The Archbishop of Canterbury has defended his controversial comments about the introduction of Islamic law to Britain and claimed that public opinion is now behind him.

On the anniversary of the interview in which Dr Rowan Williams said it “seems inevitable” that some parts of sharia would be enshrined in this country’s legal code, he claimed “a number of fairly senior people” now take the same view. He added that there is a “drift of understanding” towards what he was saying, and that the public sees the difference between letting Muslim courts decide divorces and wills, and allowing them to rule on criminal cases and impose harsh punishments.

But Douglas Murray, the director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, said: “He has started a process which is deeply dangerous, damaging to Britain and to Muslim women in Britain. It was a wicked move because it undermines the progressives and gives succour to the extremists.”

Daily Telegraph, 16 February 2009

Yes, that’s the same Douglas Murray who said: “It is late in the day, but Europe still has time to turn around the demographic time-bomb which will soon see a number of our largest cities fall to Muslim majorities. It has to. All immigration into Europe from Muslim countries must stop…. Conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board: Europe must look like a less attractive proposition.”

The Douglas Murray whose slanders against Salma Yaqoob in a television discussion led to the programme being pulled by Central TV for fear of legal action. According to Salma: “He made all sorts of wild claims about me. He said that I was a supporter of terrorism, that I didn’t care about Muslims in Iraq and that I’d taken part in an anti-war riot. It was all such libellous nonsense I thought they would just halt the recording there and then…”