"Far out in space, two planets meet," said Wulandari, glooming with her bright beautiful smile, welcoming the new Hijri year. The stars in the sky exceed millions, and billions of lanterns had been released by humans, but nothing was as beautiful as the cheerful of the moon. Then she carried on, "One planet says to the other planet, 'Well, you look like hell!' The other planet replies, 'I don't feel so good either.'
'What's wrong with you?' asks the first. 'I have homo sapiens!' complains the second. 'Oh, tell me about them,' says the first planet.
The planet says, 'Three homo sapiens are fishing to enjoy the blue Caribbean ocean. One of them says, ‘My house burnt down. I lost everything but the insurance company paid up and that’s why I’m here.’
The second says, ‘My gas station blew up. I lost everything, but the insurance company paid up and that’s why I’m here.’
The third speaks up, ‘My farm suffered a terrible flood. I lost everything, but the insurance company paid up and that’s why I’m here.’
The first turns to him and says, ‘Flood? How the hell do you start a flood?’
The first planet laughs, 'Don't worry about it, I've had them too.'"
"Sometimes, or even often, our deem, Islam, is symbolized in green," Wulandari moved on. "Take a look at the An-Nabawi mosque dome, like a green bell. Green was supposedly our beloved Prophet's (ﷺ) favourite color. There is a hadith in Sahih Al-Bukhari, narrated by 'Aisha, radhiyallahu 'anha, says, 'When Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) died, he (ﷺ) was covered with a Hibra Burd,' which is green square decorated garment. One figure mentioned in the Quran, Al-Khidr, is called the Green one, who symbolizes immortality. This color in Islamic thought is also considered as a symbol of heaven and heavenly beings, prophets and imams while being as a stage of mystical behavior in mysticism and Sufism. Faith, wisdom, youth and vitality, etc. are other symbols of the green color. Green color in romanized Arabic as akhdar, also symbolizes moderation, or a symbol of nature and life. So, wecan interpret this symbol by saying: Muslims live by ethical principles, which guide how they interact with the world. Implementing their relationship with the environment in order to get deeper into Tawhid, paying attention and contemplating the ayaat or signs of Allah everywhere, becoming the caliph of the Earth, honoring the trust or amana that we have with Him to become the protector of this planet, moving towards al-adl or justice, and living in mizaan or balance with nature. Muslims live and practice Islam, while also honoring the environment.
The Environment has become a subject of interest in recent days. Before Darwin. the significance of the Environment was summed up in the word Creation. Since Darwin, Creation has become an obsolete word in scientific circles.
Human beings have been honoured by Allah in many ways: He gave them knowledge of a kind not possessed even by the angels; and made them masters, if not of the whole earth, at least of those creatures and substances that are useful for them.
The Qur'an invites people to think, contemplate and reflect upon the signs and wonders of Allah's creation: how He made the sun and moon a means for people to tell the time, how He made It possible for people to travel by sea, and derive food and transport from certain animals.
The Qur'an encourages human beings to investigate to the limits of their capacity all the phenomena they see about them, to ask questions, but Humans cannot comprehend anything of His knowledge, unless He wills it.
The Qur’an is an ocean, but human intelligence and understanding are strictly limited. As human creatures we are scarcely capable of encompassing all the facets of our religion and giving to each its correct weight. It is inevitable that we did, in the past, emphasise certain aspects of the Faith according to our needs and neglect others. That is to be expected. But this indicates that there is still much of the ocean unexplored. There are in the Qur’an, as also in the Sunnah, elements which are not developed to their logical conclusions because circumstances did not require this. And yet, if we may replace the image of the ocean with a different one, both these sources might be compared to the rocks from which springs gush forth and from which new springs may yet gush forth when times demand this renewal.
This is not 'conquest' of nature by human beings as some would like to think but the subtle observation and use of the ways these things are made—the laws of Allah. What is science but a process of discovery of 'natural laws' so that they can be put to use in the service of mankind? If those 'natural laws' are changed, or different, or even just unpredictably disrupted in some way, human beings are no longer in control of nature, like the ship mentioned in the Qur'an which is tossed by a storm. The people on it only remember Allah when they do not feel in control of the situation, but as soon as they feel safe, they forget about Him again.
