Security Code: The India Out movement in the Maldives isn’t about kicking out New Delhi

Long home to a relaxed, liberal social milieu—the great qazi Ibn Battutah wrote at his frustration at failing to persuade local women to cover up—the Maldives slowly transformed into a Saudi Arabia-style Islamic Republic in the 1970s. The élite’s efforts to appropriate Islam, though, only ended up empowering a new generation of violent jihadists with links to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. Today, the Islamists are in striking distance of erasing liberal democracy from Maldives.