If any country on Earth could be considered paradise it would be the Maldives, but even there you can’t escape the rise of totalitarian Islam.

NEW DELHI: The Maldives’ best-known blogger, who nearly died in an attack outside his home last month, has blamed resurgent militants for the assault and fled the country.

Ismail Rasheed, known locally as the blogger “Hilath,” was on his way home from prayers on the evening of June 4 when three men grabbed him from behind and one of them stabbed him in the throat.

The 37-year-old former journalist with leading daily Haveeru, who had upset the Indian Ocean nation’s increasingly influential religious hardliners, slumped in a pool of blood outside his front door in the capital Male.

Rushed to hospital, he remained in intensive care for days where doctors brought him back from the brink. His trachea — but not a vital artery — had been sliced clean through.

“I was attacked because I advocate secularism. The radicals want Maldives to remain a 100-percent Islamic country,” he told AFP in an interview conducted via Twitter and email in the past few weeks.

The free-speech advocate has been literally silenced. He was unable to talk in person or over the telephone because doctors have advised him not to speak while his throat heals.

Fearful for his future safety, Rasheed has since fled the country and is considering seeking political asylum.

“The Maldives is not safe for me anymore,” he said, declining to disclose his present whereabouts.

Visiting tourists — celebrities and well-heeled honeymooners who head for secluded luxury hotels on outlying islands — are blissfully unaware. They are kept deliberately out of the cramped capital of Male and other populated areas.

One consequence of the change in power has been an increased role for the ultra-conservative Adhaalath Party, whose supporters follow a strict brand of Wahhabi Islam from the Gulf that has grown steadily in recent decades.

The party has two ministers in Waheed’s administration.

Adhaalath regularly accused Nasheed during his time in office of having links to Jews and Christians and it helped spur protests against him in the months leading to his ousting.

“Ever since the radicals got affiliated with Waheed, freedom of speech has deteriorated,” explained Rasheed, a distant relative of Nasheed and a follower of Sufi Islam, a more mystical and moderate form of the religion.