Al-Jazeerah History
Archives
Mission & Name
Conflict Terminology
Editorials
Gaza Holocaust
Gulf War
Isdood
Islam
News
News Photos
Opinion
Editorials
US Foreign Policy (Dr. El-Najjar's Articles)
www.aljazeerah.info
|
|
Ecology and Islam:
A Review of Ibrahim Abdul-Matin's "Green Deen"
By Eric Walberg
Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, January 16, 2011
Muslim Americans are slowly beginning to make their mark on
their conflicted society. There are more Muslims than Jews in the US now
--approximately 5 million. They are the most diverse of all American
believers, 35 per cent born in the US (25 per cent Afro-American), the rest
-- immigrants from southeast Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Traditionally
they have voted Republican, but have shifted to Democrat and Green parties
in recent years. Ibrahim Abdul-Matin is the son of black converts,
raised in New York, a community organiser now environmental adviser to New
York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. His book about Islam and the environment --
Green Deen (2010) -- is a stimulating overview of both the US environmental
movement and how American Muslims are becoming part of it, bringing their
own unique perspective. Abdul-Matin sees the weakness of the
environmental movement today in its secular, legalist approach to problems:
pass enough laws and you can curb the negative practices of business and
consumers, and push them along an environmentally-friendly path. But
this, as he shows here, is not enough. He interprets Islam's focus on One
Creator as giving "humankind the opportunity to be one and to have a common
purpose", to bring back ethical principles into our daily lives. He points
to six principles which underlie Islam and shows how they relate to our
relationship to the environment: *understanding the Oneness of God and
His creation (tawhid); *seeing signs of God (ayat) everywhere;
*being a steward (khalifah) of the Earth; *honouring the trust we have
with God (amana) to be protectors of the planet; *moving toward justice
(adl); and *living in balance with nature (mizan). Deen or din,
meaning religion in Arabic, is used in the Quran to refer both to the path
along which righteous Muslims travel to comply with divine law (Sharia) and
divine judgment or recompense, which all humanity must inevitably face --
without intercessors -- before God. The word probably derives from the
Persian Zoroastrian concept Daena -- insight, the Eternal Law. In Hebrew din
means law or judgment. In Islam, the word implies an all-encompassing way of
life lived in accordance with God's divine purpose as expressed in the Quran
and hadith. The author recalls a moving childhood experience,
hiking on Bear Mountain near New York, his first time in the wilds. He
watched as his father cleared a spot in the forest to pray, explaining to
him, "The Earth is a mosque." He considered other religions as a youth but
reaffirmed his father's decision to follow the deen, "a living tradition
that is spiritually nourishing and intellectually coherent". For
Abdul-Matin, there is no conflict between religion and science - - humans
are the best of God's creation, and, as stewards blessed with intelligence
and reason, have a responsibility towards the rest of God's creation. He
points to the verse, "Corruption has appeared on the land and in the sea
because of what the hands of humans have wrought," as proof that God warned
people about their possible harmful impact on the planet, "a taste of the
consequences of their misdeeds that perhaps they will turn to the path of
right guidance". (Quran 30:41) In this sura, The Romans, God warns humanity
not to disturb the balance of Nature. Green Deen is a refreshing mix
of theory and practice. Concern for mizan translates as: "Where does your
trash come from? Where does it go? How can you be actively involved in
making the world a cleaner, less toxic place?" Ayat are everywhere:
"He has made subject to you the sun and the moon, both diligently following
their courses; and the Night and the Day." (Quran 14:32-3) While a hardnosed
scientist might dismiss this as poetic license, the author interprets these
ayat as indeed serving us every day, allowing us to travel, giving us heat
and light, time to sleep and time to work. "To everything there is a season"
is Ecclesiastes' expression of this truth. Stop using "energy from
hell" -- coal and oil, the latter associated with today's wars, both
devastating in their ecological footprint, and betraying both khalifa and
amana. Use "energy from heaven" -- solar power, wind energy. He could have
mentioned woodchips, which can be burned efficiently and are bi-products,
