WHEN Pope Francis issued his 192-page encyclical on climate change and pollution, this was rightly hailed as a landmark in the history of the papacy, and of environmentalism. Now Islamic scholars have added their voice to a crescendo of spiritually-inspired cries for action to conserve the planet.
From a meeting in Istanbul attended by senior Muslims from Morocco to Bosnia to Indonesia (but relatively few from Islam's fossil-rich heartland) there came a passionate and impressively detailed appeal for a new global pact at the Paris climate summit in December. "We particularly call on the well-off nations and oil-producing states to lead the way in phasing out greenhouse-gas emissions as early as possible and no later than the middle of the century," it said.
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