He studied Arabic to understand the Qur'an.. Charles III said 5 important things about Islam and Muslims

In 1996, the mufti of Cyprus shockingly "accused" Charles III, Britain's new king, of being a secret Muslim.

The late Nazim al-Haqqani said, "Did you know that Prince Charles converted to Islam. Yes, yes, he is a Muslim, I can't say more than that. But this happened in Turkey. Yes, he has converted, when you come home check how often he travels To Turkey. You will find that your future king is a Muslim."

Buckingham Palace replied simply: "Bullshit."

This was stated in

published by the British "Middle East Eye" website, in which he said that Charles - who became the new king last week - is not a secret Muslim, but his admiration and knowledge of Islam is well documented.

The report indicated that the 73-year-old, who now heads the Church of England;

He gave many speeches while waiting to take over as king, on religious and historical topics related to Muslims and Islam.

He noted that he once revealed that he was learning Arabic in order to better understand the Qur'an, a fact that the imam of Cambridge Central Mosque praised last week during a sermon.

Here are some of Charles III's most important references to Islam over the decades:

The environment and the natural world

Charles has long advocated for environmental issues and climate change, and has sometimes cited the Islamic faith on the subject.

In a 1996 speech titled "A Sense of Holiness...Building Bridges Between Islam and the West," he noted that appreciating Islamic views of natural order would "help us in the West to rethink and improve our practical care for man and his environment."

Charles detailed those views in a 2010 speech at the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies, of which he has been a patron since 1993.

"From what I know from the basic teachings of Islam, the important principle that we must bear in mind is that there are limits to the abundance of nature. These are not arbitrary limits, they are limits imposed by God, and as such if my understanding of the Qur'an is correct, Muslims are commanded not to transgress them," he said. .

He later described Islam as possessing "one of the greatest treasures of accumulated wisdom and spiritual knowledge available to mankind", a tradition he said was obscured by a tendency toward "Western materialism".

"The inconvenient truth is that we share this planet with other creatures for a very good reason, which is that we cannot live alone without the intricately balanced web of life around us. Islam has always taught this and ignoring this lesson means falling short in our contract with the Creator," he said.

He went on to cite examples of Islamic urban planning through the centuries, including the irrigation systems in Spain 1,200 years ago, as examples of how the "prophetic teachings" of long-term resource planning could be preserved in favor of "short-term economies".

In fact, Charles III's garden in his Gloucestershire home was inspired by Islamic traditions and plants mentioned in the Qur'an.

Danish cartoons and The Satanic Verses

In 2006, during a visit to Al-Azhar University in Cairo, King Charles criticized the publication of Danish cartoons a year earlier, which mocked the Prophet Muhammad, may God bless him and grant him peace.

"The true mark of a civilized society is the respect it pays to minorities and strangers. The horrific conflict and recent anger over Danish cartoons shows the danger that comes from our failure to listen and respect what is precious and sacred to others," he said.

This was not the first time that the former emir was said to contribute to a debate on Islam and freedom of expression in the West.

In 2014, author Martin Amis told Vanity Fair that he had discussed with Charles his apparent refusal to support Salman Rushdie after a fatwa was issued against him following the publication of The Satanic Verses.

Ames claimed that Charles told him he would not provide support "if one person insults another person's deepest convictions".

Islam and the West

Charles spoke of the West's need to better understand Islam, particularly during his much-cited October 1993 speech.

"If there is a lot of misunderstanding in the West about the nature of Islam, there is also a lot of ignorance of what our culture and civilization owe to the Islamic world," he said.

"It is a failure that stems, I believe, from the shackles of history we have inherited," he said at the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies nearly three decades ago.

He said that Islam "maintained a metaphysical and unifying view of ourselves and the world around us", which the West lost after the Scientific Revolution.

He also called on people to resist the temptation to associate extremism with Islam and "we should not be inclined to think that extremism is in some way the distinguishing and intrinsic characteristic of a Muslim. He said that extremism is no more the monopoly of Islam than it is a monopoly of other religions, including Christianity. The vast majority of Muslims - although Their personal religiosity - they are moderate in their politics. Their religion is the religion of the middle way, and the Prophet himself always hated and feared extremism."

Islamic Finance

In a 2013 speech to the World Islamic Economic Forum in London, Charles III demonstrated a detailed knowledge of Islamic finance, and the benefits he believed it could bring to global financial markets.

“It is certainly a good idea to explore how the inherent ethos of Islam’s ethical economics can enable a fair and ethical approach to systemic risk management in economics, business and finance,” he said. "Lenders who share the borrower's risk, the concept of Mudarabah sharing the profits. This is quite different from the way traditional finance transfers risk quickly and frequently to someone else who makes a profit in only one direction."

He went on to use the Islamic concept of usury to comment on the fair consumption of natural resources.

“I suppose that if the Qur’an’s strict prohibition of usury were to be applied to the economic system prevailing at the present time, the debt that we would actually leave to future generations due to the exhaustion of the natural capital of the earth would certainly be usurious and totally unacceptable.”

"This is why financial and business organizations that adhere to the principles firmly rooted in Islam can be instrumental in crafting a more ethical approach that leads to just outcomes."

The influence of Muslims on the world

Charles III repeatedly noted the contribution of Muslims to science, art, and academic fields.

He said at Al-Azhar University in 2006, "We must remember that we in the West are indebted to the scholars of Islam. It was thanks to them that the treasures of classical learning kept alive during the dark ages of Europe."

And he said 3 years earlier at the Markfield Institute of Higher Education in Leicestershire, commenting on Islam's contribution to mathematics, "Anyone who doubts the contribution of Islam and Muslims to the European Renaissance - as an exercise - should try to do some simple arithmetic using Roman numerals. Thank God for numbers. Arabic and the concept of zero introduced by Muslim mathematicians into European thought.

In his famous speech in 1993, he spoke of progress in the field of women's rights in Muslim countries before what happened in some Western countries.

"Islamic countries like Turkey, Egypt and Syria gave women the right to vote as early as Europe did for their women and much earlier in Switzerland! Women in these countries have long enjoyed equal pay, and the opportunity to play a full working role in their societies," he said.