A Terrible Council of Despair

The BBC News 24 report which I watched yesterday on the Archbishop of Canterbury's speech, in which he proclaimed that  the adoption of 'aspects' of sharia law were inevitable in the UK, bent over backwards to diffuse the effect of what he said, drawing attention instead to the Archbishop's 'nuanced' way of speaking.

There was something awfully predictable about the way in which the broadcaster attempted to jolly up what was in fact an abject surrender by a man who, for better or worse, should be counted as one of our cultural leaders.

Predictable, and also disingenuous, as the Archbishop had already given a much less 'nuanced' summary of what he was proposing during a BBC radio interview earlier in the day.

However those of us looking for real reassurance in the subsequent criticisms of the speech from the great and the good of the political class should have known better. These were, shall we say, equally 'nuanced.'

"Raising this idea in this way will give fuel to anti-Muslim extremism and dismay everyone working towards a more integrated society"; said equality chief Trevor Phillips.

So, it seems that the speech will cause 'Islamophobia'. Yet again, it would seem, the real problem is that terrible mass of people out there just gagging for the chance to hate Muslims. Could not Phillips have instead warned that the Archbishop's remarks gave succour to those Islamic fundamentalists who already work on the assumption that there is little real will amongst our cultural and political elites to defend our national and cultural traditions?