Dhaka // Hardline Muslim groups in Bangladesh on Thursday threatened large-scale protests if a court moves to remove Islam as the official state religion of the Muslim-majority nation.
Bangladesh is officially secular, but Islam has been the state religion for almost three decades.
More than 90 per cent of the population is Muslim, with Hindus and Buddhists the main minorities.
The high court is considering a petition by secularists who say Islam’s status as the state religion conflicts with Bangladesh’s secular charter and discriminates against non-Muslims.
Furious hardliners this week urged the court to dismiss the petition at a hearing on March 27, threatening large-scale protests if it moves to remove Islam’s special status.
“Any move to scrap Islam’s status will undermine and defame the religion,” Mufti Mohammad Faezullah, secretary general of the conservative political party Islamic Oikya Jote (IOJ) said.
“Obviously the Islamic parties, general people and the clerics will resist the move by holding protests,” he said.
The court’s move threatens to exacerbate tensions between secularists and hardliners in the conservative nation, which has recently seen a spate of killings of atheist bloggers, religious minorities and foreigners.
“If there is such conspiracy and the government and the judiciary bow their heads to these people [secularists], Muslims of all walks of life will hit the roads; fire of resistance will light up across the country,” Hefajat-e-Islam, a hardline Muslim group, said.
Bangladesh was declared officially secular after a deadly liberation struggle against Pakistan in 1971.
But in 1988 the then-military ruler elevated Islam to the state religion of the South Asian country in an effort to consolidate power.
“By making Islam as state religion, the-then military government destroyed the basic character of our secular constitution,” Subrata Chowdhury, a lawyer representing the petitioners, said.
“The minorities were relegated to second-class citizens of the republic.”
The government of prime minister Sheikh Hasina brought back secularism as a pillar of the constitution, but promised it would not ratify any laws that go against the central tenets of the religion.
* Agence France-Presse
If you go
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This article is part of a guide on where to live in the UAE. Our reporters will profile some of the country’s most desirable districts, provide an estimate of rental prices and introduce you to some of the residents who call each area home.
Will the pound fall to parity with the dollar?
The idea of pound parity now seems less far-fetched as the risk grows that Britain may split away from the European Union without a deal.
Rupert Harrison, a fund manager at BlackRock, sees the risk of it falling to trade level with the dollar on a no-deal Brexit. The view echoes Morgan Stanley’s recent forecast that the currency can plunge toward $1 (Dh3.67) on such an outcome. That isn’t the majority view yet – a Bloomberg survey this month estimated the pound will slide to $1.10 should the UK exit the bloc without an agreement.
New Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly said that Britain will leave the EU on the October 31 deadline with or without an agreement, fuelling concern the nation is headed for a disorderly departure and fanning pessimism toward the pound. Sterling has fallen more than 7 per cent in the past three months, the worst performance among major developed-market currencies.
“The pound is at a much lower level now but I still think a no-deal exit would lead to significant volatility and we could be testing parity on a really bad outcome,” said Mr Harrison, who manages more than $10 billion in assets at BlackRock. “We will see this game of chicken continue through August and that’s likely negative for sterling,” he said about the deadlocked Brexit talks.
The pound fell 0.8 per cent to $1.2033 on Friday, its weakest closing level since the 1980s, after a report on the second quarter showed the UK economy shrank for the first time in six years. The data means it is likely the Bank of England will cut interest rates, according to Mizuho Bank.
The BOE said in November that the currency could fall even below $1 in an analysis on possible worst-case Brexit scenarios. Options-based calculations showed around a 6.4 per cent chance of pound-dollar parity in the next one year, markedly higher than 0.2 per cent in early March when prospects of a no-deal outcome were seemingly off the table.
Bloomberg
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