Source: SACW Jan 5-10, 2010
’BISMILLAH’ AND ISLAM AS STATE RELIGION TO STAY PM tells 14-party meet
by Hasan Jahid Tusher
(The Daily Star, January 6, 2010, Front Page)
The words “Bismillah-Ar-Rahman-Ar-Rahim” in the preamble to the constitution and declaration of Islam as state religion will remain as they are, since they reflect the beliefs of the people, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said yesterday.
She was meeting 14-party leaders at her official residence Jamuna. It was the first such meeting since the Awami League-led grand alliance came to office in January last year.
Hasina, also president of AL and chief of the 14-party combine, however said the spirit of the original constitution would be restored with inclusion of the High Court verdict that declared illegal the fifth amendment, said meeting sources.
On the issue of Bismillah and Islam in the constitution, she told the leaders they must accept the reality.
The matter came up when an alliance leader suggested that the 1972 constitution be restored to uphold secularism.
The fifth amendment incorporated “Bismillah-Ar-Rahman-Ar-Rahim (In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful) into the preamble and the eighth amendment gave Islam the status of state religion.
The Supreme Court on Sunday vacated its stay on the HC verdict on the fifth amendment, which legitimises the regimes between August 15, 1975, and April 9, 1979.
At yesterday’s meeting, the prime minister stressed the need for strengthening the 14-party coalition, formed during the BNP-Jamaat coalition rule.
She endorsed the alliance leaders’ proposal for holding meetings of the combine regularly.
Syeda Sajeda Chowdhury, AL presidium member and deputy leader of the House, was made coordinator of the coalition.
The leaders resolved to bring the war criminals to book as early as possible, and to help the government achieve its goals.
Briefing newsmen afterwards, AL General Secretary Syed Ashraful Islam said they have decided to meet regularly from now on.
The top leaders of the coalition discussed the government’s activities in last one year. They praised the way Hasina has been leading the government, added Ashraf, also LGRD and cooperatives minister.
Later, the prime minister hosted a dinner for the alliance leaders to mark the occasion of the grand alliance’s one year in office.
Those present included JP leaders HM Ershad, Rawshan Ershad, Anisul Islam Mahmud, Ziauddin Ahmed Bablu and Ruhul Amin Hawlader, Worker Party President Rashed Khan Menon, General Secretary Bimal Biswas, Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal President Hasanul Haque Inu, General Secretary Syed Zafar Sazzad, Samyabadi Dal President Dilip Barua, Islami Oikya Jote Chairman Misbaur Rahman Chowdhury and Islamic Front Bangladesh leader Shaikh Khandaker Golam Mowla.
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DITHERING AND CONTRADICTION OVER SECULARISM Editorial, New Age, 6 January 2009
LAW minister Shafique Ahmed, it seems, wants it both ways – to have the cake of secularism and to eat it as well. If inconsistency and contradiction are misleading for the people, they are more so when they come from the ministerial level. The minister did not use the term secularism but he said religion-based political parties should cease to exist if the 5th amendment to the constitution were finally invalidated by the Supreme Court. He also said Islam would remain the state religion and Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim would be on top of the constitution’s preamble. He said this at a media briefing as reported in New Age on Tuesday. The minister, or any individual, may say anything but to make sense of contradictory statements is another matter, and here the minister is outlining state policy. If Islam is retained as state religion then religion-based politics will be automatic, as well as rightful. There is no dearth of people in this country who will argue that since Islam is the state religion no other party except Islam-based party shall have any place in the country’s politics. This they will affirm even if secularism returns; they may even say with that singular mastery of disputation and prevarication witnessed before, that secularism may be alright but as far as politics is concerned it has to be religion-based. If the 5th amendment is invalidated and the 1972 constitution is revived then the four state principles will be consecrated again. The four state principles include secularism and socialism. Observing the politics of the last two decades it is difficult to believe the ruling Awami League is still firmly wedded to socialism. The party has discarded the socialist ideology long ago and has wittingly or unwittingly come under the umbrella of big money and the donor agencies. The contradictory policy statement set us wondering as to which direction the ruling party is taking. If the ruling party is serious about restoring secularism and socialism then it should not gamble on court verdict for it, instead it should strengthen the party on an ideological basis. Establishment of secularism and socialism are a matter of arduous political struggle; no court will offer these on a platter. Its present absolute majority presents an opportunity for Awami League. It can initiate the political and legislative steps to democratise our system and restore the principles and values of the liberation war.
