Breaking news: Islamic environmental and religious leaders have issued an Islamic Climate Declaration which calls on all nations to save the planet by abandoning all use of fossil fuels by 2050 and switching to “sustainable energy” by that time.

Also breaking news: There are Islamic environmental leaders?

The Islamic Climate Declaration says that the world’s 1.6bn Muslims have a religious duty to fight climate change.

It urges politicians to agree a new treaty to limit global warming to 2C, “or preferably 1.5 degrees.”

The Declaration asks Muslims, in the words of the Koran, “not to strut arrogantly on the Earth”.

Drafted at an international symposium in Istanbul, the Declaration calls for “all people, leaders and businesses …to commit to 100% renewable energy”.

It also argues for increased financial support for communities vulnerable to climate change.

I suppose we begin by being glad that they’re occupying their time with something other than the usual headlines we see, but this is curious indeed. Which countries are they representing in the Islamic world? Plenty of them are among the biggest oil producers in the world and, frankly, if it weren’t for that fact, many of them would still be third world nations. Iran is not only a huge oil producer, but claims to want to move to mostly nuclear power. I don’t see a lot of wind and solar development going on. (Which is odd, since you’d think deserts would be some of the best solar energy producing climates on the planet.

It will come as no surprise that Halldór Thorgeirsson is one of the featured speakers. He is the Director for Strategy at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, a position which puts him in direct alignment with not only Barack Obama but the other United Nations folks who are eager to issue global mandates which could, in theory, override the decisions of those nations’ individual governments. (Or at least they’d like to think so.)

This story is really just of the quick hit variety for your discussion. Where did this initiative come from and how does this fit in with Islamic law? There’s got to be more here than meets the eye.