Enjoying Good and Forbidding Wrong (Nana Firman)
Enjoying Good and Forbidding Wrong[1]
By Nana Firman, USA/Indonesia
[1] inspired by Qur'an 3:104
Contemplating Nature
Nature stores divine knowledge that requires profound exploration. Nature is not an empty reality, with no meaning for humans, nor merely an accessory in this world. Nature is a medium for humans to know their Creator.
Through the spiritual dimension, nature allows humans to live spiritually and be able to live the totality of God’s existence through nature. One of these dimensions can be formed by changing the human paradigm in viewing nature not just as a medium that can be exploited, but as a spiritual means to get to know God. In fact, plants, animals, and the natural world are sentient beings, they have the capacity to have feelings or senses. They have their own consciousness, such as tasbih (glorification of God) by performing constant dhikr (remembrance of God) that constantly glorifies the Creator.
In Islam, all God’s creations are venerated because they are mirroring the beautiful names of God. Therefore, they also have their own rights and must be treated with respect. In that respect, human beings can interact with God through the natural surroundings.
“There is no creature moving on the earth, nor a bird flying on its two wings, but they are all communities like you. We have not missed anything in the Book. Then, to their Lord all of them shall be gathered” (Qur’an 6:38).
Humans are part of nature
Despite our deep connection with the rest of nature, modern (Western) thinking, and actions, including policymaking, treat humans and the rest of nature as two separate, distinct, and independent spheres. Consequently, this separation is central to the deep ecological crises that the world is facing today, manifesting most strongly in human-made global warming and in the dramatic loss of biological diversity.
In the last 20 years or so, we have noticed more heatwaves, storms, and other severe weather events. The increase in wildfires, droughts, tornadoes, and hurricanes is directly related to our oceans rising, which is, in turn, directly related to the increase of global temperatures. Higher temperatures result in faster evaporation of water. When there is more water vapor in the atmosphere, we experience more frequent, more torrential storms. The increase in global temperatures will be catastrophic to the beautiful green planet we call home. This dramatic increase in rising global temperatures is exactly why we need to make some serious changes now. And if we have children, grandchildren, or plan to start a family, the changes that we make right now can help improve the quality of life for future generations and hopefully in saving the planet.
Both climate change and the current mass extinction will deeply affect human societies because we cannot escape from these massive disturbances. Often, we acknowledge that the main influences on the earth’s climate are both natural and anthropogenic (human-induced).
In that regard, today, some scholars say the problem is that the term “anthropocene” assumes the climate crisis is caused by universal human nature, rather than the actions of a minority of colonialists, capitalists, and patriarchs. And the implication that the earth was stable until around 1950 when the “anthropocene” supposedly began, denies the history of people who have been exploited by those systems for centuries. Indigenous scholars have further addressed how the term stands for colonialist ideologies that sever the deep ties and interconnections between humans, plants, animals, and the soil. Instead of treating the earth like a precious entity that gives us life, Western colonial legacies operate within a paradigm that assumes they can extract its natural resources as much as they want, and the earth will regenerate itself.
Astoundingly, for the first time in more than three decades since its inception, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) mentioned the term “colonialism” in its 2022 report. Leading climate scientists acknowledged that colonialism is a historic and ongoing driver of the climate crisis. Colonialism was motivated by the promise of plundering the environment and subjugating populations. And the pervasive and persistent institutions of colonialism make it far more challenging to address the climate crisis and implement solutions, especially in a just and equitable way.
Various proposals to decolonize the humanities had already long been underway when environmental humanities announced its beginning, which has only been in recent years. When afforded the power to intervene intellectually, something beyond merely superficial inclusion, perspectives from Islamic studies advance this new cluster of disciplines constructively. Moreover, Islam decenters spoken and unspoken assumptions about the role of religion in humanistic understandings of whatever is said to be the environment. Muslim environmentalism may shift the foundation of humanistic fields even further with respect to ultimate concerns, like ecological degradation and climate crisis.
Islam remains an enormous source of cultural, moral, and political influence in many Muslim-majority nations.
