The Archbishop of Canterbury has caused a bit of a stir suggesting that the adoption of certain aspects of Sharia Law is inevitable in the UK.  Here's a BBC link: http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7233335.stm.

It's an interesting concept which challenges our idea of law - that not everybody in a society should be bound by the same set of rules; and that there should be some laws which have 'options' depending upon, in this case, religious belief.

A lot of people are reacting extremely negatively to his ideas, and I can understand why.  One of the most common rebukes heard is that "British laws should be based on British values".  I ask these people, however, exactly what does that mean?  Especially in a society that has a multicultural approach to integration, instead of a prescriptive approach like that of France.

I applaud the Archbishop for his comments, if nothing else than for stimulating what should now hopefully be an extremely vibrant debate.  It is, however, unfortunate that most of the media has rushed to display the most extreme cases of Sharia Law being carried out - public floggings, mutilations and beheadings etc - when he made it clear that he was talking about things like marriage disputes etc.  This kind of media approach is totally self-serving and not helpful at all.

Taking his key example - which was in the case of marriage disputes.  Marriage is no longer a universal aspect of our society, only really so for those that actually are married.  When two people choose to be wed specifically within the realms of a given religion, and not necessarily as purely a civil partnership, then what's so bad about giving authority to agents of that faith having jurisidiction over that union?  At present, a divorcing muslim couple have to go to a Sharia court and then repeat the process in a civil court.  Why repeat this process?  The conditions of annulment required by the Sharia court are stricter, no doubt, than those that apply in the civil court - so it's not as if it's any 'worse'.

It could be done thus:

1) When a couple marries, if under a particular faith, part of the marriage record is for the couple to choose whether the marriage to be bound by a proxy law - in the Archbishop's example, Sharia law.  Existing marriage records could be modified to include this choice for a fee. 

2) If divorce becomes a reality, the couple can do so exclusively with the Sharia court only if they chose to be bound in this way.

3) If there is a dispute over the application of the Sharia Law to the divorce, then any party can request the Civil court to step in.  The Sharia court in question cannot block this move - as they are acting as a proxy, not an entity with independent civil power.  This enforces the civil courts' authority over all others, whilst ensuring that men or women are still protected by the overall laws of the society should they wish to contest.

There are many details connected with the management of such a system - scrutiny of such proxy courts for example to ensure they follow the correct practises.  Having some kind of accreditation system to ensure that all members of the court have been qualified etc.  However, I believe that if our society started to move in this direction for certain aspects of law then it would be a genuine attempt to build a more inclusive society.

At the moment we instead have a society which attempts to be multicultural when it suits it, and dictatorial when it doesn't.  This can breed antagonism on both the sides of the ethnic minority groups, as well as the majority, as things constantly shift direction.

And back to the original question - exactly what are British values?  We are a mongrel nation whose culture and nationality has been built up over time from a combination of being invaded, empire-building, and voluntary & involuntary (i.e. slave) immigration.  Trying to describe many of our 'values' as inherently British to the exclusion of those from other cultures is like trying to describe a feeling without using another feeling.

There are the nationalists who would have you believe that there is a particular Britishness that must be preserved, as if the adoption by society of parts of other cultures is somehow a threat.  What our history teaches us is that you can never destroy a particular way of thinking by introducing another into the society - look at the Catholics and Protestants - the original fears, way back when, were that one would destroy the other which led to hundreds of years of conflict.  Is either belief structure on its way out yet?

The fact is if we don't find some way of settling down together, then the current problems of the world are only going to get worse.  Britain has the opportunity to be a political world leader in applying novel solutions to the problem of social integration - god knows we could do with being the world leader in something!