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Islam and Ecology: Toward Retrieval
and Reconstruction
S.
Nomanul Haq
 CONSIDERATION
OF THE QUESTION of Islam and ecology ought to begin with one fundamental
observation of a historical kind: in the construction of what we call the
modern world, Islam has had only an indirect role to play. To be sure, one
cannot possibly imagine, nor meaningfully speak of, the phenomenon generally
known as the scientific revolution, or that which we refer to as the
Renaissance, without keeping in view the formidable intellectual influence of
Islam on Latin Christendom. But this legacy was appropriated—and here we see
the complexities and ironies of the historical process—in ways that often were
alien to the world of Islam itself. The reception in both the Islamic and
Christian worlds of the work of the towering giant Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham, d.
1038), or that of the great Avicenna (Ibn
S2n1
, d. 1037), constitutes a case in point.
Alhazen, who revolutionized the field of optics, was ignored in the Islamic
world even as he became a central scientific figure in the West. Avicenna, an
outstanding philosopher and physician, was the medical authority in
Europe well into the early seventeenth century; but his system was developed on
highly abstract mystical-spiritual lines in Islam, where he was often seen more
as a “Visionary Reciter”1
than a Hellenized rational thinker. Indeed, it is the Latin career of these
figures that endured in the modern world, not the elaboration of their thought
by latter-day Muslims.
I use the term “modern world”
in its standard sense—signifying both the world-system and the worldview that
began their joint career in Western culture after the passage of the European
Dark Ages, and which, after going through a highly complex process of
development, came to full maturity during what we call the Enlightenment. This
modern world is marked not only by a set of spectacular scientific and
technological achievements, all of which were cultivated and produced in the
Western milieu; it is marked also by a set of attitudes, a Weltbild,
that has become in our era the dominant global framework of our collective
life, the only framework we recognize as defining the terms of our contemporary
discourse. This Weltbild has given us its views of human nature, its
economic theories, its governmental system, its lifestyles, and its secular
ideology.
At the same time, there always
lurk on the horizon of the modern worldview politically charged questions of
power and control: this Weltbild, it has been feverishly argued, was
coercively imposed upon the larger part of the globe we call the developing
world. Here, operating in a strictly historical rather than moral perspective,
one phenomenon ought to be thrown into sharp relief: we do see disappearing
from the developing world practically all indigenous systems and institutions—a
disappearance brought about in the recent past largely by direct European
colonization, effected as a matter of deliberate colonial policy, and sometimes
attended by fierce local resistance. These days, the destruction of indigenous
systems is largely a result of Western market forces whose reach has now
acquired staggering global dimensions. The developing world’s military
apparatus and technique, the dress and lifestyle of its majority, its
industries, economy, banking and finance, system of education, public-health
practices, bureaucratic agencies and organs of government, and, above all, its
print and electronic media—all these entities and institutions have, in
general, been taken from the Western world or have been constructed in
emulation of Western models.
The dependence of the
developing societies on the Western world inevitably raises the overwhelming
question of sheer survival. Take, for example, the issue of public health. We
note not only that indigenous institutions of health and healing have either
died or been irrevocably marginalized; we note as well that modern life has
brought with it illnesses, epidemics, and injuries that could not possibly be
handled by these institutions as they stood, or as they stand on the periphery
today. This means that the developing world desperately depends on Western
pharmaceutical industries and medical establishments; and this in turn means a
need for hard currency to buy drugs and equipment and to train doctors and
health professionals; and this then weaves an intricate web of need,
dependence, frustration, fatalities, and political machinations.
