Marx didn't live to comment on Gaia, but he in fact commented on Islam, not in a Hegelian fashion but in a journalistic fashion, not so much about what Islam meant to Muslims as about how the Islamic government of the Ottoman Empire was run and its relation to the British and Russian empires, for instance in the context of analyzing the Crimean War. He takes note of a conundrum familiar to us today, too: replace Russia by America, and Turkey by Iran, and some of the old Russian pretexts, such as the protection of minorities, sound similar to today's American ones.
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/07/14.htm> Karl Marx in New York Daily Tribune Russian Policy Against Turkey.— Chartism London, Friday, July 1, 1853
Since the year 1815 the Great Powers of Europe have feared nothing so much as an infraction of the _status quo_. But any war between any two of those powers implies subversion of that _status quo_. That is the reason why Russia's encroachments in the East have been tolerated, and why she has never been asked for anything in return but to afford some pretext, however absurd, to the Western powers, for remaining neutral, and for being saved the necessity of interfering with Russian aggressions. Russia has all along been glorified for the forbearance and generosity of her "august master," who has not only condescended to cover the naked and shameful subserviency of Western Cabinets, but has displayed the magnanimity of devouring Turkey piece after piece, instead of swallowing it at a mouthful. Russian diplomacy has thus rested on the timidity of Western statesmen, and her diplomatic art has gradually sunk into so complete a _mannerism_, that you may trace the history of the present transactions almost literally in the annals of the past.
The hollowness of the new pretexts of Russia is apparent, after the Sultan [Abdul Mejid] has granted, in his new firman to the Patriarch of Constantinople [Germanos] more than the Czar himself had asked for -- so far as religion goes. Now was, perhaps, the "pacification of Greece" [1] a more solid pretext?
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1854/03/28.htm> Karl Marx in New-York Herald Tribune 1854 Declaration of War. – On the History of the Eastern Question London, Tuesday, March 28, 1854
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It is evident from this exposé that this fabric of theocracy over the Greek Christians of Turkey, and the whole structure of their society, has its keystone in the subjection of the rayah under the Koran, which, in its turn, by treating them as infidels — i.e., as a nation only in a religious sense — sanctioned the combined spiritual and temporal power of their priests. Then, if you abolish their subjection under the Koran by a civil emancipation, you cancel at the same time their subjection to the clergy, and provoke a revolution in their social, political and religious relations, which, in the first instance, must inevitably hand them over to Russia.
-- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>