T&T: No dhimmis here

Ah-wo! I've got to run the whole thing here. In all the years T&T had Muslims, and it's been since the late 19th-early 20th century, nothing like this has happened. This Enyahooma-El guy must think that because he's pissing on a wall and it's making froth that he's too much man for the magistrate. Listen up, friend, magistrates in T&T dread. Real dread.

A Muslim man who was ordered by an Arima magistrate to take off his headwear in the courtroom has failed to satisfy the Court of Appeal that his constitutional right to freedom of religion was infringed.

In an historic application, the court had to decide whether a magistrate had the power to order someone wearing religious headwear to remove it or leave the court, and whether the magistrate should have held an inquiry before making the order.

On September 8, 1998, Olive Enyahooma-El was ordered to remove his taj or leave the court by Magistrate Herbert Charles.

His constitutional motion was refused by Justice Joseph Tam in July 2002, and he appealed.

His attorney Sunil Gosein argued the magistrate should have held an inquiry to find out the significance of the headwear before making his order.

Gosein argued that in a multi-religious society, any order to have someone remove his religious wear or leave the court contravened a person’s right to freedom to express their religious beliefs guaranteed in the Constitution.

In a 10-page written judgment yesterday, Chief Justice Satnarine Sharma and Appeal Court Justices Margot Warner and Rolston Nelson found that Enyahooma-El failed to establish any inequality of treatment.

They also dismissed his contention that right to life meant the rights to religious beliefs and spiritual life.

“The appellant has failed to satisfy this court that there was a breach of his constitutional rights on the facts alleged by him,” Nelson said in the judgment.

Sharma and Warner offered no comments and agreed with Nelson’s findings.

Nelson said magistrates were entitled to make orders regulating proceedings in their courts.

“Removal of headwear in the case of males is usually a sign of respect for the magistrate and a mark of solemnity of the occasion,” Nelson said.

“If a member of the public raises a religious or other objection to a magistrate’s order or direction it does not follow automatically that the magistrate must waive his or her order.”