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RETURN TO ROOTS Editorial, The Telegraph, January 8 , 2010
A nation’s search for identity may not begin and end in a written constitution. But a country’s constitution is meant to capture the collective wish of its people. The legal battle in Bangladesh to restore the word, “secularism”, in the constitution is only superficially a political issue; at stake is the bigger question of what kind of a nation-state it hopes to evolve into. At its birth as a new nation, Bangladesh aspired to be a secular, democratic republic. When the fifth amendment to the constitution dropped the word “secularism”, it reflected more the politics of the government of the day than the wishes of the people. Opponents of the new move to restore the word in the constitution now make the same complaint. The two main political parties in Bangladesh — the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party — agree on almost nothing. Worse, almost everything is given a partisan twist. But the country’s liberation war left no room for doubt that secular nationalism was its prime mover. The move to restore “secularism” in the constitution should thus be seen as an attempt to return to the spirit of both the original constitution and Bangladeshi nationalism.
More troublesome for the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina Wajed, could be the move to ban religion-based parties. Her opponents would try to exploit the issue in order to recover lost ground. But Ms Wajed’s massive victory in the last elections reflected a popular anger against parties and leaders who sought to ruin Bangladesh’s secular polity. In a country where Muslims form nearly 90 per cent of the population, the majority religion cannot be in any real danger. To argue that a ban on religion-based parties poses a threat to Islam in Bangladesh is no more than familiar political rhetoric. Bangladeshis cannot be unaware that the making of a modern nation has much to do with the separation of State from religion. In fact, many of the country’s problems in recent years resulted from the way some political parties abused the people’s religious sentiments for narrow partisan gains. Some of these parties even sought to use religion to try and obliterate the nationalism that gave birth to the nation. The rise of religious fundamentalism and the resultant violence were also a direct outcome of religion-based politics. The return to secularism will not solve all of Bangladesh’s problems, but it can better safeguard its fledgling democratic polity.
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RELIGION IN POLITICS
Dawn Editorial Friday, 08 Jan, 2010
Supporters of political party Jamaat-e-Islami carry party flags while rallying through the streets of Karachi. – Photo by Reuters.
In a move aimed at reviving the spirit of Bangladesh’s original 1972 constitution which barred religion in politics, the Bangladesh Supreme Court recently lifted a four-year stay on an earlier ruling. As a result, the country’s dozens of Islamic political parties can no longer campaign under the banner of religion, and are likely to be forced to drop the religious reference from their names. The court declared as void ab initio the relevant fifth amendment to the constitution, which was carried out in 1979 during a Bangladesh Nationalist Party government. It allowed religion-based politics — which then flourished.
Given that Bangladesh has amongst the world’s largest Muslim populations, this is a quantum leap forward. The court decision, if upheld during appeals, will affect scores of powerful political parties and their voters, including the BNP now in the opposition. Yet it is worth noting that the verdict does not affect Islam’s constitutional status as the state religion or religious text that was incorporated in the constitution. Implicit, therefore, is the recognition that whatever the dominant religion, the business of the state and politics must be conducted independently; and that far from yielding benefits in terms of just and legitimate governance, the confluence of religion and politics can wreak havoc on a country’s political fabric.
Pakistan would do well to dwell on this. Religion, when enmeshed with politics, can deepen polarities and derail the examination of issues from the perspective of logic and the aggregate national benefit. We have seen, for example, how politics and state policies underpinned by religious diktat can lead to laws that are discriminatory and can be used as tools for victimisation. The Qisas and Diyat Act, the Hudood and the blasphemy laws are cases in point. At the very least, a political fabric woven from religion will either dismiss minorities and their rights, or polarise politics between dominant and minority religions. Pakistan made the state the custodian of religion through the 1949 Objectives Resolution, which was later made the preamble to the constitution by the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto government and added as an annex by Ziaul Haq. Although religious parties have not historically fared well in elections, Pakistan’s politics have, over successive decades, been coloured by religion. The separation of religion and politics will, of course, neither automatically ensure justice nor guard against the misuse of religion. But it can be a first step towards delineating the private and public spheres. This may be a good time to revisit Mr Jinnah’s 1947 address to Pakistan’s first constituent assembly, when he eloquently stated that religion had nothing to do with the business of the state.
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