> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.theredlighthouse.org/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # I Have Shaken Hands I Did Not Check Because Someone I Trusted Vouched for Them. On September 11 the Archbishop of Canterbury Gave a Pakistani Cleric an Award for Protecting Christians. Six Days Later She Took It Back. The Bill Lands in Punjab. - URL: https://www.theredlighthouse.org/discerner-lambeth-ashrafi-award-bill-lands-in-punjab/ - Published: 2026-09-22T13:28:48.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-22T13:28:48.000Z - Description: Lambeth Palace gave Hafiz Tahir Ashrafi an interfaith award on September 11 and withdrew it on September 17 after his 2007 praise of bin Laden resurfaced. Michael Nazir-Ali says Pakistani Christians fear the backlash. On the handshake nobody checked, and who pays. - Author: The Red Lighthouse - Tags: The Discerner, News Stories I have stood in a receiving line and shaken a hand I had not checked, because a person I trusted had already checked it for me. That is how most of the world's honors get given. Somebody vouches. Somebody else prints the citation. The photograph is taken before anyone searches the name. On Friday, September 11, the twenty fifth anniversary of the attacks, Dame Sarah Mullally, Archbishop of Canterbury, stood at Lambeth Palace beside Hafiz Muhammad Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi, chairman of the Pakistan Ulema Council, and handed him the Hubert Walter Award for Reconciliation and Interfaith Cooperation. The citation praised his "outstanding work as an ambassador of interfaith harmony in Pakistan" and said that "despite the challenges the country faces in protecting its religious minorities, Maulana Ashrafi has consistently been a strong advocate for their rights, particularly for the Christian community." The photographs went up on social media on Tuesday. On Wednesday a Conservative MP, Nick Timothy, began posting links. One was a 2007 Reuters report in which Ashrafi said his council would honor Osama bin Laden with the title Saifullah, Sword of God, because "if a blasphemer can be given the title 'Sir' by the West," meaning Salman Rushdie, "then a mujahid who has been fighting for Islam against the Russians, Americans, and British must be given the lofty title of Islam." Another was a 2014 report in Dawn: "The blasphemy law should stay and those proposing its repealing are neither well-wishers of the non-Muslims nor of the country." On Thursday morning Lambeth Palace said it was urgently reviewing the comments. On Thursday evening it withdrew the award. And on Friday a man born in Pakistan, once the Anglican Bishop of Rochester and now a Catholic priest, went on a podcast to say what nobody in the palace seems to have said out loud beforehand: the people who will pay for this are not in London. Michael Nazir-Ali asked it plainly. Why, he asked The Spectator's Holy Smoke, "was there not due diligence?" Pakistani Christian leaders, he said, now fear a backlash, and "some signal needs to be given that Christians in Pakistan are not responsible for whatever has happened." A slight delivered to a powerful cleric in Britain becomes, four thousand miles away, a grievance with a local address, and the local address is usually a church. Here is the part that matters. Ashrafi is not a cartoon. The citation pointed to 2012, when a Christian girl named Rimsha Masih was jailed on a blasphemy charge, and Ashrafi called her a "daughter of the nation" and condemned the attempt to turn a neighborhood against its Christians. Bishop Azad Marshall, the Church of Pakistan's Moderator, had already written him a public letter: "I had the privilege of personally recommending your name in recognition of your sustained and courageous services to peace and interfaith harmony." So the Christians of Pakistan are holding two things at once, which is the condition of being a minority anywhere. The man praised bin Laden in 2007 and defends the law that has put their neighbors in prison. The same man has stood between their neighbors and a mob. His council says the 2007 comparison "was not an endorsement of bin Laden" but an explanation of Muslim hurt over Rushdie's knighthood. Whether you believe that or not, the people who most need him to keep answering the phone are the ones his award