All these issues rap at our
doors when we take up the question of Islam and ecology. In the Islamic world a
whole range of attitudes has developed in response to what is generally
referred to as Western hegemony, a highly loaded term. In the social spectrum
of the contemporary world of Islam—whose rulers and high officials typically
belong to a small Western-educated elite—one finds crude apologetic attitudes
on the one extreme, bitter resentment against whatever is perceived as Western
on the other, and all manner of Islamic revivalist and reformist tendencies
lying somewhere in the middle.2
Thus, much literature is found among contemporary Muslims claiming that all
intellectual achievements of modernity, all successful present-day scientific
theories and technological ideas, in their most minute detail
are to be found in the
Qur’1n
, if only Muslims were to search. Considering Islamic and Western societies to
be incommensurable, this literature teaches that the environmental problems of
today’s world result from the hegemony of the West—the control of the world
fell into the wrong hands. At the same time, other Muslim writers place the
blame of the ecological crisis squarely upon Western science and technology,
entities conceived to be distinct from Islamic science and technology,
distinct both in substance and in morphology. This second line of argument,
compared to the first, is relatively moderate; but it happens to be intractably
problematic nonetheless.
Here lies a profound
irony. Some seventy years ago, Sir Hamilton Gibb articulated a fundamental
historical fact: Islam in its foundations belongs to and is an integral part of
the larger Western society. He put it strongly: “Islam cannot deny its
foundations and live.”3
In other words, a conscious recognition of the fundamental fact of Islam’s
community with the West is essential to its very survival. Like al-B2run2
in the twelfth century, and reflecting the spirit of the Islamic modernist
movement of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Gibb argued that Islam
stands side by side with the Western world, in contrast to what he called the
“true” oriental societies, those of India and East Asia.4
This was because Islam had found itself—and had creatively and consciously made
itself—heir to Classical Civilization. Moreover, in many ways that are
nontrivial, Islamic culture can indeed be characterized legitimately as
embodying Hellenism. Sir Hamilton had expressed it more picturesquely—the two
civilizations of Islam and Europe, he wrote, were “nourished at the same
springs, breathing the same air . . . , [only] artificially sundered at the
Renaissance.”5
Notwithstanding the
specific details of Hamilton Gibb’s thesis, we have here an outline of a
constructive methodology; in fact, it is a methodology that flows from the
ideas of many a modern Muslim thinker. So we note that even though Islam’s role
in the construction of the modern world is indirect, in its historical
foundations this world descends directly from an Islamic intellectual milieu.
It is more obscuring than illuminating to suppose that there is an inherent
incompatibility between Islam and the Christian West, or a total historical
break between them. But once the intellectual community between Islam and the
modern world is acknowledged, we may recognize the Islamic roots of
contemporary ideas, preoccupations, and institutions. At the same time—and this
speaks to a more urgent need—we may see that the intellectual resources for
understanding some of today’s pressing global concerns can be found in the
Islamic tradition itself. Indeed, given the durability of the classical Islamic
civilization that Gibb’s thesis brings into focus, one may legitimately seek
ideas from Islam to guide the struggle against the environmental problems that
threaten our globe today.6
We face an enormous task. It
requires, inter alia, a grasp of both the complexities of the
contemporary world and the substance and the historical context of the Islamic
legacy; and it involves much reconstruction, adjustment, and revision. In the
case at hand, the task becomes all the more daunting due to its real as
compared to purely theoretical nature.7
The issue cannot be handled meaningfully if its real dimensions are glossed
over in the glow of a sophisticated theoretical discourse. The questions of
power and control, distributive justice, economics and finance, the currents of
market forces, policy-making and tactical politics, lifestyles and social
values—these are all directly relevant here. And this means that the issue
belongs in a complex manner to several disciplinary domains at once: social
sciences, ethics, and religion among them.
Still, it ought to be noted
that this essay is essentially concerned with theoretical matters; and even in
this domain, it is concerned narrowly with the normative sources of the Islamic
religious tradition. Indeed, its scope is narrower still: it undertakes only to
reconstruct doctrinally certain
Qur’1nic
concepts, to expound certain imperatives of what is known as the Prophetic
Tradition, and to articulate briefly certain Islamic legal categories—a
reconstruction, exposition, and articulation carried out with a view to
recovering Islamic religious material that might serve to illuminate how
Islamic culture regards our current global environmental concerns and guide
Islamic thinking about them. But what is most interesting, in the internal
context of traditional Islam, is that this enterprise, by its nature,
would be considered not a partial but a comprehensive task, since religion
is claimed, literally, to be all-embracing. For traditional Islam, examining
religious sources means examining the universal canopy under which fall all
aspects of life—since all aspects are religious aspects.