Similarly, today we find that disruption in the environment is threatening our control of it and we are startulg to worry, and appreciate the fine balance of 'nature' which we have taken for granted up to now.
Environmentalists point out the many destructive results of human science and its applications in the modern world. Allah says,
ظَهَرَ الْفَسَادُ فِى الْبَرِّ وَالْبَحْرِ بِمَا كَسَبَتْ اَيْدِى النَّاسِ لِيُذِيْقَهُمْ بَعْضَ الَّذِيْ عَمِلُوْا لَعَلَّهُمْ يَرْجِعُوْنَ
'Corruption has appeared throughout the land and sea by [reason of] what the hands of people have earned so He [i.e., Allah] may let them taste part of [the consequence of] what they have done that perhaps they will return [to righteousness].' [QS. Ar-Rum (30):41]
It also shows the right way to interact with the environment. As long as people respect Allah, and the way He has set His creation in order, He will help them. Allah says,
وَلَا تُفْسِدُوْا فِى الْاَرْضِ بَعْدَ اِصْلَاحِهَا وَادْعُوْهُ خَوْفًا وَّطَمَعًاۗ اِنَّ رَحْمَتَ اللّٰهِ قَرِيْبٌ مِّنَ الْمُحْسِنِيْنَ
'And cause not corruption upon the earth after its reformation. And invoke Him in fear and aspiration. Indeed, the mercy of Allāh is near to the doers of good.' [QS. Al-A'raf (7):56]
He, Subhanahu wa Ta'ala, set a measure for everything and set up the Balance or Mizaan. So finely interlinked is this balance that the least action of the least creature can, in theory, make all the difference between, for example, fine weather and a storm. This is called, in chaos theory, the Butterfly Effect. How much more so then do the actions of human beings affect the state of the environment? With this in mind, the 'Balance' in the Qur'an, refers not just to the 'ecological balance' we know today from science. Most often, it means the Balance of Justice which weighs the deeds of human beings, the Balance of Right and Wrong. There is a right way to live and a wrong way. If people follow the instructions given by the Maker, then the balance is maintained, if they go against them, the balance is upset but, as Allah, the Creator, has power over all things, the balance He has created will be restored, at the expense of those who disturb it. It is on their own heads that the results fall.
The Qur'an does not condenm wealth and spending money, in fact it encourages it, so long as it is spent in a good way, the way of Allah. But it does say that wealth should not circulate among the rich and that it should be shared as a right with those not so well off. It encourages enterprise and development of natural resources, but also condenms excessive profit and usury that distort the market.
The person with the best right to own land is the one who cultivates it and makes the desert green. Conversely, as the Qur'an says, the deeds of the unrighteous can be recognised by their destruction of the environment, whatever they may think and declare their intentions to be:
وَاِذَا قِيْلَ لَهُمْ لَا تُفْسِدُوْا فِى الْاَرْضِۙ قَالُوْٓا اِنَّمَا نَحْنُ مُصْلِحُوْنَ
'And when it is said to them, 'Do not cause corruption on the earth,' they say, 'We are but reformers.' [QS. Al-Baqarah (2):11]
The Qur'an condemns those who heap up wealth, believing it will make them live forever; those who. appear to be pious, yet do not help orphans or feed the needy, and refuse to do even small good deeds. These are the people whose callous attitude to Allah's creation and His creatures make then unaware and heedless of the damage they are doing in their quest for wealth. These are the men who cut down huge forests of majestic trees to provide hardwood for office furniture, window-frames, even paper, and pay no attention to restocking the forest; men who fish vast quantities from the sea, heedless of the fact that they are not allowing the ocean’s life to replenish itself; men who oppress people and keep them poor, who force them from their lands, leaving them without any livelihood, and then employ them for low wages on their own land to grow crops for the market to make their employers rich; those who even kill and maim people in order to profit from the land they have stolen. These are the people who cause direct damage to the environment.
