Ramadan Mubarak (6)

"A teacher fell asleep in class and a little naughty boy walked up to him,

Little boy: 'Teacher, are you sleeping in class ?'

Teacher: 'No I am not sleeping in class.'

Little boy: 'What were you doing sir?'

Teacher: 'I was talking telepathically to Mr. Presiden.' (pointing out a photo frame displayed in the classroom).

The next day the naughty boy fell asleep in class and the same teacher walked up to him.

Teacher: 'Young man, you are sleeping in my class.'

Little boy: 'No, not me sir, I am not sleeping.'

Angry teacher: 'What were you doing?'

Little boy: 'I was talking to Mr. Presiden telepathically.'

Angry teacher: 'What did he say?'

Little boy (pointing out a photo frame displayed in the classroom): 'I don't know if this is true or not, Mr. President said he never spoke to any teachers yesterday.'"

"The statement that the world we live in now is not the same as it was just five years ago, has always been true to some extent," said Jasmine while paying her attention to the "Blue Marble", a photograph of Earth taken on December 7, 1972, from a distance of around 29,400 kilometers (18,300 miles) from the planet's surface. "A lot of things have changed and shifted more quickly than ever. Change in one location now matters everywhere because of the global network society.

Jack Schmitt, the astronaut, took a picture of Earth from the Apollo 17 spacecraft, which is now believed to be the most reproduced photograph ever. Because it showed the spherical globe dominated by blue oceans with interven­ ing green landmasses and swirling clouds, the image came to be known as Blue Marble.

The photograph, says Nicholas Mirzoeff, powerfully depicted the planet as a whole, and from space: no human activity or presence was visible. It appeared on almost every newspaper front page around the world. In the photograph, Earth is viewed very close to the edge of the frame. It dominates the picture and overwhelms our senses. Since the spacecraft had the sun behind it, the photograph was unique in showing the planet fully illumi­ nated. The Earth seems at once immense and knowable. Taught to recognize the outline of the continents, viewers could now see how these apparently abstract shapes were a lived and living whole. The photograph mixed the known and the new in a visual format that made it comprehensi­ ble and beautiful.

When it was published, many people believed that seeing Blue Marble changed their lives. A poet recalled that for the first time, people saw the Earth as a whole and round and beauti­ful and small.” Some found spiritual and environmental lessons in viewing the planet as if from the place of a god. It inspired romantic thoughts of a world government, perhaps even a single global language, epitomized by its use on the front cover of The Whole Earth Catalog, the classic book of the counterculture. Above all, it seemed to show that the world was a single, unified place. No human has seen that perspective in person since the photograph was taken, yet most of us feel we know how the Earth looks because of Blue Marble.

That unified world, visible from one spot, often seems out of reach now. In the forty years since Blue Marble, the world has changed dramatically in four key registers: the world is young, urban, wired, and hot. Each of these indicators has passed a crucial threshold since 2008. In that year, more people lived in cities than in the countryside for the first time in history. Most of them are young, by 2011, more than half the worlds population was under thirty; the population may be aging, but the global pattern is clear.

In 2015, 45 percent of the worlds population had some kind of access to the Internet, up 806 percent since 2000. By the end of 2014, an estimated 3 billion people were online. By the end of the decade, Google envis­ ages 5 billion people on the Internet.

They were connected, and this is not just another form of mass media. It is the first universal medium. One of the most notable uses of the global network is to create, send, and view images of all kinds, from pho­ tographs to video, comics, art, and animation. The num­ bers are astonishing: three hundred hours of YouTube video are uploaded every minute.

The planet itself is changing before our eyes. Although we cannot see the carbon dioxide, it has set in motion cat­astrophic change. With more carbon dioxide, warm air holds more water vapor. As the ice caps melt, there is more water in the ocean. As the oceans warm, there is more energy for a storm system to draw on, producing storm after 'unprecedented' storm. If a hurricane or earthquake cre­ ates what scientists call a high sea-level event, like a storm surge or tsunami, the effects are dramatically multiplied. The world today is physically different from the one we see in Blue Marble, and it is changing fast.

For all the new visual material, it is often hard to be sure what we are seeing when we look at todays world. None of these changes are settled or stable. It seems as if we live in a time of permanent revolution. If we put together these factors of growing, networked cities with a majority youthful population, and a changing climate, what we get is a formula for change. Sure enough, people worldwide are actively trying to change the systems that represent us in all senses, from artistic to visual and political.

We assemble a world from pieces, assuming that what we see is both coherent and equivalent to reality. Until we dis­cover it is not. The 2008 financial crash shows a striking demonstration of how what seems to be a solid whole is a composite of assembled pieces. What mainstream economists and governments alike had asserted to be the perfectly calculated, global financial market collapsed without warning. It turned out that the system was so finely leveraged that a relatively small number of people, who were unable to keep up with their mortgages, set in motion a rolling catastrophe. The very connectedness of the global financial market made it impossible to contain what would once have been a local misfortune. The crisis shows that it is one world now, like it or not.

