News Desk
MALE’ — Ali Rameez was once the most commercially successful singer in the Maldives. Girls swooned over him. His songs, many of them borrowing liberally from Bollywood melodies, were the soundtrack to a generation of Maldivian romance. In 2002 he announced he was stepping back from music temporarily. By 2005 he said he had quit entirely and that he regretted his involvement in it. In 2010 he obtained a certificate to serve as an imam.
Two decades on from that break, he is now launching a sports academy.
Manfaa Academy was inaugurated at a ceremony held at Ghiyasuddin International School, with Ali Suzain, Technical Director of New Radiant Sports Club, officiating the launch. Suzain was presented with the academy’s official jersey as a gift at the event.
Speaking at the ceremony, Ali Rameez, who chairs Manfaa, described the academy as a new chapter after 22 years in Islamic outreach. He said Manfaa Academy would serve as a model for the Maldivian sports sector and as a vehicle for propagating Islamic teachings within it. The academy’s stated aim is to build a generation of young people with strong moral character through sport.
The launch also included the release of a mobile application called Bangi, designed to notify users of prayer times and to provide the remembrances and supplications recited during prayer, with translations in both Dhivehi and English.
Ali Rameez had been associated with Jamiyyath Salaf, the Islamic NGO registered in 2006 that became one of the more influential conservative religious organisations in the Maldives. Salaf has operated at the centre of debates about the direction of Islam in the country for nearly two decades, including periods of intense controversy. The specific circumstances of Rameez’s departure from Salaf and the founding of Manfaa could not be independently confirmed before publication, and eTruth is seeking comment from Ali Rameez on the matter.
What is clear is that Manfaa represents a different approach, or at least a different arena. Where Salaf built its presence through lectures, television programmes and publications, Manfaa is planting its flag on a football pitch. In the Maldives, where religion and daily life are rarely kept in separate compartments, the combination is less surprising than it might appear elsewhere.
For Ali Rameez, the journey from singing love songs in resort bars to preaching Islam to now putting both in the service of a football academy is not a straight line. But in the Maldives, where personal reinvention often travels through religion, it is not an unfamiliar one either. He called Thursday night the beginning of a new chapter.
