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It's a beautiful gesture to dedicate a mausoleum to Ibrahim Nasir, the father of modern Maldives and its independence hero. From a distance, the monument erected in the eastern courtyard of Male's Friday Mosque looks beautiful too. But only from a distance. When one gets closer, the quality of the workmanship leaves much to be desired and compares very unfavorably with the stone carvings in the mausoleum of King Ibrahim Iskandharu in the western courtyard.
For environmental reasons one could understand why coral stone is no longer a suitable material for a mausoleum. But surely something more suitable than concrete could have been found, perhaps limestone, marble or even slate. The material actually used is concrete, cast on fiberglass moulds.
When one looks at the assembled structure, individual blocks are out of alignment by as much as a couple of inches. Because of this, straight lines on the carved design look wavy, and the curves are interrupted.
For some odd and unexplained reason, a news reporter has asked an official from Islamic Ministry what he thought of the mausoleum. His enigmatic reply was, "No shrine has been made and no shrine will be allowed to be made." [No one has said this reply resembled the statement of Mohamed Saeed al-Sahaf, the Iraqi Information Minister during the American invasion, "There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never! They're not even within 100 miles of Baghdad. They are not in any place."]