was supposed to honor him for helping. Ishiguro's butler in The Remains of the Day serves a flawless dinner to men whose politics he has never examined, and calls that dignity. What Lambeth did was not sinister. It was the ordinary institutional sin of trusting the vouching and skipping the search. But the butler's consequences fell on the butler. These fall on congregations in Punjab that had nothing to do with the citation or the ceremony. Paul's line about the body is more unsettling than the church anniversaries it gets read at. "Whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it." He wrote it as anatomy, not consolation. A hand at Lambeth extends; a nerve in Punjab fires. Pakistani Christians said so themselves last week. The Rev. Amjad Niamat, a Presbyterian commission chairman, asked for "transparency, careful review, accountability, and consistency." Gerald Vincent, a London member of the Church of Pakistan, wrote that Bishop Marshall's letter "confirms his personal role in recommending Ashrafi." Those are not the sentences of people who wanted a scalp. They come from people who know who gets the bill. I keep coming back to the handshake, because I have given it. The lesson is not that institutions should stop honoring Muslim clerics who defend Christians; Pakistan's Christians need those clerics more than Lambeth does. The lesson is that the check has to happen before the photograph, and that when it does not, the apology belongs to the people who will absorb the consequence, not to the people who noticed the mistake. Pray this week for the Christians of Punjab and Islamabad, and for the clerics, including this one, who have at times stood in front of them. If you know a church in Pakistan, write to it before the news cycle moves on; the backlash Nazir-Ali fears is the kind that arrives after the cameras leave. And if you want to keep reading the record behind the headlines, membership keeps the lights on here. ### Sources - Church Times, "Lambeth Palace withdraws award given to Muslim cleric after 'urgent review'," Madeleine Davies, September 18, 2026 (carries the citation text, the Lambeth statement, the Reuters 2007 and Dawn 2014 quotations, and the timeline): [https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2026/25-september/news/uk/lambeth-palace-withdraws-award-given-to-muslim-cleric-after-urgent-review](https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2026/25-september/news/uk/lambeth-palace-withdraws-award-given-to-muslim-cleric-after-urgent-review?ref=theredlighthouse.org) - Christian Daily International, "Archbishop of Canterbury revokes award to Pakistani cleric after bin Laden remarks resurface," CDI Staff, September 18, 2026 (Bishop Marshall's letter, the Lambeth statement, Pakistani reaction): [https://www.christiandaily.com/news/archbishop-of-canterbury-revokes-award-to-pakistani-cleric-after-bin-laden-remarks-resurface](https://www.christiandaily.com/news/archbishop-of-canterbury-revokes-award-to-pakistani-cleric-after-bin-laden-remarks-resurface?ref=theredlighthouse.org) - The Spectator, "Michael Nazir-Ali: Pakistani Christians fear backlash over Lambeth Palace award," Patrick Gibbons, September 18, 2026 (the Holy Smoke interview): [https://spectator.com/article/michael-nazir-ali-pakistani-christians-fear-backlash-over-lambeth-palace-award/](https://spectator.com/article/michael-nazir-ali-pakistani-christians-fear-backlash-over-lambeth-palace-award/?ref=theredlighthouse.org) - Crux, "Anglican interreligious gaffe could create backlash against Pakistani Christians, says former Anglican bishop," Fionn Shiner, September 19, 2026 (lede fetched; body paywalled): [https://cruxnow.com/church-in-uk-and-ireland/2026/09/anglican-interreligious-gaffe-could-create-backlash-against-pakistani-christians-says-former-anglican-bishops](https://cruxnow.com/church-in-uk-and-ireland/2026/09/anglican-interreligious-gaffe-could-create-backlash-against-pakistani-christians-says-former-anglican-bishops?ref=theredlighthouse.org) - Religion Media Centre, morning bulletin, September 21, 2026 (seen in search): [https://religionmediacentre.org.uk/morning-news-bulletin/religion-news-21-september-2026/](https://religionmediacentre.org.uk/morning-news-bulletin/religion-news-21-september-2026/?ref=theredlighthouse.org) - Scripture: 1 Corinthians 12:26 (KJV).