By
Ibrahim Ozdemir
13 August
2020
Many Muslim
majority countries bear the brunt of climate change, but their cultural
awareness of it and climate action are often staggeringly limited.
A movement
of "Islamic environmentalism" based on Islamic tradition - rather
than imported "white saviour" environmentalism based on first-world
political campaigns - can address both. And the post-COVID-19 lull in emissions
is an opportunity to fast-track this.
It is a
movement we sorely need. My home country Turkey, for example, is particularly
vulnerable to the effects of climate change, as temperatures are rising and
rainfall is decreasing year on year, causing serious problems with water
availability. In Bangladesh, it is estimated that by 2050 one in seven will be
displaced by climate change, creating millions of climate refugees. In the
Middle East, large areas are likely to become uninhabitable due to heatwaves
likely to sweep over the region in the next few decades.
Large areas in the Middle East are expected to become uninhabitable due
to frequent heatwaves in the next few decades. File photo, September 2015,
Mecca, Saudi Arabia [Mosa'ab Elshamy/AP Photo]
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However,
despite their vulnerability, many Muslim countries are contributing to the
problem. Indonesia, the most populous Muslim-majority country in the world, is
the world's fifth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and is doing little to
curb emissions. Bangladesh and Pakistan are the two most polluted countries in
the world, but have taken no serious measures to address pollution. Inaction in
the Muslim world persists despite a declaration by Muslim countries in 2015 to
play an active role in combatting climate change.
You would
think that those most affected by climate change would be the most eager to
stop it. This is not always the case. Many Muslim countries are reluctant to
impose Western concepts of environmentalism, or to bow to pressure from
countries which have already gone through industrialisation without having to
address pollution or curb emissions. Environmental colonialism is not the
answer.
What would
work, and has been proven to work, is using the principles of Islam to
encourage conservation in Muslims.
Islam
teaches its followers to take care of the earth. Muslims believe that humans
should act as guardians, or khalifah, of the planet, and that they will be held
accountable by God for their actions. This concept of stewardship is a powerful
one, and was used in the Islamic Declaration on Climate Change to propel change
in environmental policy in Muslim countries.
In fact,
Muslims need to look no further than the Quran for guidance, where there are
approximately 200 verses concerning the environment. Muslims are taught that
"greater indeed than the creation of man is the creation of the heavens
and the earth". The reality is that nothing could be more Islamic than
protecting God's most precious creation: the earth.
It is this
approach that can reach the hearts and minds of the 1.8 billion Muslims around
the world, and it must be integrated with, rather than neglected by, the
climate movement.
The Prophet
Muhammad (pbuh) also demonstrated kindness, care and general good principles
for the treatment of animals, which form a benchmark for Muslims. He outlawed
killing animals for sport, told people not to overload their camels and
donkeys, commanded that slaughtering an animal for food be done with kindness
and consideration for the animal’s feelings and respect for Allah who gave it
life, he even allowed his camel to choose the place where he built his first
mosque in the city of Medina.
A 2013
study in Indonesia showed that including environmentalist messages in Islamic
sermons led to increased public awareness and concern for the environment. In
2014, Indonesia issued a fatwa (or Islamic legal opinion) to require the
country's Muslims to protect endangered species.
There are
also organisations dedicated to using religion to pass on the message of
conservation, such as the Alliance for Religions and Conservation (ARC). One of
its most successful projects used Islamic scholars to convince Tanzanian
fishermen that dynamite, dragnet and spear fishing goes against the Quran - and
they listened.
This case
also tells us that remote, top-down moralising is unlikely to be effective. The
fishermen had previously resisted bans from the government, but were persuaded
once they were told that they were acting un-Islamically. One fisherman said:
"This side of conservation isn't from the mzungu ["white man" in
Swahili], it's from the Quran."
Clearly, we
need to speak the language of those whose behaviour we are seeking to change,
particularly if that language is naturally averse to unsustainable policies.
Some Muslim
thought leaders are aware of this and are eager to develop a
"homegrown" environmental movement to emerge as thought leaders in
their own right. For example, the Dhaka Forum this month ran a panel on
post-COVID-19 environmental issues with the majority of speakers coming from
the Muslim world.
Muslim countries
have a head start in the climate race. They have a framework and a belief
system which mandates protection of the earth and its natural resources. As
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a prominent proponent of the religion and environmentalism
movement, argues, the desacralisation of the West has resulted in an ideology
that humans have dominion over the earth, rather than stewardship of it, which
is the Islamic view.
Muslims
must become guardians of the earth once more, for the sake of their environments
and for the sake of God.
Ibrahim
Ozdemir is a renowned environmentalist and professor of philosophy at Uskudar
University, Turkey.
Original
Headline: What does Islam say about climate change and climate action?
Source: Al-Jazeera
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-environment/muslims-islamic-environmentalist-framework-follow/d/122617