Over the past decade, a select number of Muslim leaders and activists around the globe and governments in some Muslim-majority countries have begun to address the climate crisis, with notable leadership from Muslims in a variety of positions in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Morocco, Jordan, Pakistan, Turkiye, Nigeria, East and Southern Africa, Canada, the UK, and the US. These leaders together have the potential to accelerate Muslim action on climate change by creating a vision and narratives and by generating pressure that Muslim-majority, oil-producing states can no longer ignore. And in response to the climate crisis, around the globe, an increasingly influential movement has emerged and has begun to wield cultural and political influence through the Islamic Declaration on Global Climate Change. And currently, the world’s energy transition, albeit decades behind schedule in terms of avoiding serious climate change impacts, is slowly underway in many countries.
Water resources, Arusha, Tanzania (photo by Rev Michael Malcom)
What is Climate Justice?
Climate change is a significant global issue that affects every living creature on Earth. The impacts of climate change can be seen through extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and changes in ecosystems. The effects of climate change can lead to environmental degradation, food and water insecurity, and socio-economic instability. Climate change also presents a severe ethical challenge, forcing us to confront difficult questions as individual moral agents as people of faith, and even more so as members of larger political systems, in many parts of the world. It is genuinely global with direct local impacts, seriously intergenerational impacts, and crossing species boundaries. Any action on climate change confronts serious ethical issues of fairness and responsibility across individuals, societies, nations, generations, and the rest of nature. Climate change is one of the most challenging issues facing the world today.
Subsequently, climate justice is the intersection of environmentalism and social justice. It describes how climate change disproportionately harms low-income communities and colonized communities around the world. These are the people, communities, and countries least responsible for the crisis we face. They suffer climate change’s worst impacts: floods, fires, droughts and the resulting displacement, loss of livelihood, disease, injury, poverty, and death. The plants, animals, and wild places of the world suffer, too.
The climate justice movement recognizes that the climate emergency exacerbates and is intertwined with many other cruel systems of oppression, including poverty, political exploitation, racism, misogyny, homophobia, and colonization. These forces are rooted in the misuse or abuse of power, people, and the planet by extractive industries, financial institutions, ineffective or corrupt governments, and harmful cultural forces, usually originating in the global North.
Only changes in these systems and industries that are organized by social movements will address the root causes of climate change at the necessary scale and depth.
Rainforest, Arusha, Tanzania (photo by Rev Michael Malcom)
What does Islam teach?
In addition to all well-grounded concerns, climate change is creating an emotional toll which weighs on the hearts of more and more people. It’s easy, feeling doom crowds out a realization that there are pathways to a better future, that the climate movement is growing in strength and sophistication, and we must meet today’s obstacles empowered by a recognition that many social movements enjoy breakthrough milestones only after long, challenging struggles.
Thus, we can say that the current status of our earth, the climate crisis along with the ecological degradation (crises), is considered a moral and ethical crisis. With that in mind, now more than ever is the time for faith-based leaders and communities to use their ability to shape the cultural landscape and to mobilize large numbers of people of good will toward a sustainable future. And Muslims share a fundamental belief that all living beings are sacred. And our duty as human inhabitants of the Earth is to be stewards. Growing frustration must be met not by despair or apathy but by moral-political imagination accompanied by an increase in engagement from religious leaders and communities, worldwide.
We must cultivate good for all people and for all of God’s creations.
· Tawhid
Tawhid is the fundamental statement of the oneness of the Creator, from which everything else follows. It is the primordial testimony to the unity of all creation and to the interdependence of the natural order of which humanity is an intrinsic part. The whole of creation – being the work of one Originator – works within a defined pattern.
· Khalifah
Humans assume the role of stewards or trustees (khalifah) on Earth. This means that God has entrusted humans with responsibility for creation and has entrusted the Earth to humans, the Earth which God has put at their service. In other words, although humankind is not the owner or lord of the Earth – a position that is reserved for God – it nevertheless has an important place in the order of creation. The Islamic environmental movement calls on humankind to assume the role of the steward and to stop subjugating Nature to itself.
