The Sharia is not a generalised collection of dispositions. It is articulated in highly concrete codes called fiqh. It would have to be one or the other, or all, of these which would have to be recognised. All of these schools would be in tension with the English legal tradition on questions like monogamy, provisions for divorce, the rights of women, custody of children, laws of inheritance and of evidence.

"We don't either want a situation where, because there's no way of legally monitoring what communities do... people do what they like in private in such a way that that becomes another way of intensifying oppression inside a community."

Wrong.

Sack him.

Dis-establish his Church.

Ban Bishops (and, for that matter, Chief Rabbis) from the House of Lords.

Similarly, if the question arises in an English Court as to whether two persons were validly married in a Muslim country, the court would receive evidence of the marriage laws of that country, and then decide, as a matter of English law, whether or not the couple are validly married. See the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 s. 14 and the Foreign Marriage Act 1892.

There is something beyond unseemly about a national church taking local churches to court. Certainly it's anything but Christian.