You really couldn't make this up. On the 25th anniversary of 9/11, the Archbishop of Canterbury handed a prestigious Church of England award to a Muslim cleric whose past comments about Osama bin Laden were already a matter of public record. Then, when someone finally noticed, she took the award back.
This is not a minor PR embarrassment. It is an astonishing failure of judgement and due diligence at the very top of the Church of England.
Dame Sarah Mullally presented the Hubert Walter Award for Reconciliation and Interfaith Cooperation to Pakistani cleric Hafiz Muhammad Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi on 11 September — the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The award was supposedly recognition of his “outstanding work as an ambassador of interfaith harmony in Pakistan”.
There was just one rather significant problem.
In 2007, Ashrafi publicly said that Osama bin Laden should be given the Islamic title Saifullah — “Sword of God” — describing him in the context of fighting for Islam. The remarks were reported internationally at the time by Reuters and AFP.
So how on earth did the Church of England not know?
This was not some obscure comment whispered in a mosque 20 years ago and uncovered by an internet sleuth. The remarks were public, reported by major international news agencies and concerned one of the most notorious terrorists in modern history.
Yet somehow nobody at Lambeth Palace appears to have thought: perhaps we should Google the bloke before giving him an award.
That is not a minor administrative error.
It is a colossal failure of due diligence.
And the timing makes an already extraordinary decision almost surreal.
This wasn't an award presented on some forgotten Tuesday in February. It was presented on 11 September, the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, including 67 British citizens.
Of all the days in the calendar, this was the day the Church of England chose to celebrate a man whose past comments about bin Laden subsequently forced it to withdraw the honour.
The symbolism could hardly have been more glaring.
The Church of England then compounded the humiliation by initially defending the award. Lambeth Palace said it recognised Ashrafi's “longstanding support for religious minorities in Pakistan, particularly the Christian community” and stressed the importance of interfaith engagement.
Fine.
Interfaith engagement matters.
Supporting persecuted Christians matters.
But neither requires the Church of England to hand out honours without first checking the public record of the person receiving them.
The Palace eventually folded after the controversy erupted, saying that “previous comments” had come to light and confirming that the award had been withdrawn.
That raises the obvious question:
Why did those comments have to “come to light” after the award had been presented?
They were hardly buried.
The National Secular Society has described the episode as evidence of “appallingly poor judgement and inadequate due diligence”. That criticism goes to the heart of the matter.
And this is not simply about whether Ashrafi's 2007 remarks should ultimately be characterised as an endorsement of bin Laden. His representatives dispute that interpretation. The Church itself clearly decided that the remarks were sufficiently serious to withdraw the award.
So why weren't they considered before the award was given?
That is the failure for which Dame Sarah Mullally must answer.
An Archbishop of Canterbury is not some junior administrator who accidentally put the wrong name on a certificate. The Church of England describes the Archbishop as its most senior bishop and as the figure who leads the Church's vision and direction across much of England.
With that office comes responsibility.
And when an organisation gives a prestigious award to someone, it is not merely honouring the recipient. It is putting its own name and reputation behind that person.
The Church of England did precisely that.
Then, once the embarrassing facts became impossible to ignore, it took the award back.
That is not accountability. It is damage limitation.
The most charitable interpretation is that Lambeth Palace was spectacularly careless.
The less charitable interpretation is that it was so desperate to demonstrate its commitment to interfaith dialogue that it forgot the most basic rule of institutional responsibility: know who you are honouring.
Either way, the Archbishop has a problem.
The Church of England cannot demand trust from the public while displaying such extraordinary carelessness over one of its own honours.
And it cannot credibly preach responsibility, discernment and moral leadership while expecting everyone to forget that it had to discover the recipient's record after putting a medal in his hand.
Dame Sarah Mullally should therefore resign.
Not because every controversial judgement requires resignation. Not because interfaith dialogue is wrong. And not because a person's past remarks can never be understood in context.
She should resign because the buck has to stop somewhere.
The Archbishop presented the award. The award was made in her name. Her institution failed to conduct — or at least failed to act upon — the most basic due diligence. The controversy became public. Only then was the award withdrawn.
If the Archbishop is ultimately responsible for the Church's most senior decisions, she should be prepared to accept responsibility for this one.
The Church of England has spent years telling everyone else about accountability. It is time for the Archbishop of Canterbury to practise it.
Resign.
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