New Age | Declaration of Islam as state religion not discriminatory: HC

The High Court in a recent full verdict has said that the declaration of Islam as the state religion did not create any discrimination among people of other religious beliefs as the constitution ensured practice of other religions.

‘The wording of article 2A of the constitution, in our view, does not lead to any discrimination between the holders of Islam religious and other holders of other religious beliefs,’ the bench of Justice Naima Haider, Justice Quazi Reza-Ul Hoque and Justice Md Ashfaqul Kamal said this in their full verdict posted on the Supreme Court website on April 21.

On March 26, 2016, the High Court bench rejected a writ petition, filed 34 years ago, challenging the legality of Article 2A of the constitution that declared Islam as the state religion.

The High Court in 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 2A of the constitution provided that Islam would be the state religion but it ensures equal status and rights of practicing Hindu, Biddush, Christian and other religions.

It said that the judiciary was not concerned with politics and that the judiciary was antithesis to politics.

It said that the judiciary must acknowledge that amendments may be affected by political considerations.

The verdict said that the judiciary must acknowledge that they may not like enactment or amendment to statute or constitution.

The verdict said that the function of the judiciary was to endure the supremacy of the constitution.