EDITORIAL: On religious freedom
AS do many other Constitutions globally, the Barbados Constitution protects religious freedom. It does so under the rubric “freedom of conscience”. According to section 19(1) – “Except with his own consent, no person shall be hindered in the enjoyment of his freedom of conscience and for the purpose of this section the said freedom includes freedom of thought and of religion, freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others, and both in public and in private, to manifest and propagate his religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance.”
This freedom is further buttressed by the constitutional guarantee of protection from discrimination on certain grounds including “creed” to be found in section 23. Interestingly enough, the local provision exempts from this protection any law making provision on matters of personal law including adoption, marriage, divorce, burial, and the devolution of property on death or other such matters.
Given the historical development of the countries in the region, there has evolved in each what may be regarded as a dominant denomination of the Christian religion; Catholicism in some, Anglicanism in others. And in light of the fact that the Christian religion is exclusive by nature; members of minority religions and even those of the less dominant branches of the Christian religion in some cases, may justifiably feel that they are not accorded the same privileges and advantages with respect to the manifestation and propagation of their religion in worship, teaching and, especially, in practice and observance. It bears noting, however, that while popular tradition may treat these other religions differently, the law considers them all as equal.
A recent report issued by the US State Department on international religious freedom would appear to corroborate that this sentiment of different treatment may also exist in practice in Barbados. According to the report, members of the Rastafarian religion continued to experience state discrimination through the criminalization of marijuana, claimed to be “integral” to their religious rituals, and the requirement to remove head coverings by police, immigration and customs officials. Their religious belief is also alleged to be compromised by the stipulation to have their children vaccinated before enrolment in state schools. Similarly, some Muslims regard as discriminatory the requirement for women to remove all head coverings when being photographed for national identification cards and passports.
The difficulty here of course is that while the US report seeks to identify possible areas of religious discrimination, religious freedoms may be vindicated in a court of law only. It is solely in that context that the true extent of the claimed freedom will be determined and whether the treatment that is alleged indeed constitutes an infringement of it.
As with the other constitutional freedoms, religious freedom is not absolute but rather exists subject to the broad public interests of defence, safety, order, morality or public health. A claim to exercise a religious freedom that conflicts with the law is therefore doomed to fail from the outset, unless the claimant is able to establish that the law in question either was not passed with the required majority if it was created subsequent to a then existing and legal religious practice, or that the law is not saved from constitutional query in any event since it did not exist prior to 1966.
Further, a claimed exemption from a state practice such as the nature of photographs on official documents is likely to fail as clashing with the general public order.
Those “infringements” of religious freedom identified by the US report would seem nevertheless to be consistent with our constitutional ethos.