Within the space of a few days, two Church of England institutions were forced into humiliating retreats.

At Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop of Canterbury withdrew an award she had personally presented to Hafiz Tahir Ashrafi, a leading Pakistani cleric who was honoured for “reconciliation and interfaith cooperation”.

Ashrafi was no genuine interfaith operator. He helps uphold Pakistan’s brutal blasphemy laws, has supported the persecution of Ahmadis, declared the October 7 massacre an act of religious pride, and in 2007 he honoured Osama bin Laden with the title Saifullah – “Sword of God.”

“Come to Light”

When Ashrafi’s record was exposed, Lambeth Palace claimed that his previous remarks had “come to light” and withdrew the award.

They would have been better off saying nothing.

The Lambeth Palace statement makes it sound as if the information about Ashrafi was hidden away in some intelligence file. The truth is that just a few minutes of searching was all that was needed to uncover Ashrafi’s extremism. Lambeth Palace simply never bothered to look before selecting him as a worthy recipient.

There was no explanation of the vetting failure and no apology to 9/11 survivors, persecuted Pakistani minority groups, or Jews appalled by Ashrafi’s rhetoric.

Nothing but an “oops.”

“Stitch their Names”

While this farce was unfolding at Lambeth Palace, another was occurring two hundred miles further north, where Leeds Minster was forced to close an exhibition that had portrayed numerous Hamas fighters as innocent victims of Israeli aggression. During the controversy, the Minster’s rector, Canon Paul Maybury, was asked about the murder of the Bibas children – two Israeli children taken captive and brutally murdered by Hamas. He replied that “the history is complex.” Asked what he thought of Hamas, he answered: “No comment.”

The names in the tapestry have simply been taken from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, and the advert Leeds Minster published notably described those names as “Gaza’s martyrs.”

Institutional Decay

The Lambeth Palace Award and the Leeds Minster exhibition are not identical incidents but they expose the same signs of institutional decay. The Church is so eager to align itself with a particular message that symbolism replaces scrutiny, producing morally indefensible acts that are exposed when outsiders do the work the Church neglected to do itself.

Take the tapestry. The concept itself is not unique, but intentionally serious memorial projects invariably involve dedicated bodies researching and confirming the identities of those being commemorated. Stitch Their Names Together simply draws its names from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry without verification. The result is empty Palestinian advocacy that promotes the libel of genocide against Israel and helps to spread antisemitism. It should have been nowhere near the inside of Leeds Minster.

With the award it was the symbolism of interfaith, with Leeds Minster it was alignment with the anti-Israel bandwagon. Different causes, but the same failure. As Church of England vicar Rev Giles Fraser recently wrote, “the Church leadership has become ideologically captured by the progressive lanyard class.”

Which leaves the Church of England increasingly resembling a runaway train – while its driver, the Archbishop of Canterbury, looks totally out of her depth.

From a Church that Protects to One that Threatens

I want to add a little personal context here. I never had a problem with Christian England. When I was just three years old, I went to a kindergarten inside a Methodist church, before attending a state school that held Christian prayer services. My Jewish identity was always accommodated and I never felt threatened by the Christian majority.

In fact, my family home sat directly opposite a large church, and during heavy storms we would talk about the protection it gave us: its lightning conductor helped keep our house safe. I still see that today as symbolic of the protection the Church provided as I grew up Jewish in Britain.

So there is no inbuilt hostility here. Quite the opposite. What has emerged over the years is a growing sense of betrayal at the direction parts of the Church of England have taken.

Anyone researching the resurgence of antisemitism in Britain will eventually encounter Anglican figures such as the now disgraced Reverend Stephen Sizer, along with a strand of supersessionist theology that continues to have influence in some Anglican circles. That part is relatively easy to identify.

But during the years I spent undercover inside the anti-Israel movement, I encountered something else. I found myself all too often sitting inside Anglican buildings listening to anti-Jewish hostility being spread within their walls. A two-day conference at Lichfield Cathedral provides just one example: an event where Jewish history was rewritten, frustrated Jewish audience members were silenced, and material from the Islamist group Friends of Al-Aqsa was freely distributed.

The symbolism is difficult to ignore. The church building that stood opposite my childhood home represented shelter. Decades later, I found myself sitting inside Anglican buildings listening to hostility towards Jews being given a platform.

Yet when Jewish concerns are raised today, too often the response seems to consist of little more than words and carefully staged gestures.

The New Archbishop Meets the PFLP Activists

Let me start with the current Archbishop’s performative gestures towards British Jewry. Just days before her recent pilgrimage to Israel, she paid a visit to the NOVA exhibition in London, a travelling memorial providing an in-depth remembrance of the brutal massacre at the Nova Music Festival on October 7.

Yet the Archbishop was not one of the many Londoners with no access to the actual site of the atrocity. She was literally about to travel to Israel. If she wanted to make a meaningful gesture of solidarity, why not visit the real thing – the site where hundreds were murdered, just a couple of hours’ drive from Jerusalem?

