Church of England Pulls Exhibit Celebrating Palestinian Jihadis

The Church of England is just leftism at prayer, and so it was hardly surprising that, as The Times put it in its headline on, of all days, September 11, “Church of England promotes tapestry ‘with tribute to jihadists.’” Well, of course. Leftists have their heroes and saints just like everyone else.

The Times explained that “the fabric that will go on display at Leeds Minster appears to show the names of 12 members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad and one member of Hamas.”

Ultimately, this did not happen; saner minds prevailed. The BBC reported Friday that “a church exhibition honouring people who have lost their lives in Gaza has been removed from show after it emerged the display was said to feature names of several Hamas fighters.”

Abashed, the church that was showing the exhibition issued a statement saying that it wanted to “work with all faith groups within the city and acknowledges that by hosting this exhibition we have harmed our relationship with some in the Jewish community for which we apologise and now seek to rebuild trust.”

This took some doing. A spokesperson for the Leeds Jewish Representative Council said that it had been “trying to alert Leeds Minster to this issue for over a week,” and all the Jewish group got was the runaround: “We were told they had done that due diligence – they had not. What they had done was check for the 12 names we had been able to submit. They did not dispute that those names were included in the tapestry. But, worryingly, they decided that because those particular names were not on the panels exhibited at Leeds, it did not matter.”

This sounds like typical leftists. The problem you have identified is not really a problem because of some small loophole you have overlooked, and so nothing will be done to address your concerns. And also like typical leftists, the organizers of the exhibition closed ranks and circled the wagons: “When we tried to take photographs of the panels they had decided to put on public display, they refused to allow us to do so.”

The Leeds Jewish Representative Council spokesperson pointed out that the tapestry actually included the names of no fewer than 25 Hamas jihadis, and added: “This debacle has set community relations back by years. At a time where we have seen a rising antisemitism that goes beyond living memory in this city, it is simply astonishing that clergy and trustees of an important church should behave in this way. We obviously welcome the immediate cancellation of the exhibition, because even late is better than never.”

Yeah, sure, that’s great, but it isn’t as if the Church of England has now suddenly seen the light and is going to stop glorifying Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas. On the contrary, given its tendency to revise the Christian Faith to suit the fads of the present age, its idolization of these jihadis is likely only to increase.

The tapestry with featuring the names of Hamas jihadis is too hot right now, but only because the organizers got caught. If no one had been paying any particular attention to the names on the tapestry, it would have gone as planned, and no one would have looked askance at it, for the Church of England identifying fully and wholeheartedly with the Palestinian jihad is neither new nor surprising.

And after this present controversy blows over, Church officials are likely to become once again increasingly open about their adulation of the jihad warriors. As time goes on, if its leftward drift of the past century or so continues, and there is absolutely no reason to believe that it won’t, watch for the Church of England to throw out its calendar of saints altogether and replace it with a calendar of heroes of the left, including jihadi “martyrs.”

After all, what do a bunch of forgotten Romans who held to the Christian faith even to the point of death mean to English leftists who have long since thrown out that same faith? Martin Luther King, Jr., is already officially commemorated on the liturgical calendar of the U.S. Episcopal Church, and while he was a Christian, he is on the calendar because of his secular work for racial equality, not for bearing witness to the Christian faith in the traditional sense. Other secular heroes are no doubt not far behind. So why not Palestinian jihadis?

In a year, or maybe five, or ten years, but soon enough, you’ll be able to walk into a Church of England parish and hear “Saint Ashraf Sallah Alasmar, pray for us.” Ashraf Sallah Alasmar was a Palestinian Arab Muslim and a jihad suicide bomber. That’s the likes of whom the Church of England reveres these days.