Profits should be moderate and fair. Cartels and monopolies, hoarding and any other method of artificially interfering in market prices are banned in Islamic law. The office of consumer protection and market supervision, the muhtasib, was instituted during the khilafah of Umar Ibn al-Khattab (d. 644 CE) to ensure that fair prices and quality control were maintained.
The means of making profit should be generally beneficial to the community. Any harmful trade, like drugs or alcohol, is forbidden. By analogy, trade in harmful chemicals, once proved to be so, should also be banned, as would tobacco and other harmful consumer products, like petrol containing lead, and CFCs which destroy the ozone layer.
No believer in Allah could ridicule a person who earnestly strives to protect the environment and Allah’s creatures, or argue that jobs come before protecting the environment. The environment is jobs. No product, however small and insignificant, can be made without using natural ingredients derived from the earth and its plants and animals. Food is not made in supermarkets, or even factories, it is grown in Allah’s earth, nourished with His rain and harvested by workers He has created. The cars and lorries that transport it are built from iron dug up from the earth, and plastics made from oil which used once to be trees. Electricity is generated from heat made by burning coal, oil and gas from under the earth, and from uranium dug out of the earth. Pencils are made from trees, and computers from oil and metals dug out of the earth. The intelligence with which human beings devise means to use these resources is also a gift from Allah, Who first taught Adam the Names of Things, and subjected the earth and many of its creatures to the use of humanity.
Allah gave the responsibility to humanity as a khalifah—which basically means successor, but has also been translated variously as vicegerent, agent, steward - to care for His Creation. In the Qur’an this responsiblity is called al-amanah—the Trust, which was refused by the mountains and all of creation but taken on by humanity in their folly.
So each one of us has a responsibility to use what little power we have to make things better, not worse. We should try to live economically, grow some of our own food, use electricity and petrol sparingly, walk and cycle and use public transport where possible, and share whatever we have with others who are not so well off.
As recent corporate learning theory has confirmed, only when each person can see beyond their own individual needs to the effects they produce on the rest of the community, does the whole community begin to work properly and adapt to survive as a viable organism. Environmentalists agree that education and information are a vital way to improve the situation.
Unity, trusteeship and accountability, that is tawhid, khalifah and akhirah, the three central concepts of Islam, are also the pillars of the Islamic environmental ethics. They constitute the basic values taught by the Qur’an. It is these values which led our beloved (ﷺ) to say, ‘Whosoever plants a tree and diligently looks after ituntil it matures and bears fruit is rewarded’, and ‘If a Muslim plants a tree or sows a field and men and beasts and birds eat from it, all of it is charity on his part’, and again, ‘The world is green and beautiful, and Allah has appointed you his stewards over it.’ Environmental consciousness is born when such values are adopted and become an intrinsic part of our mental and physical make-up.
As easily the most eventful century in human history comes to a close, environmental issues are taking on an increasingly prominent role in our affairs. There is the ever growing realisation that this is not just another problem. Our sustained and massive abuse of the planet for the past four or five centuries is now being noticed by ‘mother nature’ and she is protesting vigorously, much to our discomfort. News of eco-disasters is commonplace and accounts of environmental catastrophes are now part of everyday media fodder.
In spite of all the governmental, non-governmental, international and national organisations that have been set up, and all the words that have been written on this subject, and all the effort that has gone into producing ‘solutions’ to the environmental problems we face today, the general consensus is that we are sliding down a slippery slope to disaster at an ever-increasing rate.
The problem is that the conceptual construct which the modem world functions within, is decidedly anti-environment. Society today is about economic progress and material gain and this takes precedence over everything else. Politics is about increasing standards of living and there is only one source from which we can extract wealth to enable us to do this and that is the earth. Exploiting it takes precedence over protecting it. Using gross national products and rates of economic growth as measures of progress is the most obvious manifestation of this. Therefore, any attempt at producing solutions to environmental problems is cosmetic and being cosmetic only lasts a short while, leaving the environment with even more complex problems to be covered up the next time. It cannot be permanently protected and our lives made reasonably safe unless there is a profound shift in attitudes and a permanent change in the manner in which we conduct our affairs.
In the next session, we will still discussing about Islamic Environmental Ethics, bi 'idhnillah."
