(MALDIVES) – The Maldives’ Islamic Ministry denied in September 2011 that it had received an anti-gambling petition seeking to stop the US Green Card Lottery, a claim that has resurfaced as the American Diversity Visa program remains suspended in 2026.

The petition, backed by about 107 individuals, asked the Ministry of Islamic Affairs to halt the lottery in the Maldives, describing it as gambling, or haraam, and as an attempt to introduce non-Muslim values.

Permanent Secretary Mohamed Didi and State Minister Sheikh Hussein Rasheed Ahmed said at the time that the Islamic Ministry had not received the petition. Their denial formed the basis of the original dispute now circulating again in the Maldives.

The old argument has returned in a different moment. On December 18, 2025, the Department of Homeland Security announced an immediate and indefinite pause of the Diversity Visa program, triggering fresh attention on religious, legal and political objections tied to the lottery system.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said the halt was necessary to “ensure no more Americans are harmed by this program,” citing security reviews after a shooting incident involving a former lottery recipient.

One day later, on December 19, 2025, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services directed field offices to “place an immediate hold on all pending Diversity Visa–based adjustment of status applications (Form I-485)” and related filings under Form I-765 and Form I-131.

The order pushed pending cases into limbo. More than 55,000 selectees in the DV-2026 fiscal year are affected by the suspension.

Consular processing also stalled. Interviews at U.S. consulates for DV-2026 winners have been frozen since January 14, 2026 for more than 75 nationalities deemed at high risk of public benefit usage.

The renewed circulation of the Maldivian petition has given the older gambling claim a new audience. In 2011, the complaint centered on whether entry into the visa lottery violated Islamic principles.

Islamic rulings cited in the dispute took a different view. Scholarly bodies including AskImam have said the Diversity Visa program does not amount to gambling because entrants do not place a stake or wager money for profit, and selection functions as an administrative process.

That distinction mattered because the Diversity Visa program was historically free to enter. The religious criticism in the Maldives focused on chance and values, while later U.S. regulatory changes targeted fraud and security.

On March 11, 2026, the Department of State published a final rule in the Federal Register aimed at fraud concerns in the program. The rule required applicants to provide valid, unexpired passport information at the time of entry and introduced a $1 registration fee to deter mass-bot submissions.

The fee changed a program that had long been free to enter. The full rule appears in the [Federal Register notice on enhancing vetting and combatting fraud in the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/03/11/2026-04857/visas-enhancing-vetting-and-combatting-fraud).

The regulatory change did not end the broader shutdown. By June 2026, multiple lawsuits had challenged the DHS pause, including a class action led by Red Eagle Law and Impact Litigation.

That case set a June 15, 2026 deadline for affected individuals to join the challenge. The litigation reflects the strain on selectees who won places in the lottery but cannot complete visa interviews or adjustment processing.

The official record on the suspension remains split across several agencies. DHS has posted updates through its [news page](https://www.dhs.gov/news), while USCIS has carried details on the adjustment hold through its [newsroom](https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom).

The State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs has also published fraud warnings and registration updates through [travel.state.gov](https://travel.state.gov). Those notices sit alongside the consular freeze that has blocked many DV-2026 cases from moving forward.

The Maldives dispute itself remains narrow and old. It involved a reported petition, an Islamic Ministry denial, and a religious argument over whether a lottery entry resembled prohibited gambling.

The American dispute now driving attention is much wider. It involves a federal suspension announced on December 18, 2025, a USCIS processing hold issued on December 19, 2025, a fraud rule published on March 11, 2026, and thousands of selectees still waiting for a path to continue their cases.

Those parallel debates have pulled the same phrase, anti-gambling petition, into very different settings. In the Maldives, it described a local religious objection to the US Green Card Lottery; in the United States, the program’s crisis now centers on security reviews, fraud controls, paused adjudications and lawsuits racing against the fiscal-year calendar.

What has not changed is the practical effect on winners. A selectee can hold a lottery result and still remain unable to move a case forward while the suspension stays in place and interviews remain frozen.

The old Maldivian headline survives because the program it targeted no longer operates in its usual form. A petition once framed as a moral complaint now circulates beside a U.S. government shutdown that has left the Diversity Visa system suspended, restricted and under legal challenge.