"waste", from manufacture. (For a khalifah, there is no such thing as
waste). For someone with a more secular worldview, all this is
still very relevant. In the past two centuries, science has reduced to the
lifeless pursuit of technology. There is no poetry in this, only money and
novelty. It is the very poetry of the Quran, this quaintness of the belief
that Nature was made subject to humans, that is what is necessary for
leading us to any change towards reincorporating morality into our lives,
whether religious or secular, given our disconnect with Nature. The
author gives a brief overview of the development of ecological awareness,
starting with the conservation president Theodore Roosevelt, who in some
sense recognised his role as khalifah, and set up the system of national
parks at the beginning of the twentieth century, making humans' relationship
to Nature part of America's political dialogue. The next step forward was
not until the 1950s, when the American Dream, which captured the world's
imagination, was accompanied by a sudden sharp decline in bird populations
and an equally sharp rise in cancer rates. The realisation that
growth was not without "external economies" started a popular movement to
regulate toxic chemicals. In the 1960s, the civil rights movement empowered
marginalised communities to build on this foundation. Now, the generalised
problem of global warming demands that everyone should transform their
lifestyles, as we are all "marginalised" communities now. These
developments reflect the six principles of a Green Deen. "The environmental
movement can be seen as an attempt to restore balance and justice to the
Earth after the environmental destruction caused by overconsumption," itself
the result of an obsession with creating, producing, finding self-worth in
consuming. This is the heart of the problem for the author, a
result of our 20th- century economic systems -- both capitalist and
socialist, the author claims -- which reduce us to units of production. "We
become relevant only by what we can create." In contrast, Islam teaches that
"we come with intrinsic value. We are also an ayat of Allah" and "do not
need to consume or create to have worth." *** The author's analysis
breaks down at this point. He is limited in what he can say, given American
biases. Damning socialism along with capitalism is a typical American
cop-out, but socialism was the secular attempt to reintroduce morality into
the economy, to fulfill the six principles that underlie Islam -- minus God.
Socialism never had the chance to deal with the dilemma of
overconsumption; the system, as identified with the Soviet Union, never had
the luxury of luxury, always fighting for survival in the face of the more
powerful capitalist world. Cuba is the only remnant of that socialist
experiment and has a much better environmental record than the West. Abdul-Matin
makes no mention of its secular attempts to find mizan though they are
encouraging and follow his by now standard recommendations: urban market
gardens, solar energy, bicycling and walking, but above all, making do with
less. Islam has a lot in common with socialism, a comparison Abdul-
Matin implicitly makes in the principle of adl -- social justice. Umm
Kholthum boldly referred to the Prophet Mohamed as "the imam of socialism".
The Prophet's wife Aisha related that, "He himself removed the lice from his
clothing, milked his goats, and did all his work himself." No need to
exploit others to fulfill your needs. The author can't hide his own
socialist leanings entirely -- green jobs (minimising inputs, producing
durable, environmentally friendly outputs) must be linked to adl -- justice
and equality -- or they will just perpetuate the current inequalities. Water
should not be sold for profit. The famous hadith about Uthman buying the
Ruma Well and making it waste-free, responding to the Prophet's call, is
recounted. The author also skirts around the issue of
neocolonialism, considering the colonies liberated in the 20th century as
"postcolonial", though suffering from the "economic control of large
corporations". More tip-toeing through the US ideological minefield: America
as the imperial ogre, the big waster, wreaking havoc around the world, does
not make an appearance. Nor does the world's worst polluter -- the US
military. Watch Avatar, set far into the future, to see that there is
nothing "post" about so-called postcolonialism. Traditional
societies were not overconsumers. Their no-brainer philosophy was Eat in
order to live, not Live in order to eat, as we do today. The Western disdain
for the "primitive" inherently dismisses their natural wisdom.
