No official religion for Thailand yet

According to the news, drafters of the new B.E. 2550 Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand decided not to include an article specifying Buddhism as the official religion of the country.

Among the reasons, the King of Thailand has been required by law and past constitututions to be Buddhist already (although he must support all major religions and a Thai is free to choose his own religion), and the fact that majority (90%) of Thais registered as Buddhists, so they reckoned that there was no need to write down. Also Buddhism 's doctrines do not practice "discrimination" against people of different faith ( but it 's not true the other way round).

Oh, I 'd like to point out that it 's that Buddhists' open-minded attitute among the drafters that has caused them to decided as such.

Personally, it does not matter much. In the mean time, Buddhism will be o.k. Constutution will be just another temporary law that will not last long. But I think I know the major motives of many Buddhists as to why they/we wanted a statement to be written down about the kingdom's religion and I want to put it down here.

Buddhism is the only religion which emphasizes on "intelligent", not on pure faith like some "you name it". And Abhidhamma contains a lot of logical reasoning in its extremely profound metaphysics and philosophy. Over a millinium ago, hundreds of thousands of Buddhists and monks in ancient India kingdoms were killed by invading muslim army. Thai Buddhist scholars remember this history quite well and they do not want a chance that similar catastrophy might happen again in the future. So they try every way to have assurance. That 's just a part of their ways to help save Buddhism from being replaced by more proactive religions that have keep on advertising their bllind faiths in the region in the past few decades.