THE NATURE OF THE NORMATIVE SOURCES
It should be understood at the very outset that the
Qur’1n
, believed to be the actual speech of God revealed through an angel, is not a
book of laws, or a manual of procedures, or a collection of tales; nor is it a
systematic treatise meant to convey ethical doctrines or principles. As the
experts say, the
Qur’1n
has to be received on its own terms—that is, as a genre unto itself.8
A striking feature of this sacred Islamic text is its highly stylized cadence,
its rhetorical structure, its literary diction, and its elegant use of language
with “semantic depth, where one meaning leads to another by a fertile fusion of
associated ideas.”9
Thus, scholars have characterized the
Qur’1n
not so much as a doctrinal textbook but “more valuably as a rich and subtle
stimulus to religious imagination.”10
If this text is to yield a concrete system, it requires an imaginative
reconstruction on the part of the reader; in principle, this reconstruction
cannot claim epistemological finality, even though it may stand firm on grounds
of overwhelming community consensus. This is precisely the position of
classical Islam.
With regard to the
question of the cosmos and its relationship to human beings, one notes that the
Qur’1n
moves at three levels simultaneously—metaphysical, naturalistic, and human. But
when one examines these levels in the totality of the
Qur’1n
, they turn out to interdigitate: on the one hand, the
Qur’1nic
notion of the natural world and the natural environment is semantically and
logically bound up with the very concept of God; on the other hand, this notion
is linked with the general principle of the very creation of humanity. The
three levels of
Qur’1nic
discourse, therefore, do not manifest any independent conceptual
self-sufficiency of, or a conceptual discontinuity between, the three realms of
the divine, of nature, and of humanity. Indeed, this linkage is of fundamental
importance to our concerns, for in our reconstruction of the cosmology of the
Qur’1n
, we can see that the historical-naturalistic is linked to the
transcendental-eternal, and this means that there is no ontological separation
between the divine and natural environments. At the human, psychological level,
all this generates a particular attitude to the world as a whole.
As we shall see, the
Qur’1n
emphasizes the transcendental significance of nature. Because nature cannot
explain its own being, it stands as a sign (1ya
, plural
1y1t
) of something beyond itself, pointing to
some transcendental entity that bestows the principle of being upon the world
and its objects. Nature, then, is an emblem of God; it is a means through which
God communicates with humanity. One may legitimately say that insofar as the
Islamic tradition allows for God’s entry into the flow of history at all—that
is, in the realm bounded by space and time—nature embodies one of the two modes
of this entry, the other mode being God’s Word, namely, the
Qur’1n
itself. Most significantly, the verses of the
Qur’1n
are also called
1y1t
, signs, and in the same emblematic
vein—and this means that the objects of the natural world and the
Qur’1nic
verses are metaphysically on a par with each other.
On the naturalistic
plane, the Qur’1n
speaks of the cosmos as an integral system governed by a set of immutable laws
that embody God’s command (amr, plural
aw1mir
). The phenomena of nature in the general
run of things follow a strict system marked by regularity and uniformity, since
nature cannot violate its amr, that is, its immutable laws. In this
naturalistic vein, we find the
Qur’1n
teaching that the cosmos exists to nourish, support, and sustain the process of
life—all of life, and in particular human life. Though human life does have
centrality in the
Qur’1nic
system, it is a centrality mediated and reigned in by a set of moral and
metaphysical controls; this we shall examine in more detail as we proceed.
A remarkable fact about
the genesis story in the
Qur’1n
is that it speaks of God announcing to the angels that he is about to create a
khal2fa
(vicegerent) on the earth—in
other words, Adam and his “equal half” (zauj)11
were bound for Earth even before they committed the transgression. Life
on Earth is here an integral part of the very concept of the human being, not a
punitive fall from glory; the human being does not exist in a state of disgrace
in the world of nature, nor is nature in any sense unredeemed.12
To expound the
Qur’1nic
position summarily, the very principle of the vicegerency of God (khil1fa
) made human beings his servants (‘abd,
plural ‘ib1d
), custodians of the entire natural world.