Abdul-Matin's defence of Islam implicitly asserts this wisdom, which is not
unique to Islam. However, due to Islam's care to conserve the original
message of 15 centuries ago, it has not been erased, as it has from the
other monotheisms, so successfully incorporated into the modern world. He
provides a fascinating example of how Islam can be practised in the modern
world in new ways. A Muslim community in Chiapas, Mexico lives off the grid,
with organic farms, few cars, solar panels made of scrap metal, sun-drying
their fruit. They have rediscovered how relevant "backward" ways of living
are to today's needs, giving "civilisation" a new meaning. The root
of the problem is not just overconsumption, but the colonisation of the
world, which destroyed -- and destroys -- cultures based on religion with
its moral truths and respect for nature. Instead of "What is a just price?"
the question is "What can I get away with?" This negative freedom (freedom
to do anything subject to constraints) has taken the place of positive
freedom (freedom as defined by an understanding and willingness to follow a
path in accord with divine law), as embodied in religion. The
various stages in environmental awareness in the West have tried to overcome
this by regulations, the result of popular resistance -- both community- and
religious-based movements. The next step forward, according to the author,
is an environmental justice movement, which he says is slowly coming about
"as a response to the disconnection between people and planet" and which
must incorporate the principles he outlines. The author enthuses
about the "smart grid" and other self-regulating systems, which use computer
monitoring and feedback to adjust the various components in environmental
systems (temperature, air quality, energy use) given the situation and
needs. That is all well and good. But aren't we still just consumers, even
if more careful about our footprints? The author's intrinsic bias is
still lifestyle-related: consume responsibly, but consume. Don't rock the
boat. Nowhere does the author address the economic mechanism that lies
behind colonialism and its tendency to overconsume -- the maximizing of the
surplus we produce, profits -- whether or not we need this material excess.
As long as we put profit on a pedestal, we are slaves to the destructive
logic undermining the ecological balance. "Let there be no change in
the work wrought by Allah: that is the true Religion. But most among mankind
understand not." (Quran 30:30) That ayat calls for us to minimise the
surplus we extract from Nature in the form of profits. "Leave well enough
alone." As scientists of the economy and Nature do, we should maximise
something worthwhile, like efficiency of production, green jobs, renewable
energy use, clean air. In his care not to tread on capitalist-crazed
American toes, the author misses the startling and highly relevant insight
that Islam has for us: to seek balance, minimise consumption. That
is the hidden truth here, for both Muslims and non-Muslims, religious and
secular minds alike. We are witnessing today environmental heedlessness in
Westernised Muslim societies like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.
In Cairo the choking exhaust fumes, the casually disposed-of garbage on
streets, the unthinking use and discarding of "free" plastic bags, the
misuse of water -- this behaviour surprises foreigners, already more
"environmentally aware". Sadly, Muslims are today "catching up" in the
negative sense. By abandoning socialism, embracing Western
neoliberalism, Egypt lost what little (socialist, anti-imperialist) morality
there was that held society together, morality which found deep and
heart-felt response in the common people. True, Egypt's socialist experiment
was flawed. It suffered from paranoia -- how to maintain power in the face
of both Western Cold War intrigues and the difficulty of incorporating the
greater truths of Islam in a largely secular movement -- which eventually
defeated it. There was no easy path to tread. Socialism's professed secular
nature was a stumbling block that eventually brought it down.
Perhaps the new awareness Abdul-Matin points to, sparked by the
environmental movement in the West, will indeed find inspiration in Islam;
and East and West will work together to revive the patient. A similar
coming-together of activists in the West and the Muslim world is now trying
to cure the other poison infecting the Middle East -- Israel's refusal to
come to its senses and make peace with its neighbours. Westerners concerned
with adl are finding eager allies in Muslims, who need no convincing about
the evils of colonialism when it comes to Greater Israel. For both East and
West, realising that the mentality behind colonialism also lies behind the
ecological crisis is the real next step forward. The author
imagines another electricity blackout as happened most recently in 2003, and
imagines houses of worship off the grid, "shining beacons of light in a sea
of darkness".
http://ericwalberg.com/
|
|
|