This Easter, the man who swore at his coronation to be Fidei Defensor, Defender of the Faith, had nothing to say. King Charles III, Supreme Governor of the Church of England, issued no Easter message to the hundreds of millions of Christians in the United Kingdom and across the Commonwealth. He did, however, find time in February to wish Muslims a “blessed and peaceful Ramadan,” opening his message with “As-salaamu alaikum“, “peace be upon you” in Arabic, and posting it to the official Royal Family account alongside a graphic reading “Ramadan Mubarak.”
Buckingham Palace confirmed that King Charles would not be releasing an Easter message in 2026, just two months after wishing Muslims a “happy Ramadan.” The Palace defended the omission by noting that, unlike the Christmas broadcast, an Easter message from the monarch is not an established annual tradition. Royal expert Richard Fitzwilliams acknowledged the historical point but called the decision “a mistake.” “The King did give a special message to celebrate Ramadan this year. It would therefore surely have been appropriate to have delivered one for Easter, as the controversy over this is one which could and should have been avoided,” Fitzwilliams told Fox News Digital.
Royal commentator Neil Sean was more blunt. “This came as a shock to most UK Christians here in the United Kingdom… we expect a message from the Monarch,” he said. Sean added that British anger has mounted specifically because Charles made video contributions filmed inside Royal palaces for Eid and Ramadan, while Christians received silence. Sean noted that Charles is already being accused in the United Kingdom of being a “secret Muslim.”
Ian Pelham Turner, a royals expert, framed the dereliction in stark constitutional terms. “How do you turn a Royal drama into a crisis? Simply do not follow decades of tradition and decide not to write an Easter message even though King Charles is head of the Church and swore an oath at his Coronation to uphold the faith,” Turner said.
Bishop Ceirion H. Dewar, who had written an open letter to the King calling on him to defend Britain’s Christian heritage, did not mince words. “Christians will be heartbroken, having learnt the defender of the faith has ignored them,” he said. “Having just issued a Ramadan and Eid Mubarak message for the Islamic community, choosing not to give an Easter message is bitterly disappointing. It does not meet the expectations you would expect from the monarch.”
This Easter omission is the culmination of a slow-growing pattern for the king. For the first time in its thousand-year history, Charles opened Windsor Castle to Muslims breaking their fast during Ramadan. In February 2025, he and Queen Camilla helped pack biryani rice and dates into food boxes for iftar meals donated to hospitals. When his 2025 Easter message did appear, it was laced with interfaith language, describing Christ’s love as “a deep human instinct echoed in Islam and other religious tradition.” This language was one that many Christians found deeply inappropriate for the holiest day of their calendar. At a state banquet in March 2026, Charles acknowledged the Muslim President of Nigeria’s “sacrifice” during Ramadan, closing his speech with “Eid Mubarak.” His silence regarding the mass slaughter of Nigerian Christians by Fulani jihadists and Boko Haram at that same dinner was conspicuous.
Charles’s fascination with Islam goes back decades. As Prince, he made a now-famous speech in 1993 at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, of which he is a patron, arguing that the West fundamentally misunderstood Islam. He has publicly defended Islamic law, praised the status of Muslim women, and voiced the view that Islam offers solutions for Britain’s ailments. In July 2025, the King cut the ribbon on the newly renamed “King Charles III” wing of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, saying that understanding the Muslim world is “more imperative than ever.”
Former Queen’s chaplain Gavin Ashenden laid the pattern bare with precision. “Last year, a message to the Islamic community in the spring as they finished Ramadan. This year, a message to the Islamic community as they began Ramadan. In neither this year nor last year did he mention Christianity and Lent.” Ashenden concluded: “The inevitable perception is that he favours Islam, because when it comes to the Christian festivals like Christmas, what he does is offer an inclusive view — he includes all faiths.”
His record toward the Jewish people and Israel is no better. In a letter written in November 1986, after an official visit to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Qatar, the then-Prince Charles suggested that the “influx of foreign, European Jews (especially from Poland, they say)” had helped “cause great problems” in the Middle East, and fretted over what he called the “Jewish lobby” in America. In 2017, the United Kingdom canceled a planned state visit by Prince Charles to Israel, reportedly to avoid alienating Arab states in the region. Despite attending international forums in Israel, most notably the World Holocaust Forum at Yad Vashem in January 2020, Charles has never met with an Israeli prime minister. By contrast, in that same January 2020 trip, he traveled to Bethlehem to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
After attending the funeral of Shimon Peres in 2016, then-Prince Charles of Wales visited his grandmother’s tomb in Jerusalem for the first time. Princess Alice died in 1969 and was originally interred in St George’s Chapel, Windsor. Her final wish was to be buried at the Russian Orthodox convent on the Mount of Olives, near her aunt Elizabeth, the Grand Duchess of Russia, who was murdered by the Bolsheviks and declared a Russian Orthodox saint. In 1988, her wish was realized, and she was re-interred in a crypt below the church.
Alice was posthumously declared “Righteous Among the Gentiles” by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in 1994 for sheltering Jewish acquaintances in her Athens residence for 13 months during World War II while the city was under Nazi occupation. Prince Philip attended the ceremony honoring his mother at the Yad Vashem Memorial in Jerusalem, marking the first time a member of the royal family visited Israel. More than 85 percent of the Greek Jews were taken to concentration camps during the Holocaust.
He did not meet with any Israeli officials on this visit.
The appointment of Dame Sarah Mullally, a former chief nursing officer with no prior theological training, as the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury has compounded the alarm among traditional Christians already concerned about the direction of the Church of England under Charles’s nominal stewardship.
While Christians make up approximately 47 percent of the UK population and Muslims roughly 6 percent, the Muslim Council of Britain has confirmed that the Muslim population is the fastest-growing faith group in the country. That demographic reality makes the symbolism of a silent Easter and a celebrated Ramadan all the more pointed.
