Ethno-religious violence in Sri Lanka is a chronic problem, and it can be sustained even without the active support of a particular government. This understanding of violence prompts further reflection – both on the factors that drive such violence and the complex relationship between ethnicity, religion, and the Sri Lankan constitution. This article delves into the post-war context in Sri Lanka and examines how and why ethno-religious violence has persisted regardless of the government in power. It is presented in three sections. The first analyzes the current state of ethno-religious violence in Sri Lanka. The second offers a hypothesis on why such violence has persisted despite the democratic transition of January 2015. It argues that democratic transitions alone cannot prevent chronic ethno-religious violence due to certain factors that serve to entrench violence within the country’s constitutional practice. The final section discusses the relationship between ethno-religious relations, the nature of the Sri Lankan constitution, and the space for meaningful constitutional reform. It concludes that the Sri Lankan state – informed by Sri Lanka’s ‘political constitution’ – embodies a certain structural dispensation towards ethno-religious violence. Until this fundamental dispensation is in some way transformed, meaningful religious freedom and power sharing will remain elusive aims.

This article investigates the extent of state intervention in the administration of Islam in Indonesia. The 1945 Constitution of Indonesia does not explicitly recognize or privilege any particular religion. Yet, the boundaries of religion-state relations in the country are often unclear and complex, especially in light of policies and laws that regulate religious life and appear to privilege the dominant religion and its adherents. In this article, I demonstrate the ways in which the state has increasingly interfered in the administration of Islam in Indonesia by focusing on two case studies: the management of Hajj and zakat. However, it is observed that the vague constitutional arrangements on religion in Indonesia provide avenues for interpretations (especially by the Ministry of Religious Affairs) that the state has a constitutional obligation to interfere in the administration of religion and implement religious doctrines; and in the case of Islam, to ‘bureaucratize’ the shariah. This further complicates the exercise of distinguishing between religious doctrines that require state intervention for implementation and those that do not.

The Philippine doctrine on the separation of church and state, while rooted in American constitutional tradition, continues to show vestiges of Spanish colonial rule. The Philippines adopted the union of church and state for three and a half centuries as a Spanish colony, but became a secular state after it was ceded to the United States of America in 1898. The wall of separation has since been maintained in all subsequent Philippine constitutions, only to be compromised in statutes and daily life. That conflict is most evident in marriage, a legal institution openly shaped by canon law. Falcis v Civil Registrar-General, the marriage equality petition pending before the Philippine Supreme Court, seeks to end that practice. But note the irony: while the US Supreme Court in Obergefell v Hodges secularizes marriage and disconnects it from religion, Falcis takes an opposing route in anchoring marriage equality on religious freedom. This article looks at the prospect of that gambit. By contrasting the legal and theological contexts from which Obergefell and Falcis stem, the article shows how the demands of same-sex union and church-state separation are tightly intertwined.