Mass Protest in defence of Islam comes to a close after 8 hours

Nearly 10,000 faithful who gathered at the newly dubbed Victory Square in Malé, the Maldivian capital, have broken their ranks after 8 hours of peaceful protest against “the Maldivian Government’s continued mockery and attacks on Islam and its tenets with the help of foreign, Islam-hating accomplices”.

The Protest was closed at 11:51 with a special prayer led by Sheikh Ilyas.

Before closing the Protest, Sheikh Imran, the President of Adaalath Party called upon the Government to fulfill 5 demands of the protesters. He said that in Malé, where there are about 30 mosques, there are more than 60 whorehouses uniformed as massage parlors and that these needed to be shut down; that the idols kept in Addu City should be uninstalled; that the Government should stop declaring parts of inhabited islands to be uninhabited islands to walk around the law and start selling alcohol in them; that the President should apologize for using UN Human Rights Commissioner Nave Pillay to mock Islam.

In his closing address, Sheikh Imran repeatedly reminded the protesters to be peaceful and avoid any form of violence against persons and property, stressing that it is a fundamental virtue of Islam which should be observed by the faithful.

As the Mass Protest came to a close, an MDP gathering at MDP Activity Centre in Malé, which had issued warnings of violence against the protesters, was also dismissed. An announcement of an MDP protest tomorrow evening was announced.

There have been reports that some furious MDP activists from the gathering are heading towards the Victory Square area to confront protesters, but so far there have been no reports of any confrontation.