When the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, visited the Maldives late last year, she urged that the practice of flogging women for having sex outside marriage - while very rarely punishing men for the same - should be abolished.
"This practice constitutes one of the most inhumane and degrading forms of violence against women," she told local reporters then.
The response was as fierce as it was unexpected. The next day protesters rallied outside the UN building, carrying placards that read "Ban UN" and "Islam is not a toy" and threatened to "Flog Pillay". A website later promised to "slaughter anyone against Islam".
Similar protests have followed, and a growing religious divide between moderate and fundamentalist Muslims - constitutionally, all Maldivians are obliged to follow Islam - has led many to question the direction of religion in the Maldives and, in particular, the place of women in Maldivian society.
In an interview with the Herald, the Maldivian President, Mohamed Nasheed, conceded an emergent religious fundamentalism had changed the way women were viewed, and treated, in his country. » | Wednesday, January 25, 2012
