by Charles Moore, Telegraph
The absurd Ashrafi case and the misguided Project Spire illustrate fundamental problems with the institution’s mindset
Paul Stott is the head of security and extremism at the think-tank, Policy Exchange. On Tuesday morning, the online alerts he receives about British relations with Pakistan flashed some photographs put out by the Pakistan government. They showed the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dame Sarah Mullally, with Hafiz Muhammad Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi, chairman of the Pakistan Ulema Council. Her people posted a picture too.
[…] But such points do not fully comprehend the mindset at the top of the Church of England. The problem is not only staff shortages and shallow public affairs teams. There is also a weird reluctance – present, too, within secular British government and most leading British institutions – to scrutinise anything involving Muslims. Asking the necessarily tough questions leaves people open to accusations of “Islamophobia” and racism, which means career death.
In 2009, when I was chairman of Policy Exchange, we published a paper, Choosing Our Friends Wisely, which urged British public authorities to work much harder to understand the strands of Islam in this country and engage only with those who do not invoke Allah to transact extremist politics here and in the Middle East, threaten Jews, and condone terrorist atrocities. More than 15 years later, British institutions still flounder, governed more by fear of Muslim reaction than by the facts on the ground.
The Church of England, of course, should have different priorities from secular institutions. Its eternal concern for peace and unity rightly makes it wish to understand members of other faiths. But wishful thinking does not help understanding. The Ashrafi absurdity illustrates that problem.
There is a wider point too. Archbishop Sarah, critics say, does not set the Thames on fire. True, but that can help. Her conscientious decency is respected. In the end, Justin Welby’s pyrotechnics were rejected by too large a proportion of Anglicans to achieve their intended effects. The new, gentler Archbishop has it in her power to show her care for the parish life which, with its liturgy and Bible, is how the Church serves all of England. She could make that her priority, acknowledging the case made by critics like Save the Parish, recruiting more paid clergy, rather than racial justice advocates and diocesan officials. She could stop jacking up churches’ already massive energy bills by demanding net zero installations. She could celebrate the Church’s many saints rather than disturbing the graves of its sinners (of whom, of course, in our generation, as much as in all past ones, there are many).