Religion & Ecology
July 2010
Banner photo: Alpine Flowers and Cloud Reflection, Colorado [© Carr Clifton]
Reviving Traditions of Stewardship
Fazlun Khalid is founder and director of the Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Sciences in Birmingham, UK. He is recognized as one of the foremost experts on ecology from the Islamic perspective. He believes that Islamic teaching offers an opportunity to understand the natural order and to define human responsibility within it, and has described environmental protection as a form of worship. He has worked as the director of training at the Alliance of Religions and Conservation and served as a consultant for the World Wildlife Fund.
SGI Quarterly: What experiences led you to become involved in environmental activism?
Fazlun Khalid: In the 60s and 70s, I became aware of the threats being posed to the natural habitat by human activity. Being someone of a political inclination, I began to question what was happening in the name of progress and development. Increasing economic activity in the modern sense ultimately destroys the natural world, which we are intrinsically a part of and dependent on.
At the same time I was concerned with what Muslims were offering to mitigate the damage to the planet caused by human activity, and in the absence of satisfactory responses, I ended up going to university again, quite late in life, to research Islamic texts and scriptures concerning environmental ethics.
SGIQ: In what way are the ethics of Islam in keeping with the environmental agenda?
FK: The Qur'an describes the natural world and the place and role of the human species within it. But this understanding has been lost with the emergence of a secular worldview based on economic domination of the planet.
My second crack at going to university proved to be quite fruitful. I made the encouraging discovery that Islam is inherently environmental. The challenge, however, was to convey this accessibly in the modern context--to extract the environmental teachings in the texts and present them in a quickly digestible form.
Marine conservation areas set up in Zanzibar according to Islamic ethical codes have helped put an end to unsustainable fishing methods such as blasting [© Uniphoto]
I decided to call this teaching Knowledge of Creation (Ilm ul Khalq in the Arabic) and chose to present it under four principles. The first is the unity principle (tawhid): It teaches that creation--the universe, planet Earth and all living species including people--is all one. This is embodied in the verse in the Qur'an that describes the Creator as the one who encompasses the whole of his creation. Everything one touches, hears, sees and smells is interconnected. And there is another verse that describes everything in creation as being of a matter that is greater than the creation of humankind--even an ant. This puts us in our place.
The second principle is the principle of primal reality (fitra): No matter how technologically advanced we may be, the planet still continues to work on primordially established principles which cannot be changed. It is very simply articulated in the Qur'an thus: God first created the conditions for life on Earth and then created the human in the womb of His creation; this cannot be changed, and this has yet to be understood.
The third is the principle of balance (mizan). This conveys the idea that Earth systems are in balance. The Qur'an teaches how the plants and the trees and everything on the Earth prostrate themselves in front of the Creator. It is intended to mean that they have been created for a purpose, which they carry out by being what they are. For example, trees absorb excessive polluting carbon dioxide, they provide homes for birds, their roots prevent soil erosion, and so on. The whole of creation is in a state of dynamic balance that has made it possible for life to emerge and continue to thrive.
The fourth principle (khalifa) is the principle of stewardship, which I call the responsibility principle. Having ordered creation, the Creator gave humans intelligence and assigned them the role of steward. Life on this Earth is then a test of one's behavior, of how one treats the planet and other sentient beings in it.
This method that I have devised is only a beginning, and I think it goes to the root of the issues we should be taking seriously. Now it is up to the Islamic scholars to widen this teaching.
Principles in Practice
What we have been discussing is the ethical basis of Islamic environmentalism. But Islam also provides guidelines concerning the practical applications of these principles. This practical stream, which is now being developed particularly in Indonesia, is coming to be known as Fiqh al Bi'a, that is, jurisprudence on the environment.
Children attend a workshop at an environmental awareness center in Cairo, Egypt [© Shehzad Noorani/Majority World/Specialist Stock]
There is a great deal in the texts and the traditions about this. For example, we set up a marine conservation zone in Zanzibar, and zones of this type are described as hemas. These are protected areas that can be set up by the local community, or the state or the regional government. In Indonesia we are working on ways to create hemas out of large tracts of national forest. These will have more than symbolic value for the local people as they will be responsible to care for them.
There are other institutions, like the harim, which is a system created for the protection of watercourses, for example by prohibiting the felling of trees, grazing of animals or any kind of building on the banks of a river.
There is much more in the Islamic tradition, and our task is to extract this knowledge from the texts, bring this to prominence in the Muslim world and apply it to real-life practical situations.
SGIQ: Do you think this can show some people a side of Islam they might not have known?
FK: I would hate to think that Muslims are going to get involved in environmental issues to demonstrate that they are goodies, or as an apology for being Muslims. I do it because it is my faith and it is my responsibility as a human being, and for no other reason.
If people in one corner of the world plant a tree, people in other corners of the world benefit--whether we are Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Jew or Muslim, it doesn't really matter, and the fact is we're doing something positive.
SGIQ: What do you hope for over the next 20 or 30 years?
FK: Raising of awareness; especially about the possibility of the negative legacy we could be leaving future generations. The desire to be part of the solution has to come from people's hearts. This kind of concern for the planet and for future generations can only come from a moral perspective based on religious teaching.
We also need to realize that chasing after endlessly increasing standards of living is one of the root causes of environmental problems. The dominant paradigm of our age is economics. Where is the spirit, the heart, the soul? We have to develop these aspects of our lives, and we need to have recourse to the teachings of our faiths to do this. Once people have an understanding of these deeper dimensions of existence, they will change things for the better themselves.
SGIQ: So in a sense we need a revival of faith . . .
FK: Of faith and hope, and less dependence on the material world. People in the West have everything, and the discontent here is all pervasive. Yet you go to any poor area in the world and you see smiles and contentment. If there is an awareness of the spiritual dimension--which teaches you limits; which tells you how far you can go and how far you need to go; which teaches you to care for your neighbor and to care for things outside of yourself--we could be on the road to some kind of recovery. We need to recover the dimension that is going to give us contentment.
I think what faith can teach one is unselfishness. And if that very strong lesson is absorbed and we move away from our very selfish consumer culture, that in itself could bring about profound changes.
