On the very day an 18-year-old shot 19 students and two adults at Robb Elementary School, in Uvalde, Texas, on the other side of the world, a 37-year-old man forcefully entered Jamaluddin School, one of the oldest primary schools in the Maldives' capital Malé, according to local media reports. The attacker attempted to assault the school's principal, screaming "Allah Akbar".
According to Channel News Maldives, the reason for his attempted attack was based on ideology as much as politics: he felt the school curriculum was derogatory towards Islam.
In the Maldives, Salafi and other religiously conservative actors have successfully turned the school curriculum into a religious and political issue, with those critiquing it often labelled heretics. The Maldivian government has gone to the extent of reviewing the curriculum following criticism from civil society in 2015 that narratives in the Islamic Studies school textbooks promote violence, hatred, xenophobia, homophobia, antisemitism, and even intra-Muslim bigotry against sects outside of Sunni Islam. Muslims promoting democracy, rule of law and human rights, according to the textbooks as they were, are seen as traitors conspiring against Islamic societies.
Maldivian Democracy Network (MDN), one of the only organisations openly countering violent narratives in the country, was forcefully de-registered in November 2019, following a belated smear campaign over its 2015 report on extremism. The report exposed the severely problematic Islamic Studies curriculum and religious clerics, government, civil society, and security forces promoting fundamentalist ideologies. This was the continuation of a trend of smear campaigns run by hardline Islamist groups that then became legitimised by sources associated with the government in the Maldives. This can be seen in the case of the MDN, where the Islamic Ministry advised authorities in writing, and in no uncertain terms, that the authors of the MDN report should be executed for blasphemy and apostasy.