Once you start to provide public services that have to be run under public rules, for example child protection, then it has to go with public law. Institutions have to make a decision whether they want to do that or they don't want to do that.
Trevor PhillipsMost liberal-minded folk would like to think that since they are not hostile to people of a different race, racism is a disease of the uneducated, unenlightened and socially backward - football hooligans, British National Party supporters, policemen. You could call this the Bad Guy Theory. But the Bad Guy Theory does not explain why Indian-heritage children do nearly twice as well as Pakistani-heritage children at GCSE.
Trevor PhillipsTo me there's nothing different in principle with a Catholic adoption agency, or indeed Methodist adoption agency, saying the rules in our community are different and therefore the law shouldn't apply to us. Why not then say sharia can be applied to different parts of the country? It doesn't work.
Trevor Phillips