianity". The reason for blocking RaajjeIslam a few days ago is unknown and according to the media, the MoIA has not offered an explanation. As has been noted by Minivan News and Haveeru News, the website was blocked after they published an audio clip of Mohamed Shakeeb, an Imam at Shaviyani Atoll Foakaidhoo, claiming that he has been threatened by the State Minister of Islamic Affairs Mohamed Shaheem Ali Saeed. It is interesting to note that the material on the website seems to be ideologically similar to that advocated by the Adhaalath Party, who controls the MoIA, and tame compared to what can be seen at, say, fagudi.wordpress.com. There is no specific explanation given for randomreflexions.com. The feydhooschool.info site was apparently blocked upon request from a "senior person" at the Feydhoo School. I seriously doubt the MoIA has the authorization to block any website under such flimsy pretense.

Mass censorship??

You might have noticed that I used "mass internet censorship" in the title of this post and here is why.

As you may already know, every human readable pretty domain name maps to an address called IP address. That is how computers find each other on a network and on the Internet. For example, the domain name for Dhiraagu is dhiraagu.com.mv and their associated IP address is 202.1.207.33. So when you type in dhiraagu.com.mv, your computer looks up the IP address and tries to access the server computer at that IP address. But an IP address can be shared by many different domains on a single server and this is the standard practice amongst all web hosting services. The Dhiraagu IP address, for example, is shared by around 81 other sites including Bank of Maldives and Bandos Resort. If someone wanted to block, say, Bank of Maldives and placed a block on the IP address 202.1.207.33, then all the other 81 domain names would also be affected and their sites made inaccessible. Please note there doesn't necessarily have to be any relationship or connection between the sites that maybe hosted on a single IP.

Now consider the above mentioned blocked sites, their IP addresses and the number of sites it carries.

- 98.130.196.2 (raajjeislam.com) --> 181
- 67.205.44.193 (simonshareef.com) --> 98
- 66.197.160.197 (feydhooschool.info) --> 589
- 64.71.35.15 (gospelgo.com) --> 9
- 58.137.156.52 (seedhaahithun.com, sidahitun.com) --> 32

That means there would be a total 909 unintended victim sites that fell prey to the mindless blocking of just these few site IP addresses! This has been confirmed been both on Dhiraagu and ROL connections.

While running censorship checks, using lists of Maldivian blogs and websites, a few other websites got flagged as possible victims of MoIA instructed blocking or indirect victims of such blocking.
- souley.org (ROL only)
- gasim08.com (ROL only)
- maumoon2008.net (ROL only)
- mvphotos.org
- simonshareef.com

Souley.org, gasim08.com and maumoon2008.net are all hosted at the popular GoDaddy hosting service and happen to be all on the same server. The server is also host to 5553 other domains hence all those 5553 are under functional censorship as well. It is not clear whether this really is due to censorship of one these three websites (or possibly another I am not aware of) or due to a technical glitch. Given that these sites are accessible under Dhiraagu, it may well be due to a glitch at ROL but I thought it maybe worth mentioning here. (Update: 17/Mar/2009) I've been informed that ROL was indeed instructed to block that IP as well, meaning well over 6000 sites are currently effectively censored! MvPhotos.org and simonshareef.com are hosted on the same server as randomreflexions.com and hence is blocked as well (or possibly has been blocked under instruction from MoIA).

I cannot stress enough the irresponsibility that goes with imposing such unrestricted IP based blocks. I suspect the blame for this mishap rests solely on TAM and the two ISPs.

Future

The Maldivian blogosphere contains dozens of blogs from various individuals, Muslim and other belief positions alike, that do not subscribe to MoIA's views and are pretty vocal in letting their opposition and dissenting views be known. But by no means is dissent limited to personal websites only. The popular video sharing website Youtube contains many videos that promote Christianity in Dhivehi. There is also growing demand for the many thousands of articles, books, videos and lectures on the various theistic and nontheistic positions that are available online for easy reading for the English literate. One thing is clear for the future: Maldives is no longer a mostly homogeneous society where people think and believe the same thing, despite the continuing assertions by the government and the MoIA. Will MoIA continue to block websites, including those such as YouTube?

Breaking free

The Internet is a beast that is hard to tame and a blocked website is just a minor inconvenience at best.
RSS - All blocked blogs and websites with RSS feeds can be accessed using some of the many free web-based RSS readers.
Proxy - Using a proxy might be convenient and might be the best option if the site you are trying to access does not provide full RSS feeds. There are two ways to this: using a web-based proxy service or setting a proxy in your browser.
Tor - Tor is a freely downloadable software that uses a method called "onion routing" to bounce your traffic several times with different hosts on the internet before going to the final destination.

Opinions

Perhaps it is too soon to raise alarm over the MoIA's tightening grip on the internet, perhaps it will be reversed soon. Either way, it is not too early to call for the establishment of clear guidelines and mechanisms for blocking websites, if the government really insists on continuing to stifle opinion. Letting anyone reign per their whims on the sole source of decent information available in the Maldives, to arbitrarily block websites and blackout large sections of the internet, does not seem very conducive towards the new government's promise of a free and democratic society.

Elsewhere on the Maldivian blogs...
- maldives: Maldives to become haven for dissident writers but plagued by censorship
- maldivesdissent: Maldives president blocks websites and crackowns on protests
- ithadu: How sensible is the Islamic Ministry?
- ithadu: From internet to intranet! Democracy?
- duwyduwy: Attack on bloggers
- chopey: Dr. Majeed, Please bless my blog
- majlissexstories - Internet banned
- Bits 'N' Bytes: I condemn internet censorship by Islamic Ministry in Maldives
- MaldivesHealth: In support of RandomReflections
- pizzahouse: A moment of silence...

