Ayaan Hirsi Ali in The Telegraph on the archbishop’s ecumenical pratfall:
When faced with deep civilisational or theological contradictions, the modern reflex of our elite is rarely to engage in critical thinking. Instead, it is to retreat into a defensive, self-righteous insulation.
Leaders entrench themselves behind boilerplate statements and tactical retractions, hoping to survive the immediate news cycle by staying on the rehearsed message and then fleeing back to the safety of the elite bubble.
Rarely is this institutional pattern more vividly illustrated than in a single, striking photograph from Lambeth Palace that was recently released. The image caught Archbishop Sarah Mullally presenting a Lambeth Award to Hafiz Muhammad Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi, the chairman of the Pakistan Ulema Council. Standing just three feet away was Ashrafi’s wife, wrapped tightly from head to wrist, with only her eyes visible to the assembled crowd.
It’s striking in so many ways. One way is the disjunction between the institutional prestige and power of the archbish and how it contrasts with the nullification of Ashrafi’s nameless faceless wife, who appears to onlookers as nothing but a pillar of black cloth with a peculiar slit near the top.
Another is what we know Ashrafi must have been thinking. “This filthy harlot woman is daring to look me in the face and talk to me and even touch me but I must pretend to tolerate the monstrous slut, because taqiyya.”
Another, which many are ashamed or embarrassed to admit, is sheer disgust. The contrast between the two grinning people who are allowed to show their entire faces to the world (although one of those people thinks the other one is in fact not allowed to do that, and would learn better quick-smart if he were allowed to teach her) and the blank pillar-box of black cloth is striking and utterly repulsive.
Just imagine the archbishop presenting an award to a slaveowner who brought one of his slaves with him for the occasion, a slave naked except for a loincloth, and chained at the feet, hands and neck. Seriously: imagine it. Grotesque, isn’t it. Even the archbishop might think so. But this on the other hand…
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