The first female Archbishop of Canterbury has been forced to withdraw an interfaith award she gave to a Pakistani cleric on the 25th anniversary of September 11, after his past praise of Osama bin Laden resurfaced.
Archbishop Sarah Mullally's office at Lambeth Palace in south London confirmed Thursday that it revoked the Hubert Walter Award for Reconciliation and Interfaith Cooperation from Hafiz Muhammad Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi, the chairman of the Pakistan Ulema Council, an Islamic umbrella organization. The award had been presented at a ceremony at Lambeth Palace timed to the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks.
The problem: Ashrafi praised the architect of those attacks in 2007, calling bin Laden someone who had "been fighting for Islam against the Russians, Americans, and British." On another occasion, Ashrafi described bin Laden as deserving the title "Saifullah", Arabic for "sword of God."
Those comments came to light after the ceremony. Lambeth Palace, the official residence and administrative seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who leads the global Anglican church, then moved to strip the award. Mullally, 64, is the first woman to hold that title.
The palace issued a statement that acknowledged the revocation but stopped short of apologizing for giving the award in the first place. The New York Post reported the palace's full statement:
"It is a longstanding principle of interfaith dialogue and co-operation that we must engage with one another across deeply held differences, and that remains the case. However, previous comments made by Imam Ashrafi have come to light that have led Lambeth Palace to reconsider this award, and we can now confirm today that the award has been withdrawn. We have contacted Imam Ashrafi to make him aware of this decision."
That is the entire public explanation. No account of how the award was vetted. No explanation of why a cleric's public praise for the man behind the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil went undetected before the ceremony. No apology to the families of the nearly 3,000 people killed on September 11, 2001.
When the Archbishop's office first announced the award, it praised Ashrafi for "his outstanding work as an ambassador of interfaith harmony in Pakistan, known for his commitment to promoting religious tolerance." That language is difficult to square with a man who publicly glorified bin Laden and who has defended Pakistan's blasphemy laws, statutes that Human Rights Watch condemned for "perpetuating religious discrimination, and... targeting the poor and minorities in unlawful evictions and land grabs."
Ashrafi pushed back. In a statement to BBC News, he called his comments "totally taken out of context" and described the backlash as "an unfair campaign" aimed at smearing him. He claimed the remarks were made in response to "the hurt felt by many Muslims" after the British government issued a knighthood to Salman Rushdie, the author of the controversial novel "Satanic Verses."
That defense raises its own questions. Even if Ashrafi's comments were prompted by anger over Rushdie's knighthood, the substance of what he said, praising bin Laden as a holy warrior and offering him an honorific meaning "sword of God", stands on its own. Context does not erase content.
Ashrafi also defended Pakistan's blasphemy laws, claiming they "save lives" by stopping people from taking religious offenses into their own hands. Human rights organizations have documented the opposite effect: the laws are routinely weaponized against religious minorities, the poor, and those accused on flimsy or fabricated evidence.
The 25th anniversary of September 11 carried particular weight this year. Former President George W. Bush revisited his post-9/11 actions as the milestone approached, and political disputes over how to honor the day's victims continued to surface across the Atlantic and at home.
The core failure is straightforward. Ashrafi's 2007 comments were not hidden. They were public enough to surface almost immediately after the award ceremony. Fox News reported that the remarks came to light shortly after the presentation, forcing a rapid reversal. A simple search of Ashrafi's public record, the kind of basic due diligence any institution should perform before handing out an honor on the anniversary of a mass atrocity, would have caught them.
Lambeth Palace chose not to explain what vetting process, if any, it used. It did not say whether Mullally was personally involved in selecting Ashrafi or whether the decision was made by staff. It did not say who surfaced the 2007 comments or how long the palace knew about them before acting.
The award's full name, the Hubert Walter Award for Reconciliation and Interfaith Cooperation, is meant to honor individuals who bridge religious divides. Giving it to a man who called bin Laden a warrior for Islam, on the anniversary of bin Laden's most infamous act, is not reconciliation. It is institutional negligence dressed up in ceremony.
And the palace's passive-voice response, "previous comments... have come to light", treats the problem as something that happened to Lambeth Palace rather than something Lambeth Palace caused by failing to do its homework.
Interfaith dialogue is a fine goal. But it means nothing if the institution leading it cannot be bothered to check whether the man it is honoring once praised the terrorist who murdered thousands of innocent people. The revocation was the right call. The question is why it was necessary at all.
