You're completely right.

One of the central questions of our time is how we reconcile cultural diversity with the shared sense of community needed for a properly functioning society.

Multiculturalism and rights for minorities are properly regarded as major achievements and the question is how to keep those things while having also having a sphere in which we're all part of a joint community. That sphere must, to some degree, be based on our shared institutions - the law is one of these institutions and so must be kept as something we are all equally accountable to.

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I agree that in the lecture he was trying to kick off new thinking about legal universalism and "loosening of the monopolistic framework", and he was certainly not making a concrete proposal for a Sharia law realisation. He does seem to want to explore the opening of space for "supplementary jurisdiction" beyond our current concept of arbitration. I find it a rather difficult lecture to comprehend at the first reading, but the direction seems to be given by the quote:

"I have been arguing that a defence of an unqualified secular legal monopoly in terms of the need for a universalist doctrine of human right or dignity is to misunderstand the circumstances in which that doctrine emerged, and that the essential liberating (and religiously informed) vision it represents is not imperilled by a loosening of the monopolistic framework."

I'm not convinced by the lecture - it would need a lot of pondering over!

On the other hand the press release and radio interview seemed to suggest religious law could fit in with the existing law of the land much like the existing Jewish courts:

"... certain provision of Sharia are already recognised in our society and under our law; so it's not as if we're bringing in an alien and rival system; we already have in this country a number of situations in which the internal law of religious communities is recognised by the law of the land  ... We have orthodox Jewish courts operating in this country legally and in a regulated way because there are modes of dispute resolution and customary provisions which apply there in the light of Talmud. It's not a new problem, not to mention the questions ... about how the consciences of Catholics, Anglicans and others who have difficulty over issues like abortion are accommodated within the Law; so the whole idea that there are perfectly proper ways in which the law of the land pays respect to custom and community; that's already there."

Hmm. He certainly has a lot of headline coverage in the morning papers, to my surprise maybe more in the serious papers than the tabloids. An effective bit of publicity, but I'll be surprised if this debate pans out in the direction he hopes.

It seems there are already many unofficial Sharia courts. Newsnight reported that quite a few Muslim marriages were not, unwisely, registered at the Registry Office. So there is little option but use these unofficial Sharia courts to sort out "divorce" details. Sounds like encouraging them to come under the arbitration framework, as much as possible, would be a good thing.

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> introduce secular education

My particular gripe here is the membership of each LA's "School Organisation Committee" which seems the permit the CofE + Catholics to block the creation/closure of primary schools in a LA. The School Organisation Committee is not a sub-committee of the LA, but an independent body formed from 4 groups:

1) 7 members of the local authority

2) 7 nominees of the Diocesan Board of Education of the Church of England

3) 7 nominees of the Bishop(s) of the Roman Catholic Church diocese in the LEA

4) 7 nominees by the Further Education Funding Council for England (who generally only vote when 16+ education is affected)

So for under-16 education the churches can block the LEA's will for reorganising schools, if they want. From my only interaction with a SOC over a school reorganisation, it seems horse-trading with the LEA goes on, but the churches have quite a bit undue power here even if they don't push it to the full.

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