A state religion (or established church) is a religious body officially supported by the state. A theocracy is a form of government in which a god or deity is recognized as the supreme civil ruler. The canon law of the Catholic Church (Latin: ius canonicum)[11] is the system of laws and legal principles created and applied by the hierarchical authorities of the Church to regulate its external organization and government and to direct the activities of Catholics towards the mission of the Church. [12] It was the first modern Western legal system[13] and it is the oldest permanently functioning legal system in the West,[14] which preceded the European common law and civil law traditions. This began with rules (“canons”) established by the apostles at the Council of Jerusalem in the 1st century. It has evolved into a very complex and original legal system that includes not only New Testament norms, but also elements of the Hebrew (Old Testament), Roman, Visigoth, Saxon and Celtic legal traditions spanning thousands of years of human experience. while the unique traditions of Eastern Catholic canon law govern the 23 Eastern Catholic particular churches sui iuris. Please list any fees and grants, employment through advice, co-ownership or close relationship with an organization at any time during the previous 36 months whose interests may be harmed by the publication of the response. Please also list any non-financial associations or interests (personal, professional, political, institutional, religious or other) that a reasonable reader would like to know in relation to the submitted work. This applies to all authors of the play, their spouses or partners.

This conference will not attempt a detailed discussion of the nature of Sharia, which would go far beyond my competence; My aim, as I said, is simply to highlight some of the broader issues surrounding the rights of religious groups in a secular state, with a reflection on what might be needed to create a just and constructive relationship between Islamic law and British law. But it`s important to start by dispelling one or two myths about Sharia law; Far from being a monolithic system of detailed staging, Sharia refers primarily – to quote Ramadan again – to “the expression of the universal principles of Islam [and] the framework and thought that make their realization possible in human history” (32). Universal principles: As any Muslim commentator will claim, God`s eternal and absolute will for the universe and especially for its human inhabitants is in sight; But also something that needs to be “updated”, not a finished system. When Shar` refers to the essence of the revealed law, Sharia is the practice of realizing and applying it; While some elements of Sharia are quite precisely specified in the Qur`an and Sunnah, and in the hadiths recognized as authoritative in this regard, there is not a single code that can be identified as “the” Shariah. And when some states apply what they call Sharia law, or when some Muslim activists ask for recognition alongside secular jurisdictions, they usually refer not to a universal and fixed code established once and for all, but to a certain concretization by a tradition of jurists. In the hands of contemporary legal traditionalists, this simply means that the application of Sharia law must be determined by the judgments of representatives of classical schools of legal interpretation. But a number of voices argue for an extension of ijtihad freedom – essentially based on initial principles and not simply on the compilation of traditional judgments (see, for example, Louis Gardet, `A Prior to Human Rights Issues: Updating Muslim Religious Law Today`, Islamochristiana 9, 1983, 1-12, and Abdullah Saeed, “Trends in Contemporary Islam: a Preliminary Versuch of a Classification,” The Muslim World, 97:3, 2007, 395-404, especially 401-2). Sharia law deals with many issues covered by secular law, including crime, politics, and economics, as well as personal matters such as sexual intercourse, hygiene, nutrition, prayer, and fasting. When it has official status, Sharia law is applied by Islamic judges or Qadis. The Imam has different responsibilities depending on the interpretation of Shariah; Although the term is often used to refer to the leader of community prayers, the imam can also be a scholar, religious leader, or political leader. I recently argued in a discussion of the moral context of legislation on incitement to religious hatred that any crime involving religious crimes must be considered in terms of its tendency to create or reinforce a position in which a religious person or group could be severely disadvantaged in terms of access to full public speech: Crimes must be related to issues of power and status, so that a powerful person or group that makes derogatory or defamatory statements about a disadvantaged minority can expect to exacerbate that disadvantage.