On questions of the environment, Christians and Moslems have points of view that closely resemble each other. Both for Islam and for Christianity, the safeguarding of the creation for future generations is an essential concern. That is what emerged from the interreligious colloquium promoted by the World Council of Churches (WCC) and held in recent days at Marrakesh on the occasion of the international Conference on Climate Change. The colloquium with the title: Let’s protect the earth for our children” brought together experts and representatives of the Christian and Moslem communities as well as 75 delegates of non-governmental organizations. “In the Koran said Ahmed L. Khamlichi, professor and Islamic scholar at the royal palace of Morocco God authorizes human beings to use the created world to satisfy their needs: food, clothing, housing, transport, but exhorts them to do so with reason and moderation, without excesses and abuses”. “Each generation added Khamlichi will only live for its allotted span so that it cannot arrogate to itself the right to appropriate for itself the created world in the here and now. The environment and the climate belong to the future generations”. The Jesuit Father Henri Madelin urged the Christian Churches to “break down the anthropocentrism of modern culture”, while the Swedish delegate Stefen Edman emphasized the duty of solidarity with the poorest countries which are already suffering today from the effects of climate change. “The industrialized nations he said are practising a new type of colonialism in the stratosphere. We must prevent it”.
