SEPARATION OF SHARIA FROM THE STATE AS ACCOMMODATION – EFFECTS AND LIMITS

Citizens of contemporary constitutional democracies adhering to particular religions may submit themselves to laws administered by their religious communities insofar as they remain within limits outlined by the national legal order. In this paper I analyse this usual response to religious norms against the background of the growing presence of Sharia law in Canada and the United Kingdom. In particular, I argue that it creates the “transformative space”, allowing believers to determine by themselves the extent and the way in which religious law will apply to their lives. This space, however, remains riddled with limitations that have already been discussed in the existing literature. However, the authors that dealt with the problem thus far tended to overlook the nature of the transformative space as the groundwork of difference. Instead, they conceptualised it as a barrier towards diversity. I look at how this oversight might cause additional problems for the always tense religion-state relationship