At the same time, 'one world' does not mean it is equally available to all. Moving country for personal or political reasons is often very difficult. Money, on the other hand, can move wherever it wants at the click of a keyboard. There is globalization in theory, which is smooth and easy. And there is the uneven, difficult, and time-consuming expe­ rience of globalization in practice. The ads and the politi­ cians tell us there is a single global system now, at least for financial affairs. Our daily lives tell us otherwise.

What we can see now is the result of human changes to the world over the long human period since the Indus­trial Revolution began around 1750, which is a speck in the eye of geological time. Among the most notable ongoing transformations, in addition to climate change, are the sixth mass extinction of living things, and the ever-growing clearance of over one quarter of the world s forests. Imag­ine a world without coral reefs, with no summer ice in the Arctic, where big animals like lions, tigers, and polar bears can only be seen in zoos or carefully controlled outdoor protected areas like game parks.

Welcome 2045. Probably, it will be a 100th birthday celebration, but it might not be a Year full of Gold. The human relationship with the world is going to change funda­mentally as a result of our having fundamentally changed the world. Simply put, everything will look different. Todays hurricanes, droughts, floods, record snowfalls, and escalating temperatures create a different feeling—a constant unease as unusual weather becomes the new nor­ mal. That unease chimes with the uncanny feeling pro­duced by the new global city, digital networks, and drones. In order to have lived in a month where the world was not warming month by month, you need to have been born in 1985 or earlier. If you were born after 1985, you have never known what the pre-climate-changed world was like. Your body knows nonetheless that the drought, the floods, and the rising seas are out of joint with past experience. It just feels wrong.

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.

From an Islamic perspective, the entire universe is Allah's creation. Allah makes the waters flow upon the earth, upholds the heavens, makes the rain fall and keeps the boundaries between day and night. The whole of the rich and wonderful universe belongs to Allah, its maker. It is Allah who created the plants and the animals in their pairs and gave them the means to multiply. Then Allah created mankind—a very special creation because mankind alone was created with reason and the power to think and even the means to turn against his Creator. Mankind has the potential to acquire a status higher than that of the angels or sink lower than the lowliest of the beasts.

Every problem that we face and every question that we ask relates back to the Centre, and the Centre is always Allah. This world, this universe, and all that it contains is not some chance agglomeration of material atoms, unconnected with our being; it is the mazhar, the theatre created for us, in which we live out our personal dramas and fulfil our destiny. The scenery and what, in a theatre, are called the 'props', satisfy all our genuine needs, and the cosmos itself is neither more nor less than the landscape through which we pass on our journey towards the predestined end.

In Islam, nature itself is an aid to the ascent—as the Prophet Isa bin Maryam, alaihissalam, ascended by Allah to Heaven, where the spiritual man seeks to rise above nature, for it reflects a higher reality, that same reality towards which the spiritual man journeys. It is a 'reminder' of Allah for those who have eyes to see, that this natural world, is exploited and ruined.

The loss of harmony between man and nature, the opposition set between them, is but an aspect of the loss of harmony between man and his Creator. Those who tllrn their backs upon their Creator can no longer be at horne in creation; they might be compared to bacteria or viruses which ultimately destroy the body which they have invaded. Today man is no longer the custodian of nature.

So, what is the Islamic solution to this environmental problem? The beginning of wisdom is the fear of Allah', and the knowledge that no deed and no attitude can escape its consequence in this world and the next, is one path to that beginning. Nothing stands by itself; everything is under the hand and eye of Allah. This entire universe, and the universes which lie beyond it, are a harmony in which, and to which, each particle of existence is ordained and necessary; nothing can be added and nothing taken away. Allah says,

وَعِنْدَهٗ مَفَاتِحُ الْغَيْبِ لَا يَعْلَمُهَآ اِلَّا هُوَۗ وَيَعْلَمُ مَا فِى الْبَرِّ وَالْبَحْرِۗ وَمَا تَسْقُطُ مِنْ وَّرَقَةٍ اِلَّا يَعْلَمُهَا وَلَا حَبَّةٍ فِيْ ظُلُمٰتِ الْاَرْضِ وَلَا رَطْبٍ وَّلَا يَابِسٍ اِلَّا فِيْ كِتٰبٍ مُّبِيْنٍ

'And with Him are the keys of the unseen; none knows them except Him. And He knows what is on the land and in the sea. Not a leaf falls but that He knows it. And no grain is there within the darknesses of the earth and no moist or dry [thing] but that it is [written] in a clear record.' [QS. Al-An-'am (6):59]