· Amanah
Very closely linked to the doctrine of khalifah is the doctrine of amanah, which stands for the fulfillment of responsibility in all dimensions of life. It is about the responsibility inherent in the role of steward, the responsibility that humankind assumed when God offered it to humans. The section of the Qur’an that is often cited in this case describes how God offered this responsibility to the heavens, the earth, and the mountains, but they refused, because they were afraid to take this responsibility upon themselves.
· Mizan
Mizan means balance, equilibrium, or scales. In Islamic environmental ethics it is translated as 'ecological balance' or 'a middle way'. This principle calls for the conservation or the restoration of balance on Earth, both in terms of harmony within Nature and in terms of the field of human justice and morality in day-to-day dealings. God created the Earth and everything in it as perfect, free from fault, and in balance. However, it is the task of human beings to keep it that way. In the opinion of Muslim eco-theologians, problems such as global warming, earthquakes, and rising sea levels are evidence that the Earth is no longer in divine balance.
· Fitrah
Fitrah is understood to mean the original state of creation or the original nature of things. First and foremost, this comprises the natural state of humans in harmony with nature. From this is derived the necessity that humankind protects the environment and its obligation to do so.
A call to act
A commitment to climate justice requires examining a number of relevant themes which stem from Islamic teachings to draw together basic principles of an Islamic environmental ethic that will be used to explain and derive meaning from the processes and impacts associated with climate change, as viewed from within the faith. This examination will be followed by a discussion on the value of some basic principles inherent in an Islamic approach to economics, contrasted with those prevalent in the economic system that dominates our current time. This will then attempt to uncover what forms an Islamic response to climate change might take, with particular attention given to how Muslims might engage with the climate issue and participate in building a social movement for climate justice, with the intention being to point to constructive avenues of expression and thus draw out more of the potential that society has, to collectively engage with this global and pressing challenge. This movement has the moral power to change the systems behind the crisis both as farḍ al-'ayn (an individual duty) and fard al-kifayah (communal obligation). Together, we rise up to hold fossil fuel and extractive corporations, financial institutions, and governments accountable for the climate emergency.
There is an urgent need to develop capacity building on the Islamic approach to climate justice for all levels, to have a clear understanding in the current science and politics of climate change, while also exploring the teaching of Islam regarding Muslim’s responsibility to protect the planet. And we know the solutions, by eliminating fossil fuels usage, along with stopping deforestation, a surge in clean energy transition and green jobs.
Climate change’s impacts are visible everywhere. Now, it’s time to engage in problem-solving exercises from local or national case studies, using the Islamic teaching and traditions lens to find potential interventions, locally, nationally, regionally, and/or globally, including taking real actions and/or collaborating with partners and networks. While changing our hearts and minds is also part of the just transition, we call for today. We are also in transition. We will get involved directly with our hands and our feet. Such will energize Muslims in different parts of the world to take real actions in combating climate change, including the phase-out of fossil fuels, and ensuring a just transition and universal access to clean energy for all.
Finally, as humans, we are merely temporary travelers on this Earth. Thus, we should leave this Earth better than we received it, “by walking gently on this Earth” (Qur’an 25:63) – meaning that we don’t destroy nor pollute the land and the sea while living in this world. So, we don’t leave it as a burden for future generations to come. And we must make the transition from desecration to a more sustainable future, which is in line with Islamic teachings and values of ‘adl (justice) and rahma (compassion) for the people and the planet.
Nana on a nature walk, New York City, USA
Other resources:
Islamic Declaration on Climate Change: https://unfccc.int/news/islamic-declaration-on-climate-change
Beach clean up, San Diego, California, USA
Nana Firman is the founder of Eco-Fab Living and initiator of the Eco-Hijrah Movement. She is a senior ambassador of GreenFaith’s, an interfaith coalition for the environment and a student of Bayan Islamic Graduate School. Originally from Indonesia, Firman now lives in California.
Thanks for reading. This article is part of our collection, A Climate Transition Supported by Faith: from the voices of Islamic and Indigenous women, edited by Rev. Dr. Neddy Astudillo. Check that collection for more. Visit our email list, podcasts and YouTube channel for more content. Sign up for our quarterly emails here.
###
