Church ‘con­don­ing oppres­sion of women’

Arch­bishop accused of send­ing ‘deeply troub­ling mes­sage’ after present­ing award to Islamic scholar

Dame Sarah Mul­lally with Hafiz Tahir Ashrafi, who praised Osama bin Laden


By Charles Hymas and Tony Diver
20 Sep 2026


THE Arch­bishop of Can­ter­bury has been accused of con­don­ing the repres­sion of Muslim women after she gave an award to an Islamic cleric who hon­oured Osama bin Laden.

Dame Sarah Mul­lally was pic­tured with Hafiz Tahir Ashrafi, an Islamic scholar, and his wife, who was wear­ing a niqab so that only her eyes were vis­ible, when he received his award on the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that Bin Laden orches­trated.

In a let­ter to the Arch­bishop, Rebecca Paul, the shadow cul­ture sec­ret­ary, and Nick Timothy, the shadow justice sec­ret­ary, asked her to explain how Lam­beth Palace decided to go ahead with such a con­tro­ver­sial award, which caused “ser­i­ous repu­ta­tional dam­age” to the Church of Eng­land.

They also asked what changes were going to be put in place to pre­vent a repeat and whether she recog­nised the “deeply troub­ling mes­sage the cere­mony and pho­to­graph con­veyed about the dig­nity and free­dom of women”.

They wrote: “The Church of Eng­land teaches the equal dig­nity and worth of men and women. Yet you presen­ted the award along­side Mr Ashrafi’s wife, whose face was con­cealed by a niqab so that only her eyes were vis­ible and Lam­beth Palace sub­sequently pub­lished that image.

“This could appear to con­done one of the most repress­ive mani­fest­a­tions of Islam, one that denies women basic freedoms over how they dress, whether they may show their faces and how they inter­act with oth­ers.

“At this very moment, women in Afgh­anistan face viol­ence for refus­ing to cover, while women in Iran have been imprisoned and bru­tally attacked for res­ist­ing com­puls­ory veil­ing. Nor is coer­cion con­fined to other coun­tries: many women and girls in Bri­tain also face coer­cion and cul­tural pres­sure to veil them­selves too. It is import­ant for you to reflect on what mes­sage this con­veys to women fight­ing for the freedoms that we take for gran­ted.”

Kemi Badenoch, the Con­ser­vat­ive leader, said she was pleased Ms Paul and Mr Timothy dis­covered some of this inform­a­tion and called this out pub­licly, for­cing the Church to change its pos­i­tion.

She pos­ted on X: “Yes, the Church might have been ignor­ant of some facts, but the pres­ence of a woman with a full face veil, covered head to toe in an out­fit widely known as a vis­ible sym­bol of female oppres­sion, should have given pause for thought. Our Cul­ture and

Integ­ra­tion Com­mis­sion was set up to end this sort of naive belief that all cul­tures are equal. No other party in Brit­ish polit­ics is doing this work to pro­tect our cul­ture.”

Their let­ter fol­lows Lam­beth Palace’s with­drawal of the “inter­faith” award in the face of an out­cry after it emerged that the Pakistan Ule­man Coun­cil of schol­ars, of which Mr Ashrafi is head, awar­ded Bin Laden its highest hon­our in retali­ation for the UK Gov­ern­ment giv­ing Sal­man Rush­die a knight­hood in 2007.

The cleric praised Bin Laden, whose al-Qaeda ter­ror group killed 2,977 people in the 9/11 attacks, for tar­get­ing Brit­ish people. The award hon­oured him as a “Muslim war­rior”.

Mr Ashrafi has also said sui­cide bomb­ings in Afgh­anistan were law­ful, sup­por­ted Islamic blas­phemy laws, which carry the death pen­alty, and claimed that Jews and Chris­ti­ans were using the war in Iran to tar­get Iran’s nuc­lear weapons.

A spokes­man for Mr Ashrafi and his coun­cil said his remarks had been taken “out of con­text”.

Ms Paul and Mr Timothy said in their let­ter: “These were not obscure alleg­a­tions that could only have been uncovered through extens­ive invest­ig­a­tion.

“The most ele­ment­ary checks would have revealed them. The Church there­fore needs to explain whether those checks were never con­duc­ted and whether inform­a­tion was missed.”

They urged the Arch­bishop to apo­lo­gise, not­ing that Lam­beth Palace’s state­ment fell short of an apo­logy des­pite the repu­ta­tional dam­age it had caused.

A Palace spokes­man said in response to the let­ter: “We fully recog­nise the wide­spread con­cern caused by the inclu­sion of Imam Ashrafi in last week’s Lam­beth Awards cere­mony.

“After his pre­vi­ous com­ments came to light we res­cin­ded the award as quickly as pos­sible.

“Lam­beth Palace is review­ing how this par­tic­u­lar award came to be given – and our wider nom­in­a­tion and vet­ting pro­cesses – to ensure that les­sons are learned for the future.”

Ms Paul said: “The Arch­bishop of Can­ter­bury should apo­lo­gise for this extraordin­ary fail­ure of judg­ment.

“With­draw­ing the award does not erase the fact that it was ever given, or the deeply troub­ling mes­sage sent by the cere­mony itself.

“An apo­logy is the very least owed to those who rightly expect the Church to stand up for reli­gious free­dom and women’s rights.”

A spokes­man for Mr Ashrafi pre­vi­ously said: “Our pos­i­tion against ter­ror­ism, extrem­ism, sui­cide attacks and the killing of inno­cent people is clear and unequi­vocal. We have con­sist­ently worked for peace, mod­er­a­tion and inter­faith har­mony.”

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