From Newsweek
By 8/14/15
Islamic scholars and politicians are issuing a call to the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims to play their part in tackling climate change.
The Islamic Climate Change Declaration will be formally announced on Tuesday at an Istanbul summit organised by three religious-environmental groups, according to Bloomberg. It has attracted high-profile Muslim supporters, including Sheikh Shaban Ramadhan Mubaje, the Grand Mufti of Uganda—a title given to the highest religious authority in a Sunni country. Other backers include the Grand Mufti of Lebanon and the president of the Indonesian Council of Ulema, the country’s major body of Muslim religious scholars, and government representatives from Morocco and Turkey.
The summit, which will also be attended by U.N. officials including Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s second-in-command Ibrahim Thiaw, will describe climate change as the world’s most pressing challenge and say that Muslims have a religious duty to adopt a greener lifestyle in order to tackle the problem. In an email comment, Mubaje said, “Islam teaches us: ‘Man is simply a steward holding whatever is on earth in trust,’ therefore man should ensure that we do everything possible to protect for this and future generations, in order to leave this world a better place than we found it.”
Despite the traditional view that religion and science are poles apart, faith leaders are taking a leading role in the fight against climate change. The response from leading Muslims followsa major intervention by Pope Francis, the leader of the Catholic Church, who in June released a letter to the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics describing climate change as an “urgent and compelling” issue. Earlier this year, the Church of England also pulled £12 million ($18.8 million) of investment from tar sands oil and thermal coal, two of the most polluting fossil fuels.