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Note: Big thanks to Hassan for all the help he provided in running the block checks on ROL and contributing to the mini-investigation. Also thanks to Nattu and Rhipha for the list of Maldivian websites and Millzero for confirming the blocks on Dhiraagu.

Lately, I stop myself from blogging most of the time and on the occasions that I do go onto publish something, I make sure it's something pretty mundane... mostly because expressing myself has come at a cost that I do not wish to bear for the moment. However, the recent terrorist bombing in the Maldives agitated me too much to keep my big mouth shut.

One of the most shocking things to me about the incident was that there seemed to be not much of public outrage or unrest following the explosion. Maybe it is because people have, for the most part, grown apathetic to what is going on in the country or perhaps people were expecting such an attack as if it was an already overdue eventuality. Whatever it is, we all seemed to be very interested in knowing exactly who perpetrated it. Most people, apart from Maumoon & Co ofcourse, were quick to point fingers at a particular group of people in the country – the religious extremists (or rather Islamic extremists to be more precise). It may not have been fair to single out any group of people at such an early stage but given how things have unfolded and the status of the police investigation (as of now) it seems almost certain that the confessed culprits that organised and executed this utterly unjustifiable attack did what they did based on their particular religious conviction.

However it is that you choose to classify these savages, be it “extremists”, “fundamentalists”, “jihadists”, “religious fanatics” or perhaps simply “deluded insane misfits”, it is important that we skip semantic disagreements and instead concentrate on the heart of the matter – WHY. A query into their exact motives gives an independent, unbiased and more complete description of who these people are and what sort of mentality and beliefs led to the atrocity they committed. I will refrain from engaging in speculation on what their motives are/were since the investigation is still ongoing and the police have not released any statement on the issue. However, I do wish to raise my concern over the growing religious extremism which seems to be a reality that many people refuse to accept (still).

An objective, independent observer would most certainly agree that there has been sudden and dramatic increase in the religiosity of the Maldivian people in the past 2-4 years. Maldivians have been Muslims for the past 1000+ years yet there probably never was a time, atleast in my living memory, where so many men wore snipped trousers and long beards and women wore black burka covering head-to-toe and withdrew from social life and work to a place in the home. It is essential that we honestly ask where this sudden religious “enlightenment” arrived from and why it is taking root and how it is spreading because it is along with this movement that extremist thought was imported and is being cultivated.

The religious (Islamic) enlightenment in the country certainly had/has a lot to do with the growing freedom with which preachers are able to spread their message. The political “changes” that started a few years ago certainly made all the difference in that restrictions on the freedom to publish were then relaxed, making it possible to break away from the Maumoon-only fatwas. The public was then suddenly bombarded with all sorts of material from all sorts of writers and groups – both from within and without. Now, there are books, booklets, flyers, speeches, Q&A sessions and all sorts of religiously themed events going on each day where religious “scholars” preach to their heart’s desire. The freedom and reach is increasing evermore as weekly’s, radio programming and TV slots dedicate more time and space for such material. What is alarming though, is that there is nothing to keep things in check.

Maldives is a 100% Islamic nation by (implicit) assertion in the constitution and the prevalent mode of thought makes it almost impossible to say something that can be even remotely perceived as anti-Islamic. There certainly was/is no room for criticizing a preacher’s message or engaging in intellectual debate on religion and related issues. Aniya was quickly shot down due to her now famous article in Minivan for allegedly offending and attacking Islam and its principles. The reaction to her article certainly set the ground for what writers and intellectuals who disagree with the “religiously enlightened” can expect – there was zero tolerance on anything that is remotely critical, there wasn’t room for scepticism. This important lack of freedom of expression is what I think seeded the roots of extremism.

The lack of freedom to criticise or voice scepticism on any matter within the grasp of religious preachers gave them a lot of room to spread their particular interpretations of the Quran, the Hadith and Islam itself. It is essential to note that ANY position on Islam (or most, if not all, other religions for that matter!) is all down to the particular interpretations a person chooses to adopt and the resultant ideologies that a person chooses to accept. To someone that has taken the leap of faith to adopt a particular interpretation as the ultimate truth, all other competing interpretations of “truth” are invalid and sinfully wrong. Extremists justify their position using the same material and with equally valid “arguments” as any other and only differ in that they are willing to engage in immoral, unjustifiable violations of human rights to enforce their beliefs. It is all too easy to move through different religious modes of thought without realizing where the buck stops – for blind faith is deemed a virtue. It is truly saddening and worrying when people, especially young adults barely in their twenties (such as the perpetrators of the Maldivian terrorist attack), gain such conviction that they are ready to harm and kill others in the name of their beliefs.

Religious extremism may now sadly have made its first bloody mark with the first ever terrorist attack on the Maldivian people and our guests. The Maldivian WWW sites run by extremists offer a peek into what maybe really going down in their clans and how far they are willing to take it. Witness some of the Maldivian calls for jihad at the videos at http://www.raajje.tv/kokko007 and writings at http://noorulislam.wordpress.com/. How long are we going to give a blind eye to this madness???

If we do seriously intend to tackle extremism (irrespective of whether it is religious or not), we need to immediately start engaging in free, open intellectual debate on all matters, improve education (especially science) and generally open the public’s eyes to the beliefs, ideas and lives of people elsewhere in the world and throughout history.

Update (08-Oct-2007): Seems Raajje.tv decided to kill the videos that I had linked above - the videos certainly aren't available no more. How or why they censored it is beyond me but I suspect the Maldivian government had some influence. Anyway, a friend found out that the same user kokko007 had uploaded the same videos to YouTube as well.