Prince Charles stressed the problems of religious restrictions on birth control found in many religions but stressed that religion is needed to solve world problems and restore an understanding of the “soul.” Speaking on Monday at the 25th anniversary of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies of which he is patron, the Prince then went on to urge Muslims to use their heritage to protect the environment.
The Prince’s main theme was that population growth is out of control and the environment cannot cope with the expansion. During his lifetime the population of Lagos has risen from 300,000 to 20 million, and the world’s current 6.8 billion population is expected to rise to 9 billion over the next 50 years. For the earth to cope will require a reduction in consumerism and a slowing of population growth.
The latter is primarily a cultural issue, and he said that all religions must help. Roman Catholics believe it is against “natural law” to use artificial methods to prevent conception while some conservative Muslim scholars teach that birth control is wrong. Condoms are opposed by Orthodox Judaism and some contraceptive techniques are unacceptable to Buddhists. However, he was concerned to stress that religion is also needed to solve the world’s environmental and financial crises, which he claimed reflect the fact that “the soul has been elbowed out” in the quest for economic profit.
Speaking to his Muslim hosts he said the Islamic world has one of the “greatest treasuries of accumulated wisdom and spiritual knowledge”, but lamented the fact that it is now often “obscured by the dominant drive towards Western materialism – the feeling that to be truly 'modern’ you have to ape the West”. It is a “tragedy” that traditional Islamic crafts are being abandoned, and he called upon Muslims to use their heritage to protect the environment. He concluded that the world is “on the wrong road” and should not be “pigheaded” about refusing to acknowledge that fact, but should instead “retrace our steps” and return to working within nature rather than against it.