If the beginning of wisdom is fear of Allah, then to love Allah is the end of it. All the created universes, and all that they contain, are as nothing before the immutable Bounty and Majesty of their Creator. Allah could reduce our universe to ashes in an instant. He, Subhanahu wa Ta'ala says,

وَلَا تَدْعُ مَعَ اللّٰهِ اِلٰهًا اٰخَرَۘ لَآ اِلٰهَ اِلَّا هُوَۗ كُلُّ شَيْءٍ هَالِكٌ اِلَّا وَجْهَهٗ ۗ لَهُ الْحُكْمُ وَاِلَيْهِ تُرْجَعُوْنَ ࣖ

'And do not invoke with Allah another deity. There is no deity except Him. Everything will be destroyed except His Face [i.e., except Himself]. His is the judgement, and to Him you will be returned.' [QS. Al-Qasas (28):88]

And by His grace, He does not do that. We acknowledge—besides the power and majesty of Allah and all His attributes of absoluteness—the Beauty of Allah, which 'all who have hearts' can see dimly reflected in paradisaI forms in the created world, and the Generosity of Allah, which is manifest in the endless variety and abundance of these created forms and, not least, in the gift to us of this present life and in the promises made to us for the life to come.

Human beings should praise their Creator in acknowledgment of the gift of life in this world and the potentiality of bliss beyond. Human beings alone are gifted with free will, and can thus choose either to obey or to disobey. They are nonetheless warned that disobedience, which will bring retribution, is imprudent and unintelligent; their role, as is made quite clear in Islam, is to be Allah's regent, or representative, in creation, and this trust is truly awesome.

Matters cannot be profitably discussed in isolation; earth's affairs require the guidance of Heaven; the world canoot be taken into meaningful account if Allah, its Creator, is omitted from it; utility canoot dispense with morality; human beings, the exploiters, are vile creatures unless their exploits are tempered with an awareness of the duty to protect and control, to be Allah's regents—or vicegerents (in Arabic khalifah) in the world. And, finally, the world itself is either an enigma or a meaningless, material accident, unless it is perceived to be replete with the Signs of Allah and itself a Revelation from the Creator. Allah says,

اِنَّ فِيْ خَلْقِ السَّمٰوٰتِ وَالْاَرْضِ وَاخْتِلَافِ الَّيْلِ وَالنَّهَارِ لَاٰيٰتٍ لِّاُولِى الْاَلْبَابِۙ الَّذِيْنَ يَذْكُرُوْنَ اللّٰهَ قِيَامًا وَّقُعُوْدًا وَّعَلٰى جُنُوْبِهِمْ وَيَتَفَكَّرُوْنَ فِيْ خَلْقِ السَّمٰوٰتِ وَالْاَرْضِۚ رَبَّنَا مَا خَلَقْتَ هٰذَا بَاطِلًاۚ سُبْحٰنَكَ فَقِنَا عَذَابَ النَّارِ

'Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth and the alternation of the night and the day are signs for those of understanding—who remember Allah while standing or sitting or [lying] on their sides and give thought to the creation of the heavens and the earth, [saying], 'Our Rabb, You did not create this aimlessly; exalted are You [above such a thing]; then protect us from the punishment of the Fire.' [QS. Ali 'Imran (3):190-191]

Now, by contemplating the nature around you, take an example: would you be Heptapleurum actinophyllum, the evergreen tree with her five, seven or nine leaves, and worthy of being called a 'good fortune tree', not because she is able to bring money, even though her stems and roots will grow bigger and fatter, but a smaller plant, what grows under her shade, will live and thrive? Or, do you want to be a taro tree, where no plants can live around it, because its leaves are poisonous? A man is hailed as the 'conqueror' of Mount Everest; no one asks whether he has conquered himself, although that would be a far greater achievement. If you have an ambition to climb the mountain, but you cannot conquer your nafs, then what is the point of going out and conquering some rocky peak, is it simply because it is there?

All praise is due to Allah, we ask Him to aid us in performing righteous deeds and to allow us to complete it with righteous actions. Man either utilizes his time in good, so the benefit comes back to him, or he utilizes his time in evil, so the harm comes back to him.

We'll continue our Ramadan reflections in the next episode."

Afterwards, Jasmine then sang, 

Open your eyes, don't throw away what's right aside

Before the day comes when there's nowhere to run and hide

Now ask yourself 'cause Allah's watching you

Is He satisfied? Is Allah satisfied? *)

Citations & References:

- Harfiyah Abdel Haleem, Islam and the Environment, 1998, Ta-Ha

- Nicholas Mirzoeff, How to See the World: An Introduction to Images, from Self-Portraits to Selfies, Maps to Movies, and More, 2016, Basic Books

*) "Awaken" written by Maher Elzein & Suzy Kanoo

[Episode 7]

[Episode 5]

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