Do read Melanie Phillips's commentary on Rowan Williams; it is masterful.

She also explains why it's quite wrong - as seems now to be happening - to equate the way the Beth Din is treated with the Archbishop's proposals re Sharia law: Yes, Jewish religious courts, like sharia courts, deal with such issues as dispute arbitration, family issues, marriage and divorce. But the Jewish courts have never sought official recognition of their rulings, and they are not recognised under English law. Their dispute resolution is informal and voluntary. Their religious marriage and divorce rituals have no status in English law; for the state to recognise their marriages or divorces, Jews have to marry or be divorced according to English law just like everyone else. If sharia courts were to operate in this way, there would be no problem. Why should anyone care, after all, what minorities are doing in the private sphere as long as it doesn’t break the law? But the crucial difference is that such Muslims want their rulings to be accepted by the state as having the same legal authority as English law — and Dr Williams is endorsing this. But it breaks the fundamental precept that Jews have always acknowledged — that as a minority they live under the law of the land and do not seek to change it to accommodate them. UPDATE: I am rightly taken to task for confusing masterly and masterful in the above remarks. Mea culpa.