The High Court, in its recently published full verdict on the petition challenging the legality of the declaration of Islam as the state religion, observed that declaration did not create any discrimination among religions as the constitution ensured the practice of other religions.
‘The wordings of Article 2A of the Constitution, in our view, do not lead to any discrimination between the holders of state religion and other holders of other religious beliefs,’ the bench of Justice Naima Haider, Justice Quazi Reza-Ul Hoque, and Justice Md Ashraful Kamal said in their full verdict posted on the Supreme Court website on April 21, 2024.
The High Court bench on March 26, 2016, rejected a writ petition filed 34 years ago challenging the legality of Article 2A of the constitution that declared Islam the state religion.
The High Court, in a short verdict, said that the petitioner, Swairachar O Sampradaiyikata Pratirodh Committee, had no legal right to file the petition.
Fifteen eminent citizens—former chief justice Kemal Uddin Hossain, former Supreme Court judges Justice Devesh Chandra Bhattacharjee and Justice KM Sobhan, lawyer Syed Istiaq Ahmed, academics Khan Sarwar Murshid, Kabir Chowdhury, Mosharaf Hossain, Serajul Islam Chowdhury and Anisuzzaman, Liberation War sector commander Chitta Ranjan Dutta, poet Begum Sufia Kamal, writers Kalim Sharafi, Badruddin Umar, Borhan Uddin Khan Jahangir, and journalist Faiz Ahmed—filed the petition on behalf of Swairachar O Sampradaiyikata Pratirodh Committee, a platform formed to resist autocracy and communalism, in 1988 after the passage of the eighth amendment to the constitution.
The full verdict observed that Article 2A of the constitution provided that Islam would be the state religion, but it also ensured equal status and rights of practice for Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and other religions.
‘At present, 25 countries claim Islamic credentials. Of these 25 countries, 23 constitutionally declare Islam to be the state religion,’ said the verdict.
It is said that countries that didn’t declare Islam a religion gave it special privileges.
The verdict said that the constitutions of Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, and Bhutan declared Buddhist religions as their state religions.
It said that the judiciary was not concerned with politics. The judiciary is ‘antithesis’ to politics.
