The Gambia's Reversed Islamic Republic Declaration

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

The Gambia's constitution protects freedom of religious choice so long as it does not infringe the rights of others or the national interest, and it explicitly bars the establishment of a state religion and the formation of political parties organized around religious affiliation. That secular guarantee was tested directly in December 2015, when President Yahya Jammeh declared the Gambia an Islamic republic by decree, overriding the constitutional bar on establishment by executive action rather than through any amendment process.

The declaration was formally reversed after Jammeh's 2017 removal from office, restoring the secular constitutional order intact rather than leaving Jammeh's decree as a lasting change to the country's legal architecture. The episode stands as a clear case of the gap between a constitution's text and a government's practice: the bar on establishing a state religion held on paper throughout Jammeh's declaration, and it was the political transition, not any court ruling, that ultimately restored it in fact.