ABSTRACT
The collective and political nature of religious courts' recognition claims appears in a more straightforward way in narratives, which reveal that the judicial autonomy that they superficially seek aims instead at a sharing of sovereignty within the state, thereby progressing beyond mere 'accommodation' claims. The imposition of certain compulsory state norms upon religious arbitration processes can be viewed as undue intrusions from a foreign system into a system that defines itself as autonomous, if not quasi-sovereign. Religious freedom is taken to imply a right to the recognition of that sovereignty, understood as a God-given natural right from which the law derives. The actual or perceived exclusion of a particular group, religious or otherwise, becomes an important issue from the standpoint of legitimacy and democracy. In Roger Williams' view, this exclusion stems from a refusal in many secular states to acknowledge the multiplicity of identities, individual and collective, that all persons carry.
