North male atoll
The Maldives has hundreds of resorts on it's many islands (Robinson 7), the most visited island being the North Male Atoll. The vast majority of western tourists who visit the Maldives stay within their secluded resorts, not venturing out into the city. This has allowed westerners to see the Maldives as a beautiful peaceful set of islands, a perspective influenced mainly by the resorts themselves. These resorts have also created loopholes for themselves in the strict Islam enforced country that has allowed them to serve meat and liquor to the tourists and allow other otherwise illegal activities on the islands (Robinson 4). It is confusing to understand that the Maldives has strict cultural and legal Islamic rules that are allowed to be clearly broken within resorts, yet this is the case. This paradox exemplifies the enormous importance of a successful tourism industry which makes up around 70% of the country's GDP (A Mindha). But because the government and locals have allowed the tourism industry to ignore their own rules, there is a growing hatred toward westerners in the country. Evidence of this hatred was exposed in a video of a Swiss couple getting their wedding vows renewed where they were unknowingly ridiculed by resort staff members in their local language (The Week UK)(video posted below). While speaking in the native language: Dhivehi, the couple is referred to as, "infidels," "swine"(The Week). Although it has not occurred yet in it's fullest form, the combination of extreme Islam and western based hatred often results in terrorism (Ahmad Niyaz). Although nobody quite knows if this will be the case in the Maldives, it is assumed that if terrorist attacks took place in a tourist resort, the following destruction to the Maldivian economy would be massive.