Liberal Maldivians and Westerners will be pleasantly surprised upon their arrival in Kaashidhoo to notice immediately that something is rather different than when they visit Male' City or the rest of the other inhabited islands of Maldives: Kaashidhoo residents don't stare at you.
It's not that they are ignoring you or that they don't care about you: rather, the Kaashidhoo community is one of the most caring of Maldivians, even if you happen to spend just one day in the island.
Like the completely isolated South Pacific islands you saw in the BBC documentary, Kaashidhoo people's tolerance and liberalism stems from the fact that the island is totally isolated, with the nearest inhabited island Gaafaru more than one and half hours away by boat ride.
Nothing is therefore visible on the horizon, and almost four square miles of jungle, with less than 3,000 people in population, have over the centuries made the island community dependent on one another to such a great extent that everybody would rather turn a blind eye to each and everyone's inherent private "evils" which, naturally being humans, cannot be completely wiped out even with more than 800 years of forced Islamization and Arabization.
Hence, it is the official social rule of each and every islander to mind his own business and never interfere with another person's personal affairs, whatever private opposition and personal opinions one might have about them. Therefore, though Kaashidhoo has all the modern urban "woes" like drugs, even the "unpleasant" elements in the society do not interfere or disturb other people's lives. The pleasant result is that thefts are almost unheard of, and like the innocent Male' of the early 1980s, homes are even now left open unattended and bicycles are never locked however long you leave them out in the open.
But if you are a criminal seeking to take unfair advantage of the openness of this blissful paradise -- for example by committing theft -- then you have broken the golden social code and the people's official policy of non-interference, and the result will be that you will be immediately kicked out of this island because you have disturbed its peace, tolerance and liberalism. This has happened before, I am told, so even the heroin addicts currently in the island do not commit theft but finance their addiction and habit through their own means and leave the other islanders in peace. So, in which other island of Maldives would you find such a community nowadays? I already have half a mind to permanently emigrate to this place -- Alex Garland's fictional The Beach found for real!
And unlike the stuck-up population of Male', since Kaashidhoo is such a small community, nothing remains private, which may be the reason why people don't have the choice of practicing social hypocrisy and therefore everyone is just their true selves and there is no shame felt by anyone even if one happens to be "different" -- like being homosexual.
As long as you too practice the policy of not interfering in other people's business, you can comfortably be yourself and do not have to feel guilty or ashamed of being your true self. So quite amusingly, visitors sometimes erroneously describe Kaashidhoo people as "uncouth" but the reality is that they seem so only because they are brutally honest about everything, most importantly about themselves: men and women treat each other equally and during festivities like Bodu Eid, both men and women equally engage in enacting public entertainment.
Not surprisingly, religious extremism has failed to take hold in the community despite continuous visits by Male's conservative sheikhs, thanks due to the island's natural isolated setting I earlier mentioned which makes it naturally impossible for any extremist views of any kind to take root in the community.
For instance, women who are pious and wear the headscarf, are still moderate and find no problems in dancing to bodu beru or other traditional entertainment during festivities in front of the whole community -- unlike the women Minivan News' Eleanor Johnstone encountered during the latest Bodu Eid festival in a northern island who blamed the headscarf as their excuse of being unable to perform in front of men. I don't blame religion; rather, I think the problem is with how you interpret religion, and it definitely varies from community to community as my experience of Kaashidhoo during the latest Bodu Eid was very very different from Eleanor's experience.
So I was pleasantly amused when, after spending just a few days with relatives from my mother's side in Kaashidhoo during the latest Bodu Eid holidays, I returned to Male' and immediately upon arrival on Bodu Thakurufaanu Magu, my first reaction was how barbaric and uncivilized Male' City residents were!
The staring and feeling of being constantly (and unfairly) judged every second while you are on a Male' street -- totally unacceptable and unwarranted for. In Kaashidhoo, you don't get that kind of negative energy you get from Male' residents. So you Male' people should really learn from Kaashidhoo people's example...
So after spending just a few days in Kaashidhoo, for the first time in my long 36 years of life in Maldives, it was as if I had discovered both The Beach and Amsterdam in an island called Kaashidhoo, a true paradise where, despite my openly liberal Sufi Islamic views and gay self, I was not only unconditionally accepted but in fact warmly welcomed. For the first time in my life, my being "different" or a "freak of nature" didn't matter, to me or to anybody else, and much to my relief, I finally felt hope for Maldives, and most importantly, for the first time in my life, I finally felt a sense of belonging to a Maldivian community - the Kaashidhoo community.
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