The Archbishop of Canterbury has withdrawn an award given to Pakistani Muslim cleric Hafiz Muhammad Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi after his past remarks about Osama bin Laden resurfaced.
The episode has become a serious embarrassment for Lambeth Palace because the award was presented on 11 September 2026 — the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks — and was specifically for reconciliation and interfaith cooperation.
The controversy is not simply about an old quotation. It raises much bigger questions about due diligence, institutional judgment, religious diplomacy and the difference between engaging a controversial figure and publicly honouring that person.
The award that triggered the controversy
Ashrafi was presented with the Hubert Walter Award for Reconciliation and Interfaith Cooperation at Lambeth Palace by Archbishop of Canterbury Dame Sarah Mullally.
Lambeth Palace said he was being recognised for his longstanding support for religious minorities in Pakistan, particularly Christians, and for his contribution to interfaith harmony.
That description makes the subsequent controversy particularly striking.
The same ceremony took place on the anniversary of the attacks carried out by al-Qaeda in the United States in 2001, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed.
Within days, reports resurfaced about statements Ashrafi made in 2007 concerning Osama bin Laden.
Lambeth Palace subsequently announced that the award had been withdrawn.
“Previous comments made by Imam Ashrafi have come to light that have led Lambeth Palace to reconsider this award.”
The Palace also said it had contacted Ashrafi about the decision.
What did Ashrafi actually say about Osama bin Laden?
This is the central issue.
In 2007, Ashrafi said he would confer on Osama bin Laden the title “Saifullah”, commonly translated as “Sword of God” or “Sword of Allah”.
Contemporary reporting described the proposed title as an honour for bin Laden's alleged service to Muslims through jihad against perceived enemies.
ITV reported that Ashrafi had said bin Laden was “serving Muslims by waging jihad against infidels”.
Other reporting from the period quoted Ashrafi describing bin Laden as having fought for Islam against Russians, Americans and British.
That historical context matters because bin Laden was not simply a controversial political figure.
He was the founder of al-Qaeda, the organisation responsible for the September 11 attacks and other terrorist attacks.
The United States killed bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011.
Consequently, language conferring a religiously honourific title on him inevitably carries a very different meaning after 9/11 than an ordinary political criticism of Western governments.
Ashrafi says the remarks have been taken out of context
Ashrafi has disputed the interpretation being placed on his 2007 comments.
He told the BBC that the remarks had been “totally taken out of context” and described the backlash as an unfair campaign against him.
His explanation centres on Salman Rushdie.
In 2007, the British government awarded author Salman Rushdie a knighthood, triggering protests in parts of the Muslim world because of controversy surrounding Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses.
Ashrafi says he was using bin Laden as a comparison to explain how Muslims felt about Britain honouring Rushdie.
He maintains that he was not actually endorsing bin Laden or suggesting that Britain should honour him.
His subsequent explanation is therefore important to include in any serious account of the controversy.
But it also leaves the central question intact:
Even if the statement was intended as a comparison, was publicly proposing a religious honour for Osama bin Laden an appropriate thing for a religious leader to say?
That is precisely the issue Lambeth Palace ultimately decided to resolve by withdrawing the award.
Why the 9/11 anniversary made everything worse
Had this been an ordinary award ceremony on an ordinary date, the controversy would still have been significant.
But the timing was extraordinary.
Ashrafi received the award on 11 September 2026, exactly 25 years after the September 11 attacks.
ITV reported that 67 British citizens were among those killed in the attacks.
The anniversary is one of the most solemn dates in the modern history of international terrorism.
Therefore, an institution associated with the Church of England publicly honouring someone whose past comments appeared to praise bin Laden created an obvious symbolic contradiction.
The award was supposedly about reconciliation and interfaith cooperation.
The person receiving it had previously proposed giving a religious title to the man responsible for the organisation behind the attacks being commemorated that very day.
That is why the controversy escalated so quickly.
The bigger problem: Was the vetting good enough?
This may ultimately be the most important question for Lambeth Palace.
The Palace has explained why it withdrew the award, but the episode naturally raises another question:
How did the award get approved in the first place?
Ashrafi is not an obscure individual.
He is chairman of the Pakistan Ulema Council, an umbrella body of Islamic scholars, and has held prominent public roles in Pakistan.
His statements and political positions have been publicly reported for years.
The 2007 remarks were not newly created allegations. They were historical statements that had been publicly reported.
The controversy therefore raises questions about the due-diligence process surrounding international honours:
- Who nominated Ashrafi?
- What background research was conducted?
- Were his historical public statements reviewed?
- Were his positions on terrorism examined?
- Were his views on Pakistan's blasphemy laws considered?
- Did anyone identify the 2007 comments before the ceremony?
- Why did the issue become apparent only after the award was publicly presented?
The available public statement from Lambeth Palace does not answer all of these questions.
It simply says the previous comments “have come to light” and caused the Palace to reconsider the award.
That wording itself makes the due-diligence question unavoidable.
There is another controversy: Pakistan's blasphemy laws
The bin Laden remarks are not the only reason Ashrafi's record has come under scrutiny.
His views on Pakistan's blasphemy laws have also attracted criticism.
Ashrafi has defended the laws, arguing that they can prevent people from taking alleged religious offences into their own hands and saying they “save lives”.
