The archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, has withdrawn a prestigious honor conferred on a Muslim cleric who opposes the repeal of Pakistan’s blasphemy and child marriage laws and who has accused Jews and Christians of conspiring to destroy nuclear-capable Pakistan.
Mullally bestowed the Hubert Walter Award for Reconciliation and Interfaith Cooperation on Hafiz Muhammad Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi at Lambeth Palace on September 11, 2026. Ashrafi has also honored Osama bin Laden and endorsed suicide attacks. The archbishop withdrew the award on September 17 after a backlash on social media.
A photograph published by Lambeth Palace shows Mullally posing with Ashrafi, and with two women who appear to be Ashrafi’s wife and daughter. The cleric’s wife is clad in a full black burka; the daughter is wearing a face veil. Lambeth Palace praised Ashrafi for “his outstanding work as an ambassador of interfaith harmony in Pakistan.”
Lambeth Palace praised Ashrafi for “his outstanding work as an ambassador of interfaith harmony in Pakistan.”
Ashrafi belongs to the Deobandi sect of Islam, which informs much of the Taliban’s religious foundation. He heads the Pakistan Ulema Council, which opposes the repeal of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. These laws have resulted in the imprisonment and killing of hundreds of Christians, Ahmadis, Hindus, Sikhs, and reformist Muslims.
Ashrafi said the Pakistan Ulema Council supports the “judicious use of blasphemy law but will never allow repeal of the law on flimsy grounds or under international pressure,” after police arrested a mentally disabled 11-year-old Christian girl for allegedly desecrating the Qur’an in 2012. “The legislation related to blasphemy cannot be annulled or amended. Any bid to transform Pakistan into a liberal country will be foiled,” Ashrafi said.
In a high-profile case, the Pakistani Taliban assassinated Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan’s only Christian state minister, in 2011, after he urged repealing the death penalty for blasphemy. Earlier, Punjab’s governor Salman Taseer’s bodyguard assassinated him for defending Asia Bibi, a Christian woman accused of blasphemy.
In 2023, a mob of 1,200 men torched 22 churches and attacked 91 Christian homes, businesses, and graveyards in Jaranwala, Punjab, after accusations of blasphemy against two Christian residents. Ashrafi apologized, saying that “the attackers have shamed us.”
Sarah Mullally, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Roger Harris, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
“Archbishop Mullally could hardly have made a more tone-deaf choice,” Nuriyah Khan, a British-Pakistani women’s rights activist, said. “Pakistani Christians live under blasphemy laws that Ashrafi openly supports. While he may claim he opposes their misuse, the reality in Pakistan remains that a mere accusation alone can cost someone their life.”
Khan cited the case of Shama Bibi and Shahzad Masih, a young Christian couple beaten and burned alive after they were accused of blasphemy. “Shama was pregnant. I cannot understand how the archbishop can look at that and decide that someone who defends these laws deserves an award for ‘interfaith harmony,’” she said.
“His record on women and children deserves similar scrutiny. Ashrafi was a member of Pakistan’s Council of Islamic Ideology when it declared that laws setting a minimum age for marriage were un-Islamic,” Khan, a fellow of the Ideological Defense Institute and expert in Islamic law, said.
“Blasphemy laws have been used to persecute Christians in several Muslim countries for decades, including Pakistan,” A.J. Nolte, director of Regent University’s Israel Institute, said. “Christian girls in Pakistan have been regularly forced into child marriages. It’s deeply concerning that the Archbishop of Canterbury chose to honor a supporter of these practices.”
A July 2026 United Kingdom Home Office report noted that blasphemy laws can result in the death penalty. In 2024, 20 Christians were among the 344 people accused under the blasphemy laws, compared with 11 of 329 accused in 2023. The report noted that at least nine Christians were imprisoned and sentenced to death or life imprisonment, and nine others detained.
Nor is Ashrafi’s endorsement of violence new. When Britain knighted Salman Rushdie in 2007, Ashrafi responded by honoring the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. “We are pleased to award the title of Saifullah [sword of God] to Osama bin Laden after the British government decided to bestow the title of ‘Sir’ on blasphemer Rushdie,” Ashrafi said. In 2013, Ashrafi said that “suicide attacks in Afghanistan are lawful because NATO troops are invaders that have occupied the country,” though he later claimed reporters took his comments out of context. By ignoring such public statements while vetting Ashrafi, the archbishop appears to rationalize and accept such terrorism. Ashrafi has also called on the government to prosecute Pakistanis who visit Israel because they have “wounded the hearts of the Muslim Ummah.”
When Britain knighted Salman Rushdie in 2007, Ashrafi responded by honoring the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.
Mullally’s conferring of the award on a cleric who opposes Pakistan’s recognition of the “illegitimate state” of Israel is provocative following her recent fallout with the Jewish community over the Church of England’s approval of the Palestinian Kairos II document, which condemns Israel as a Jewish supremacist state and defends Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre of Jews.
“Mullally speaks a lot about women’s rights and protecting the vulnerable. Yet she has chosen to honor a powerful cleric while entirely oblivious to Christians and women whose rights are routinely sacrificed to religious authority in Pakistan,” Khan lamented. “The hypocrisy is difficult to miss. Calling this ‘interfaith harmony’ makes a mockery of the phrase.”
Lambeth Palace earlier said it was aware of comments circulating online attributed to Ashrafi and was urgently reviewing the matter. Later, it issued a statement noting that previous comments made by Ashrafi have come to light that led Lambeth Palace to reconsider and withdraw the award.
