Lambeth Palace has caused a stir with the release of a new photograph of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The picture shows her in ordinary clerical garb – black shirt and dog collar – standing in the Palace’s Great Hall. She is smiling and locked in enthusiastic conversation with a Muslim cleric from Pakistan clad in white turban and billowing gold-trimmed robes – Hafiz Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi – to whom she has just given an award for “Reconciliation and Interfaith Cooperation”.
Next to them, but a little set back, is Mr Ashrafi’s wife. Lambeth Palace’s social media does not care to tell us her name. If she is smiling like the Archbishop and her husband, we do not know: she is swathed in black hijab, and her face is covered with a niqab. All we can see are her eyes.
Let us leave aside the puzzling choice of the reward’s recipient. Mr Ashrafi, as the MP Nick Timothy has pointed out, is on record as having supported Pakistan’s appalling blasphemy laws, condoned suicide bombers in Afghanistan, and hailed Osama bin Laden with the title of “Saifullah” (Sword of Allah) for fighting jihad against the British.
Rather, let us wonder what might have been going through the Archbishop’s mind as she stood next to the shrouded Mrs Ashrafi.
It apparently did not occur to her that being photographed in this situation looks like an appeasement of, or even a condoning of, the most repressive form of Islam – which denies to women the most simple liberties such as the freedom to go with their face uncovered, to choose how they dress, or to conduct their own social interactions.
Source: The image that exposes Sarah Mullally’s terrifying naivety
And that the Archbishop had to hand the award to his wife as his brand of misogyny does not allow a woman to touch him. That is why his wife is wearing the medal and standing between them. The wife’s attendance is purely as a prop so that the Archbishop cannot contaminate him by her femaleness alone. So much for Sarah Mullally’s claim that her own appointment was a push back on misogyny in her own church.
This is absolutely appalling and should result in immediate removal of the archbishop.