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The first female Archbishop of Canterbury in more than 1,400 years kicked off Friday’s awards with a characteristically woke speech.
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Archbishop → publish → speech
Standing at a lectern in Lambeth Palace’s magnificent Great Hall, Sarah Mullally told assembled guests that ‘we live in a world that is not always as we wish it would be’, owing to a combination of ‘injustice’, poverty, starvation and what she called the ‘climate emergency’.
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she → stand → what
Thankfully, she continued, there are those among us who are ‘determined to make a difference, determined to be hope in this world’.
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who → continue → world
And they were the exact people she was about to celebrate.
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she → celebrate → ?
The Lambeth Awards, whose recipients are chosen each autumn by the Archbishop, are among the most prestigious honours the Church of England can bestow.
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Church → choose → England
Previous winners have ranged from Queen Elizabeth to Pope Francis, and usually include a selection of vicars, former bishops, and notable politicians who have ‘made extraordinary contributions to the Anglican Communion and wider society’.
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who → range → Communion
This year, the list included one individual who very much stood out from the crowd.
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who → include → crowd
According to the Church, he was given the ‘Hubert Walter Award for Reconciliation and Interfaith Co-operation’, for having allegedly promoted harmonious relationships between different religious groups.
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he → accord → groups
Pictures of Friday’s ceremony show him posing beside Mullally, who looks faintly uncomfortable, and two other women in the 13th century banqueting hall.
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who → show → hall
Pakistani cleric Hafiz Tahir Ashrafi poses with his wife beside Mullally, who looks faintly uncomfortable, and another unidentified woman in the 13th century banqueting hall
The cleric’s remarks about Bin Laden are in keeping with a host of provocative and intolerant statements he’s shared over the years, many of which have achieved the exact opposite of promoting interfaith harmony
One is dressed head-to-toe in a niqab, the restrictive Islamic veil that covers a woman’s entire head aside from her eyes.
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that → pose → eyes
She is described as Ashrafi’s ‘wife’, though the Church of England’s photo captions failed to extend the courtesy of identifying her by name.
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captions → describe → name
The other, who appeared to be wearing a head covering and a black Covid face mask, has not been identified at all.
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who → appear → covering
For an Archbishop who likes to describe herself as a ‘feminist,’ and has pledged to ‘speak out on misogyny’, it made for a curious and perhaps rather awkward tableau.
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it → like → tableau
In fact, the whole thing prompted a minor kerfuffle on social media, where images of the occasion were soon posted.
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images → prompt → occasion
Yet commentary about the attire of Mullally’s guests was nothing compared to the row that broke out yesterday when the Tory MP Nick Timothy dug up a series of highly provocative comments that Ashrafi had made about Osama bin Laden over the years.
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Ashrafi → compare → years
The cleric, who was handed his gong on the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, turns out to be an old acquaintance and sometime fan of the jihadist.
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who → hand → jihadist
Specifically, Ashrafi, who once told the BBC that he had met Bin Laden ‘many times’, gave him the honorific title of ‘Saifullah, or Sword of God’ in 2007.
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he → tell → 2007
This was in response to the Government’s decision to knight Salman Rushdie.
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This → knight → Rushdie
Explaining the move, Ashrafi told the AFP news agency: ‘We are pleased to award the title of Saifullah to Osama bin Laden after the British government’s decision to bestow the title of “Sir” on blasphemer Rushdie.
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We → explain → Rushdie
In an interview with Reuters, he added: ‘If a blasphemer can be given the title “Sir” by the West… then a mujahid who has been fighting for Islam against the Russians, Americans and British must be given the lofty title of Islam, Saifullah.’
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who → add → Islam
Quite how a man who made such remarks (and has since failed to renounce them) ended up being honoured by the Archbishop of Canterbury for services to interfaith harmony is anyone’s guess.
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ended → make → harmony
After stonewalling questions for several hours, Lambeth Palace said yesterday lunchtime that it was ‘urgently reviewing this matter’.
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it → stonewall → matter
Just before 6.30pm, the award was unceremoniously withdrawn.
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award → withdraw → 6.30pm
So ended a turgid day for the newly minted Archbishop and her team, who appear not to have done the slightest due diligence before inviting Mr Ashrafi to London to accept her achingly fashionable award.
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who → end → award
The cleric’s remarks about Bin Laden are, after all, entirely in keeping with a host of other provocative and at times deeply intolerant remarks he’s shared over the years, many of which have achieved the exact opposite of promoting interfaith harmony.
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many → share → harmony
We know this because he has for decades chaired Pakistan’s all-male Ulema Council of Muslim scholars, which issues pronouncements regarding whether specific customs and government policies are compatible with Islamic law.
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customs → know → law
Thanks to the power and influence this role affords, Ashrafi is frequently invited on the country’s TV and radio stations, and transcripts of his regular press conferences are often shared via the government’s official PR department.
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transcripts → afford → department
To get a taste of his world view, one need only wind the clock back to March, when the Iran war kicked off.
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war → get → March
At a conference, the cleric shared an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that the US and Israeli missile strikes were part of a plot to eventually take control of his own country.
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strikes → share → country
‘Under the cover of Iran, the target of the Jews and Christians is nuclear-armed Pakistan,’ he said, before praising Iran’s ‘mujahideen’, or religious warriors, who were ‘standing like a wall of lead against Jews and Christians’.
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who → arm → Jews
‘Islam permits the husband to marry four times and he does not need permission for it,’ Ashrafi previously told reporters.
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Ashrafi → permit → reporters
He is seen here meeting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
According to the Times of Karachi, he also described the assassinated Ayatollah Khamenei, a despotic theocrat who ran one of the world’s most repressive states and was responsible for the death of tens of thousands of his own citizens, as a ‘martyr’.
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who → see → martyr
The rhetoric was in keeping with Ashrafi’s response to 2023’s October 7 attacks, in which Hamas terrorists murdered roughly 1,200 civilians and gang-raped, sexually tortured and mutilated hundreds of Israeli women.
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terrorists → murder → women
On the day of the attacks, he appeared on BOL, a Pakistani TV news network, to declare the whole thing entirely justified.
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thing → appear → BOL
Israel has been continuously desecrating Al-Aqsa Mosque,’ he said.
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he → desecrate → Mosque
And added in a second interview: ‘Allah crushed the pride of Israel through the Palestinian freedom fighters.’
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Allah → add → fighters
Again, this hardly promotes ‘interfaith co-operation’.
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this → promote → operation
But Ashrafi’s hostility to the world’s only Jewish state runs deep.
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hostility → run → state
In 2022, he demanded the Pakistani prime minister hold an inquiry into reports that a delegation of his country’s businessmen had taken part in a trade trip to Jerusalem, calling for ‘strict legal action against not only those who have visited Israel but those who gave permission in this regard’, accusing them of having ‘hurt the hearts of the Muslim Ummah [community]’.
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who → demand → community
On the domestic front, he’s also a vocal supporter of conservative and some might say highly repressive laws regarding women’s rights.
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some → ’ → rights
…and 26 more, not listed.
The Aporia
