My Lords, perhaps I may reply briefly to the point that my noble friend Lord Taverne made. It is historically not the case that the progress of democracy has been linked to the separation of church and state. The most egregious examples of the lack of democracy have been where religion or, indeed, its lack has overtaken the state and replaced it. This is what ISIL is trying to do—to replace the state by its religion. The aggressive atheism of the Chinese communist state and the Russian Soviet communist state are two potent examples of how democracy cannot thrive without a decent place for religion within a country.
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