Bravo to the Rev Peter Mullen for his brave and impassioned protest in the Times at the fact that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, is to mark the anniversary of September 11 by preaching in the mosque at al-Azhar university in Cairo, the most important centre of learning in the Muslim world. He quotes extensively from Dr Williams's pamphlet Writing in the Dust, which he wrote after 9/11 (and to which I have previously referred on this website). This small document is a virtuoso display of moral equivalence, whose inability to distinguish nihilistic killing from its defence, along with a denial of moral responsibility, would be staggering if written by anyone, let alone someone who became the leader of the Anglican church. Mullen devastatingly concludes:

'Dr Williams is praised as a man of superior intelligence. But there is no intelligence in Writing in the Dust, only romantic faux naivety. As his writings reveal, he is an old-fashioned class warrior. He dislikes our Western way of life and romanticises the Islamic world as much as Marxists used to romanticise the USSR. This wouldn’t matter much in normal times, but these days we live on the edge of destruction. Before Dr Williams opens his mouth in Cairo, he should remember the slogan from the Second World War: “Careless talk costs lives.” '

*Dhimmi Watch defines dhimmitude thus: 'Dhimmitude is the status that Islamic law, the Sharia, mandates for non-Muslims, primarily Jews and Christians. Dhimmis, "protected people," are free to practice their religion in a Sharia regime, but are made subject to a number of humiliating regulations designed to enforce the Qur'an's command that they "feel themselves subdued" (Sura 9:29). This denial of equality of rights and dignity remains part of the Sharia, and, as such, are part of the law that global jihadists are laboring to impose everywhere, ultimately on the entire human race. The dhimmi attitude of chastened subservience has entered into Western academic study of Islam, and from there into journalism, textbooks, and the popular discourse. One must not point out the depredations of jihad and dhimmitude; to do so would offend the multiculturalist ethos that prevails everywhere today.'