'Green' Islam?

On June 9, Prince Charles delivered a stunning speech at Oxford wherein he called for a Western pantheistic religious synthesis with Islam to help save the world from the impending environmental catastrophe looming on the apocalyptic horizon.

Shockingly, Charles believes that Islam can play a critical role in bringing back ancient religious traditions that will promote a much-needed check on Western man's unbridled enthusiasm for capitalism, power and money, where science has been inappropriately exploited by commerce since the Industrial Revolution.

Prince Charles presumes that such a course of action will return the Western world to a more reverent attitude toward nature. He thus concluded his speech by quoting an old saying from Islamic nomads -- "The best of all Mosques is Nature herself."

"Shockingly, Charles believes that Islam can play a critical role in bringing back ancient religious traditions that will promote a much-needed check on Western man's unbridled enthusiasm for capitalism"

Although the U.K.'s would-be king did briefly acknowledge the Bible and a few Christian authors, his lecture was far from a Christian one. Built on pagan foundations, pantheism stands in sharp contrast to Judeo-Christian theism precisely because the Bible unabashedly asserts that God is the transcendent creator of the universe. This means that God stands outside the universe. Pantheism, however, is the belief that God is everything. In pantheism, God is the universe, or nature itself. Pantheism is thus a form of nature worship where nature is worshiped as god, usually in the name of Mother Earth or "Gaia.".

When Prince Charles referenced Genesis 1, he conveniently ignored the most salient point made in the chapter, i.e., that Adam was made in God's image. This made Adam and Eve the king and queen of the Earth.

To add insult to injury, God then commands them to be fruitful and multiply and subdue the Earth. Such commands are an absolute anathema to the modern green movement as it constantly obsesses over human population growth and sustainable development. Even more troublesome is that after Adam and Eve fell into sin, they were subsequently banished from Eden. Harmony between man and nature is henceforth forbidden -- and this by the edict of God.

"In other words, in the brave new world of sin, nature is sacrificed for man, not man for nature"

In fact, the Lord purposefully cursed nature to frustrate and discipline man. Animal sacrifice is then introduced to cover their shameful nakedness in sin. This was a shocking lesson but one that also looked forward to the ultimate sacrifice of the Messiah on the cross, where an innocent substitute dies in the place of the worshiper.

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"The great problem here is that the last time the green movement became involved with a group as anti-Semitic as Islam was in Nazi Germany"

In other words, in the brave new world of sin, nature is sacrificed for man, not man for nature. As a deep ecologist, it is not likely that Prince Charles is unaware of this biblical albatross, which is precisely why he went elsewhere -- to Islam, of all things. The great problem here is that the last time the green movement became involved with a group as anti-Semitic as Islam was in Nazi Germany.

Nazism was, in fact, a green movement in some important, fundamental ways. By 1935, it was the greenest regime on the planet. Its god was a Western, pantheistic god of nature whose totalitarian will cannot be overcome, as many Jews, Christians, liberals, capitalists and communists falsely presume.
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"Nazism was, in fact, a green movement in some important, fundamental ways. By 1935, it was the greenest regime on the planet"

Its anti-Semitic racism and love for biology were rooted in the Social Darwinian ecology of Ernst Haeckel. Its holistic nationalism and geopolitics were grounded in the environmental indigenous ideas of Goethe, Humboldt and Arndt. Its Germanic green socialism was derived from Riehl, the father of sustainable development and public forest lands. Its romantic SS "blood and soil" agrarian pipe dream was borrowed from the pantheistic nature-loving Monist League.

.The Nazi love for animals was acquired from Arthur Schopenhauer, the anti-Semitic guru of environmental ethics and animal rights who blamed Genesis 1 and Judaism for what he calls the "odor of the Jews," i.e., animal cruelty.
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In fact, Hitler tried to bring to fruition Schopenhauer's assertion that the "Jewish view of the animals world must, on account of its immorality, be expelled from Europe."

Nazism's wild, artistic romanticism was elicited from Richard Wagner, the famous opera composer who hated the Jews for commercializing art. Wagner was also a pupil of both Schopenhauer and Haeckel's anti-Semitic environmentalism. Hitler even attributed his vegetarianism to Wagner.

Thus, eco-fascism is no metaphor. However, it is one thing to call someone an eco-Nazi using metaphors but quite another to discover that the Nazis had incorporated a green agenda into their political policy making as well.

For obvious reasons, putting these two things together is exactly what modern environmentalists do not want. When such a label begins to match its history at some important junctures, it becomes much more explosive.

And the bringing together of environmentalism with Islam only injects much more octane into an already highly volatile atmosphere.
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RMM I.F.
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Mark Musser was a missionary to the former Soviet Union for 7 years. He is now a pastor. Mark is the author of two books – “Nazi Oaks: The Green Sacrificial Offering of the Judeo-Christian Worldview in the Holocaust” and “Wrath or Rest: Saints in the Hands of Angry God.”
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This piece appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review on 7/18/10

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