I didn't quite know whether I was writing for the non-Muslim or the Muslim, and at the end of the day I'm writing, I hope, for people who are interested, whatever their faith. Even if they don't have any faith. As a barrister I had certain advantages - I could think like a lawyer and I knew how all the laws were fitted together and all the rest of it. One of the things I realized pretty early on while I was writing book about Shari'a was that that was as much a hinderance as it was a help because the Shari'a isn't just a system of rules.

One of things that surprised me when I was in Iran was to find out that the country finances seven times as many sex change operations as the entire European Union. And the reason for that is because Ayatollah Khomeini himself, in the early 1960s, in the same time that he was developing this other idea of an Islamic state, also hit upon the idea that if a person is born into the wrong sex, it was entirely proper for them to change sex.

If Muslims want to take their disputes to religious arbitrators because they genuinely believe that it's a matter of great spiritual importance that they do that, they shouldn't be the only community in this country that's denied the opportunity to do that. Because the Jewish population has been entitled to take their disputes to tribunals known as the Beth Din for over one hundred years, and the Church of England is integrated into the fabric of this country, and there are ecclesiastical tribunals where religious disputes can be dealt with.

Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa to that effect, which was then given effect in the Islamic Republic of Iran, so in the Islamic Republic of Iran, it's flexible enough to allow for sex changes, and it encourages sex changes. But if you want to change your religion in Iran, you've got some serious problems. There are other problems. You're allowed to change sex, but if you want to be a homosexual, theoretically at least, you face the death penalty. Quite how often these penalties are carried out is a moot point, but it's there on the statute books.

Whenever one writes a book one should have a notional reader in mind.

I work in the human rights field and there are serious conflicts between certain interpretations of Islamic law and human rights. That's something which I don't make any bones about at all, it's something which I think is very important for everyone to address, including the Muslim community, and many Muslims are addressing that issue.

I didn't quite know whether I was writing for the non-Muslim or the Muslim, and at the end of the day I'm writing, I hope, for people who are interested, whatever their faith. Even if they don't have any faith. As a barrister I had certain advantages - I could think like a lawyer and I knew how all the laws were fitted together and all the rest of it. One of the things I realized pretty early on while I was writing book about Shari'a was that that was as much a hinderance as it was a help because the Shari'a isn't just a system of rules.