She didn’t.

Instead, during her five-day pilgrimage, the Archbishop was presented with carefully selected Palestinian voices. Among them were two women I subsequently identified as having documented links to PFLP activism.

I covered the full story and the evidence in an investigation published at the time. There is no need to repeat it all here. The point is what it tells us about the Archbishop’s judgement, and the judgement of the team around her.

Within days of standing at a London memorial to the victims of October 7, she travelled to the region and gave a platform to activists associated with a terrorist organisation that participated in the October 7 attacks.

Once again, the scrutiny came afterwards – and from outside the Church.

Thine Enemy Israel

The pattern continued almost immediately. Just weeks after the Archbishop returned from the region, the Church’s General Synod adopted a motion involving Kairos II, a Palestinian Christian document that is antizionist to its core.

This is not just about accusations of genocide. Kairos II displays key characteristics of supersessionist ideology, erasing and distorting Jewish identity and history while attempting to transfer biblical imagery from Jews to Palestinians. It presents Zionism as a form of racism and even urges Christians to reject dialogue with Zionist Jewish voices, while instead seeking out the fringe Jewish voices that share its anti-Zionist position.

Then came more empty gestures towards British Jews. The Archbishop met with the Chief Rabbi, during which she claimed to have been “deeply saddened by the hurt and distress” in the Jewish community caused by the Synod vote. These are empty platitudes. If the Anglican Church cared about the Jewish community it would not be adopting openly anti-Jewish motions. This was followed by a later meeting with the Board of Deputies at Lambeth Palace. The Board raised its concerns about Kairos II, as well as concerns about the Archbishop’s own visit to the region.

Here is the pattern. Jewish concerns are heard ceremonially but not allowed to alter the anti-Jewish itinerary.

There is a striking irony here. At the same Synod that passed the Kairos motion, members received a five-year study into trust within the Church, based on 74 interviews with lay and ordained leaders. Professor David Ford told Synod that society needed institutions capable of showing how trust could be “repaired, renewed and sustained”. Of the Church itself, he admitted: “At present, in most people’s eyes, we are not that.”

Ashrafi provides a useful contrast. When the Church considers something sufficiently serious, it can reverse course. Apparently, aligning itself with a supersessionist document that rewrites Jewish history and pushes mainstream Jewish voices out of the conversation does not meet that threshold.

This is Not Just About the Jews

The resemblance between Mullally’s pilgrimage and the Kairos worldview is striking. Palestinian Christian testimony is granted privileged moral status. Israel becomes the principal agent of Christian suffering. Islamist power recedes into the background. Palestinian political responsibility is marginalised. Jewish objections are acknowledged, then overridden.

In the real world there are few Palestinian Christians left. What was once a thriving community now constitutes just 1% of the population. Even Christian persecution monitors acknowledge that the biggest problem for Christians in PA areas is Islamist persecution:

Which means the Church is elevating voices from a vulnerable Christian minority living under significant Islamist pressure, while simultaneously allowing those voices to reinforce a narrative in which that Islamist pressure disappears.

For those who open their eyes, there is no real dispute. Across much of the region, where large Muslim majorities dominate, minorities have been squeezed out. The PA areas fit this pattern. Islamist oppression is causing Christian communities enormous harm throughout Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia – so why is the Archbishop caught echoing Islamist rhetoric on Israel, while staying silent on the Islamic persecution of Christians?

Which brings us back to Ashrafi.

The Fight Before Us

Britain is undergoing profound demographic and religious change. It now contains millions of Muslims and a growing network of religious, political and activist organisations seeking influence in society.

Respecting Muslim citizens has become confused with deferring to self-appointed communal gatekeepers. Scrutiny of Islamist organisations is inhibited by fear of allegations of racism. Extremist figures obtain legitimacy through performative “interfaith” activity. Serious attempts to confront antisemitism become sidelined for fear of Islamist objections.

The reality of Islamist oppression and supremacy is too uncomfortable to bring to the table.

The Church of England should be one of the principal institutions confronting this challenge.

It should defend converts from Islam, persecuted Christians, Muslim dissidents, freedom of conscience and Jews facing religiously framed hatred. It should insist that interfaith engagement requires honesty and reciprocity.

Instead, the established Church honours defenders of blasphemy laws while Christians, Hindus and Ahmadis continue to suffer under them. Ashrafi represented this inversion perfectly.

And all this is without even touching the safeguarding scandals and failures that have brought so much pain to victims and survivors.

British Christians require brave leadership with the intellectual ability to distinguish between compassion and surrender.

Instead they got Sarah Mullally.

Mullally did not put the Church of England on this track. But at precisely the moment British Christianity requires a leader capable of applying the brakes, the Church has chosen a driver who appears unable even to see where the train is heading.

 

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