The clamour following Rowan Williams’ proposals regarding Islamic law at the Royal Courts of Justice last week was supremely unedifying.

Williams did himself no favours, planting a few horror words - "sharia", "unavoidable" - in a forest of impenetrably dense academese. But that fails to excuse the hysterical, ill-informed and frankly Islamophobic response to his interview and speech.

In case anyone is still labouring under any misapprehensions, the archbishop was not calling for a parallel Islamic legal system, in however limited a form. He was not calling for the ‘incorporation’ of sharia law into British law. He was not exempting Muslims from British law. He was not suggesting that non-Muslims should in any way come under Islamic jurisdiction. And he was not, of course, advocating the savage punishments so commonly associated with sharia law in the popular mind.

He was merely advocating - no, not even that - exploring the possibility of "supplementary jurisdictions", through which British Muslims could arbitrate certain specific issues, in accordance with their own legal system, providing that the processes and decisions were consonant with the British legal system within which they would operate.

There are potential problems with this. How do you ensure that Islamic legal processes and decisions are consonant with British law? More generally, how do you know that such a system would indeed accommodate rather than simply isolate the Muslim communities that used it?

Williams acknowledged some of these objections, which are, in any case, hardly insuperable. Sharia courts could be regulated in the same way as British courts are. And it is at least arguable that if more Muslims felt that British society recognised their religious commitment in this way, they, in turn, would feel greater warmth and loyalty to Britain.

As it is, the reaction to the Archbishop's lecture can only have damaged whatever loyalty British Muslims have to the country in which they live. Rowan Williams was the lightening rod for every commentator and soap-box columnist who doesn't have the courage to come out and say that they simply don't like Muslims very much. So much easier to ridicule, abuse and demonise an establishment figure who appears, on this occasion, to stand for Islamic values.

As has been frequently pointed out over the last week, the arrangement that Williams was advocating already exists for Orthodox Jews. Beth Din courts have been operating in Britain for decades, without attracting much public attention. Had Williams made exactly the same speech but about supplementary Jewish jurisdiction, would anyone have even noticed it?

The answer is almost certainly no. The reaction of the last week tells us two things about the British, and neither is exactly appealing. The first is that beneath the politically correct face paint that we are all now compelled to wear, many of us are hardened by prejudice and loathing. We don’t like Islam. We don’t like Muslims. We will tolerate them. We have to. They're here now. Providing they play by our rules and don't make a nuisance of themselves, we will put up with them. But no more than that. It’s a sentiment that is as unattractive as it is deeply felt.

The second is that so few of us are capable of imagining a world without nation-states - despite the fact that they are a comparatively recent, rare and fragile phenomenon - that we have forgotten that the state is there to serve its people, and not the other way round.

If - and please note that word, if - that state can accommodate the religious and cultural commitments of its diverse people, without harming its duty to maintain social order and equality before the law, it should do everything in its power to do. Even if that means risking the wrath of the British media and making accommodation for Sharia law.

Dr Elizabeth Lee is a retired civil servant. The full text of the Archbishop of Canterbury's lecture can be found here.