Skip to main content

Bangladesh Considers Dropping Islam as Official Religion

Share This article

Bangladesh's Supreme Court will consider for the first time in 28 years if it should drop Islam as the country's official religion.

On March 27, the court will hear arguments to decide whether Bangladesh should return to a secular state -- a status it gained when it declared independence from Pakistan in 1971.

The court's hearing comes as ISIS claims credit for the stabbing death of a Christian convert, a senseless killing that the group warns should be a "lesson to others."

The attack by Islamic extremists was the latest incident to raise concerns over the Muslim-majority South Asian nation's official relationship to Islam, reports Christianity Today.

The country is about 90 percent Muslim and 8 percent Hindu, with Christians and other religions filling the remaining 2 percent.

"Minority groups in Bangladesh continue to face discrimination in the law, in society and in treatment by enforcement agencies," Jubliee Campaign and Christian Solidarity Worldwide said in an oral statement to the United Nations this month.

"Last year's multiple attacks on Shia mosques, Hindu temples and threats to Christian church leaders are reflective of the ongoing struggles for religious minorities in Bangladesh. Increasing number of violations on freedom of expression are also concerning, indicated by attacks on bloggers and publishers of secular material," the statement continued.

The petition to change the country's religion is now seeing legal action after the original 1988 file was dropped.

A group of citizens who filed a writ with the High Court realized "that the bench would not" rule favorably, petition organizer Shahriar Kabir told Reuters.

"Since 1988, we have been opposing Islam as the state religion. Religion is a personal matter and a democratic state can't have an official religion," Nirmal Rozario, secretary of the Bangladesh Christian Association, told UCAnews.com.

Another effort to change the religion came in 2009 when Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina came to power. She attempted to tone down Bangladesh's Islamic identity.

The constitution was amended to reinstate the principle of secularism but it also reaffirmed Islam as the state religion.

Shahriar and his group now seek to resolve that contradiction with the hopes that Islam will not be the state religion.

The group also argues that the Islamic designation has been used to rationalize recent violence against Christians and other non-Muslims.

"This is nothing but an effort to dominate other religions in the country. It must stop," Rozario said.

"It will take long time to get any decision," said Rana Dasgupta, a government prosecutor. "The nature of the case is time-consuming. The High Court will continue to hear from both parties and then will deliver its verdict."

Share This article

About The Author

CBN
News

CBN News is a national/international, nonprofit news organization that provides programming 24 hours a day by cable, satellite and the Internet. Staffed by a group of acclaimed news professionals, CBN News delivers stories to over a million viewers each day without a specific agenda. With its headquarters in Virginia Beach, Va., CBN News has bureaus in Washington D.C., Jerusalem, and elsewhere around the world. What began as a segment on CBN's flagship program, The 700 Club, in the early 1980s, CBN News has since expanded into a multimedia news organization that offers today's news headlines