Comment: Oh, what a circus

A medical doctor with no formal religious training takes centre stage as an Islamic scholar to tickle the Maldivian youth’s religious fancy.

One man questions his own faith and asks the scholar for his learned opinion on apostates. The good doctor diagnoses the man’s malady as possessing too much intellect – a condition that prevents belief cells from forming and developing in the brain. The doctor prescribes a specialist consultation with the ‘Non-Islamic-but-Muslim government’ for a remedy to his condition.

The government provides him with ‘counselling’, which proves to be just what the doctor ordered as, lo and behold, the man is cured within days. He apologises to his Muslim brethren who put away the swords they had unsheathed and enfold him in the warm embrace of their attar-scented hijabs. ‘Insha-Allah!’ cry the audience.