The clueless Ayatollah of Canterbury

Peter Hitchens:

The poor old Ayatollah of Canterbury doesn't actually deserve all the slime now being tipped over his modernised mitre. Just some of it.

Of course it is absurd for the chief of the Christian Church in this country to cringe publicly to Islam. But at least Archbishop Williams is open about his unwillingness to defend the faith – as is his colleague, the wretched Bishop of Oxford, who recently announced that he was perfectly happy for loudspeakers to blare the Muslim call to prayer across that city.

Even on their own liberal terms, this pair are clueless about sharia and its scorn for women.

It was exiled Iranian Muslim women who defeated a similar proposal in Canada. They had travelled thousands of miles to escape sharia law and didn't want it in Toronto, thanks very much.

Compare that with the Government, which poses stern-faced as the foe of "terror" and noisily jails figures of fun such as Abu Hamza while greasily pretending that there's no connection between Islam and terrorism.

Gordon Brown's Cabinet has also quietly agreed that Muslim men with more than one wife can now claim benefits for these extra spouses – while bigamy remains a criminal offence for everyone else, punishable by up to seven years in prison.

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There was a time when one of the titles of the Crown in the UK was "Defender of the Faith." You can forget that when not even the Church of England is willing to defend its faith, nor is the government willing to stand up for the rule of law. Someone needs to report a crime to Scotland Yard. There has been a mass theft of backbones in the UK.