The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

environment

Islamic environmentalism generally finds its inspiration in three main theological concepts. First, the unity of God (tawḥīd) as Creator implies that all creation is one. All creatures are equal in this regard and worthy of protection, whether humans, animals, or the physical environment. Second, in the Qur’an humankind is called to be God’s trustee (khalīfa) on Earth, and thus is accountable to manage equitably and responsibly the Earth’s bountiful resources. Finally, a number of sayings (hadith) of the Prophet Muhammad enjoin kindness to animals, preservation of natural resources (especially water), and their fair distribution among all.

The environmental anxieties that gripped the Western world in the 1960s also sparked some soul-searching in religious circles. Just a few months before the publication of Lynn White’s groundbreaking essay indicting monotheism—chiefly Christianity—as the cause of the ecological crisis, Seyyed Hossein Nasr published Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man. Nasr’s adherence to the philosophy of Frithjof Schuon that all religions derive from the same absolute source limited his influence somewhat, and his concerns were more theoretical than practical.

Since the early 1990s, perhaps the two most influential Muslim environmentalists have been Mawil Izzi Dien and Fazlun Khalid, both British. Izzi Dien was one of six Muslim ecologists to be commissioned in 1983 by Saudi Arabia to write a short treatise on Islamic principles of environmental conservation. As he later noted with regret, little of that wisdom was ever implemented in government policy. Besides his participation in international forums, Izzi Dien wrote the first monograph—with the exception of Nasr—on Islam and ecology, The Environmental Dimensions of Islam. Khalid, for his part, is the first Muslim environmental activist with a global reach. In 1994, he founded the Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Sciences (IFEES), which launched projects in the United Kingdom and several Muslim-majority countries. Perhaps the best known of these was a successful 2005 wildlife preservation campaign in the Zanzibar archipelago aiming to stop fishermen from using dynamite. The IFEES also developed a research center; a database to exchange information with other similar organizations; and an educational wing that publishes articles, books, and a biannual newsletter.

Many other Muslim scholars have weighed in since the 1990s, as Richard C. Foltz’s bibliography on Islam and ecology indicates, and new local initiatives have continued to appear on the Internet. But as Foltz notes, although several Muslim countries have state-sponsored environmental programs, they are poorly implemented and take a back seat to the priorities of economic development and the alleviation of poverty.

Another challenge is how to educate the mostly pious masses about the urgency of environmental protection, renewable energy generation, and global warming mitigation. Much of the literature has focused on Islamic principles derived from the Qur’an and sunna, and scholar-activists like Khalid emphasize the shari‘a-compliant nature of their initiatives. Indeed, some of the traditional provisions of Islamic law are being revived, like ḥīma (conservation zones) and ḥārim (inviolable zones, mostly for the protection of water). Yet the contemporary context is so vastly different from that of the medieval period that discourse on “shari‘a” today is more about environmental ethics than classical Sunni or Shi‘i law.

A last challenge concerns the framing of environmental priorities. The contemporary Islamic theology of creation, as in Christian and Jewish circles, is anthropocentric—that is, God mandates humankind to act as his trustees on Earth (the khalīfa principle). This clashes with the more biocentric forms of environmentalism, in which humans have no priority in their rights over animal and plant species.

See also caliph, caliphate