Human Rights Watch takes a fundamentally different view.
The organisation has documented how Pakistan's blasphemy laws expose religious minorities to prosecution, discrimination and violence. Its 2025 report argued that the laws facilitate abuses including personal vendettas, land disputes and attacks on minority communities.
Human Rights Watch has also documented the vulnerability of Christians and Ahmadis to blasphemy-related prosecutions and violence.
This is particularly relevant because Lambeth Palace cited Ashrafi's support for religious minorities as a reason for giving him the award.
The Rimsha Masih case complicates the picture
There is, however, another side to Ashrafi's record.
Lambeth Palace highlighted his intervention in the 2012 Rimsha Masih case.
Rimsha was a young Christian girl accused of blasphemy in Pakistan. The case attracted international attention after allegations emerged that the accusation itself had been fabricated.
Human Rights Watch's later reporting describes the case as an example of how blasphemy accusations can be exploited against vulnerable Christian communities.
Ashrafi's intervention in the case was therefore a genuine part of the justification for his recognition.
This is why the story cannot responsibly be reduced to “cleric praised bin Laden, therefore everything he has done is illegitimate.”
His record contains different episodes that need to be assessed separately.
But an award specifically recognising reconciliation and interfaith cooperation also requires institutions to consider whether a recipient's broader public record is compatible with the values being honoured.
Engagement is not the same thing as endorsement
Lambeth Palace has made an important distinction.
It said interfaith dialogue requires people to engage across “deeply-held differences” and that this principle remains in place.
That is a legitimate principle.
Religious communities cannot build peaceful societies if they refuse to speak to anyone with whom they disagree.
But there is a fundamental difference between:
talking to someone
and
giving them a prestigious institutional award.
Dialogue can involve disagreement.
An award communicates recognition.
That distinction is at the heart of this controversy.
The Church of England could engage Ashrafi in discussions about Christian-Muslim relations without necessarily presenting him with a formal honour.
Once an award is given, the institution becomes publicly associated with the recipient's record.
That makes due diligence particularly important.
This should not become an indictment of Muslims
There is also an important distinction that should not be lost in the controversy.
Ashrafi's statements are his own.
They should not be used as evidence about Muslims generally or about Islam as a whole.
Millions of Muslims have condemned al-Qaeda and the September 11 attacks. The actions or statements of one Muslim cleric cannot reasonably be transferred to an entire religious population.
Likewise, criticism of Ashrafi's remarks is not automatically criticism of Islam.
The relevant question is much narrower:
What did Ashrafi say, what did he mean by it, what has his subsequent record shown, and was the Church of England's decision to honour him adequately informed?
That is where the evidence belongs.
The Archbishop's decision to withdraw the award
Lambeth Palace has now taken the award back.
The Palace did not announce an end to interfaith engagement with Ashrafi or with Muslim communities.
Instead, it said the award itself had been reconsidered because of the resurfaced comments.
That distinction matters.
The withdrawal effectively acknowledges that the information that emerged was significant enough to make the original award inappropriate to retain.
The controversy therefore has two separate dimensions:
Ashrafi's historical statements — which he disputes as being interpreted without their proper context.
Lambeth Palace's decision-making process — which must explain how such statements were missed or not considered before the award.
The second issue may ultimately have greater institutional significance.
A warning for institutions that hand out honours
This episode demonstrates the risk of treating interfaith diplomacy as a substitute for rigorous background checks.
The desire to recognise someone who works across religious boundaries is understandable.
But reconciliation cannot simply mean finding people who can bring different communities into the same room.
It also requires confronting difficult questions about violence, religious freedom, minority rights and past statements.
An international award carries institutional credibility.
Once a recipient stands beside a senior religious leader holding an official honour, photographs and headlines travel globally.
The institution's reputation becomes attached to that person.
That is precisely what happened here.
The photographs from the Lambeth Palace ceremony spread online. The old bin Laden remarks resurfaced. The story changed from “Muslim cleric honoured for interfaith harmony” to “Archbishop withdraws award after cleric's past praise of bin Laden emerges.”
The reversal itself became the story.
The uncomfortable lesson
The most striking feature of this controversy is not simply that an award was withdrawn.
It is that the award was given in the first place.
The Church of England wanted to send a message about religious reconciliation.
Instead, the ceremony generated questions about whether the institution had properly examined the record of the person it was honouring.
The Archbishop's office eventually acted once the historical remarks became a public issue. But the episode demonstrates why institutions need to conduct comprehensive due diligence before putting their names behind an award.
And the timing makes the episode particularly difficult to defend.
A ceremony celebrating reconciliation was held on the 25th anniversary of 9/11.
An award was presented to a cleric whose earlier remarks included a proposal to give Osama bin Laden the religious title “Saifullah” — “Sword of God.”
Days later, the award was withdrawn.
Ashrafi says his words were taken out of context and that he was making a comparison related to the anger surrounding Salman Rushdie's knighthood. Lambeth Palace has nonetheless concluded that the remarks were serious enough to overturn the honour.
That is the documented sequence of events.
And the larger lesson is straightforward:
Interfaith dialogue deserves respect, but public honours demand scrutiny. Reconciliation should never require institutions to suspend due diligence or ignore a recipient's documented public record.
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