My father's from Pakistan and he has been a secularist all his life. In the Pakistani context, there's no messing with religion. There's been a battle for the soul of Pakistan since 1947 and I have grown up without any illusions about the dangers of religious power in the context of a country like Pakistan.

The Shari'a itself - this is possibly a kind of verbal debate - is understood to be something different from the Fiqh, and the Fiqh is the man-made element and the Shari'a is theoretically the divine element but it depends on one's personal beliefs.

I think it's important to understand Shari'a to be rooted in history - what we know about the history and what we don't know about the history. So then, if people want to argue, at least they're arguing from the same point and we know what we know, and we know what we don't know.

There's crucial distinction that has to be drawn between the Shari'a, which is this hugely expansive vision of cosmic order that I've been describing, and principles of Islamic law, known in Arabic as "Fiqh" - a word that means understanding. If you're a devout Muslim, you don't argue against the Shari'a; the Shari'a is the path that God has laid down. But what you can do, and what people are doing all the time, is arguing over the correct interpretation of the Shari'a, arguing over the Fiqh. That's something that has been going on throughout Islamic history.

There is an issue about the discrimination provisions because the Qur'an does say that women should have half the share of men. Again, in the seventh century perhaps that kind of made sense, but in the twenty-first it very often doesn't. But in the arbitration contract that won't arise. An inheritance dispute might arise after someone dies but the two sides have to come together consensually.

Shari'a is not just the Qur'an, you see Shari'a is comprised according to all the doctrines. There's consensus and analogy - argument by analogy. These are the four components in the Shari'a. An orthodox Sunni would not accept that the Shari'a was simply comprised of the Qur'an itself and actually there are people who say that it's heretical to believe that. They have to say that because if they don't say that then they would have to accept that, for example, stoning is not a punishment which appears in the Qur'an - it doesn't.

What we shouldn't do is victimize and target Muslim communities specifically. But as things stand, there's one tribunal which has drawn a lot of flack - the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal.