It was just possible, in theory, that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, might have confounded those who were aghast that he should choose to commemorate 9/11 by addressing one of the major seats of Islamic learning, Al Azhar University in Cairo. There was the faintest of hopes that he might have used the occasion to speak out bravely against the evil being perpetrated in the name of Islam, and to call upon all people of true faith in the Muslim world to join in the attempt to end it.

Alas, his address revealed an Archbishop on his knees before terror. For cant, humbug and moral spinelessness, this took some beating. He spoke warmly, for example, of the pre-eminent Sunni religious authority, Sheikh Tantawi of Al Azhar:

'I am deeply grateful that it was once again in this country that Jewish, Christian and Muslim leaders from the Holy Land under the co-chairmanship of the Grand Imam, Dr Tantawy, signed the Alexandria Declaration together, with its commitment to respect for the rights of the peoples of the Holy Land, its call for justice, and its refusal of terror and violence. How much we still need that vision to inspire us today, as the tragedies of this region of the world continue to resist settlement!'

Yet this is the same Sheikh Tantawi who -- although he has also issued a number of contradictory comments -- has said it is a religious duty for Muslims to wage jihad against US forces in Iraq, and who said on May 27 1998:

'It is every Muslim, Palestinian and Arab's right to blow himself up in the heart of Israel, an honorable death is better than a life of humiliation. All religious laws have demanded the use of force against the enemy and fighting against those who stand by Israel; there is no escape from fighting, from Jihad, and from [self-]defense, and whoever refrains from such things is not a believer.'

You would never think, from the Archbishop's remarks, that he was the leader of a Christian world that is under murderous attack in Nigeria, Sudan, Pakistan and many other countries by an Islamic jihad that clearly states it intends to wipe out or subjugate Christianity throughout the lands of the medieval Caliphate. Not a word of this escaped the Archbishop's lips. Instead -- unbelievably -- he cast Christianity as the villain of the piece:

'And it is sad that sometimes an unfaithful or careless Christian way of speaking has led Muslims and Jews to believe that we have a doctrine of God that does not recognise the oneness and sufficiency of God, or that we worship something less than the One, the Eternal. In our conversations with Muslim friends, we Christians are rightly challenged to think more deeply, to think as our Egyptian Christian fathers did, about the unity of Almighty God.'

Certainly, Christian religious hubris has a lot to answer for. But in these circumstances, where millions of Christians have been and are still being murdered or persecuted and their churches razed to the ground across the world, one might expect their leader to condemn and oppose such monstrosities and demonstrate a strong desire to protect his flock.

Instead, the Archbishop merely said what he has said before: that in the face of terror, its victims must passively submit. Now, it's one thing for a Christian to turn the other cheek when he himself is attacked. But it is simply monstrous to say that people should not take the action that may be necessary to to prevent themselves and others from being murdered. Yet this is precisely what he did say:

'We may rightly want to defend ourselves and one another – our people, our families, the weak and vulnerable among us. But we are not forced to act in revengeful ways, holding up a mirror to the terrible acts done to us. If we do act in the same way as our enemies, we imprison ourselves in their anger, their evil. And we fail to show our belief in the living God who always requires of us justice and goodness. So whenever a Muslim, a Christian or a Jew refuses to act in violent revenge, creating terror and threatening or killing the innocent, that person bears witness to the true God. They have stepped outside the way the faithless world thinks. A person without faith, hope and love may say, If I do not use indiscriminate violence and terror, there is no safety for me. The believer says, My safety is with God, whose justice can never be defeated. If I defend myself, I seek to do so only in a way that honours God and God’s image in others, and that does not offend against God’s justice. To seek to find reconciliation, to refuse revenge and the killing of the innocent, this is a form of adoration towards the One Living and Almighty God.'

This is a quite remarkable doctrine. Ostensibly preaching moral even-handedness, it is actually guilty of a quite grotesque moral inversion. Christians and Jews do not murder Muslims; it is Muslims who are murdering Christians and Jews; any attacks on Muslims by Jews, Christians or others in, for example, Israel or America are conducted solely in self-defence and in an attempt to prevent further acts of mass murder. To equate such acts of self-defence with truly indiscriminate acts of barbarism is disgusting. The fact that the Archbishop of Canterbury appears not to understand the difference suggests a staggering moral illiteracy.

Defining self-defence or the defence of others against murder as 'revenge', or 'indiscriminate violence and terror' is tantamount to turning a blind eye to slaughter. It condemns the innocent to death, and claims that this is a godly path to choose. Well, turning the other cheek on behalf of those who are being murdered doesn't fit any religious or moral codes that I know of. It is repugnant, and if followed would turn religion into the accomplice of great evil. It would mean that, if the Nazi Holocaust were to happen again, the Church would once again stand aside. As it is, this address will only provide encouragement and justification for those with murderous hatred in their hearts. It represents a negation of morality and decency -- a new low for the Church of England, and a sign that it is decadent right from the top. Read this address, and shudder for the fate of the free world.