Human beings exist by virtue of a primordial covenant (m2th1q
) whereby they have testified to their own
theomorphic nature, and by virtue of a trust that they have taken upon
themselves in pre-eternity. There is a due measure (qadr) to things, and
a balance (m2z1n
) in the cosmos, and humanity is
transcendentally committed not to disturb or violate this qadr and
m2z1n
; indeed, the fulfillment of this
commitment is the fundamental moral imperative of humanity.
The three dimensions of
the Qur’1nic
discourse—metaphysical, naturalistic, and human—are thus mutually related in a
complex manner, and any one of them cannot be understood in isolation from the
others. Nature in its
Qur’1nic
conception is anchored in the divine, both metaphysically and
morally. The expression is strong: “But to God belongs all things in the
heavens and on the earth; And He it is who encompasseth (Muh2t
) all things” (4:126); note that the word
Muh2t
can also be translated legitimately as
“environment.”13
So we see that when the
Qur’1n’s
notion of nature is reconstructed in the larger framework of this supreme
Islamic source, it appears inherently connected with its notions of God and
humanity—and all these notions, as we have seen, have their roots in the
transcendental realm and then issue forth in the moral-historical field.
When we come to the
Had2th
literature, the corpus often referred to as Prophetic Traditions, we are in a
different atmosphere altogether. Here we have a vast body of collections of
formally authenticated reports about the words and actions of the Prophet of
Islam, and sometimes of his companions who enjoy a derivative authority. The
collection and authentication of
Had2th
was an enormous undertaking aimed at articulating Islam as a function,
and for this purpose God’s Way (shar2
‘a) had to be translated
into a viable body of concrete codes of action and laws. Indeed, one material
source for the understanding (fiqh) of
shar2
‘a was the established
tradition of the prophetic way (sunna). An authenticated
Had2th
was legally binding.
But the impressive
discipline called the Science of
Had2th
(‘Ilm al-Had2th
) did not develop until more than two
hundred years after the death of the Prophet, and in the meantime a whole
corpus of fabricated
Had2th
had come into being. It was only in the middle of the ninth century that the
first Correct
(@
ah2h
) collection of
Had2th
appeared; this was established after much sifting, systematizing, and a
rigorous process of authentication. Five more massive
@ah2h
collections were compiled during the
following hundred years. But given the very size of the corpus of these
transmitted reports and the inherent complications in the very nature of the
chain of transmitters (isn1d
), even the six Correct collections vary
widely in authenticity and content. Note that in
Had2th
authentication, as a general rule, practically all attention was paid to the
isn1d
rather than to the actual content (matn)
of what was transmitted.
It is for reasons such
as these that the use of
Had2th
material in reconstructing the Islamic position on the environment and ecology
is not a straightforward task.
Had2th
collections are manuals of what one may in a qualified sense describe as a body
of case law. An isolated and independent ecological concern is not to be
found here—this is a present-day development—but spread all over the body of
Had2th
, one does find reports concerning the general status and meaning of nature,
and concerning land cultivation and agriculture, construction of buildings,
livestock, water resources, animals, birds, plants, and so on. In addition, one
notes the remarkable fact that the
Had2th
corpus also contains the two fateful doctrines of
him1
and
haram
, land distribution and consecration. These two
related notions were indeed developed by Muslim legists who articulated them
particularly in their environmental dimensions, designating some places as
protected sanctuaries.
Him1
and
haram
developed into legislative principles of land
equity on the one hand, and of environmental ethics on the other, and were
subsequently incorporated into the larger body of the Islamic legal code. Note
that ethical questions and environmental questions are here moving hand in
hand; they are interconnected.
The most systematic
source of codified Islamic religious norms is that of fiqh-law,
developed on the foundations of the
Qur’1n
and Had2th
. One may legitimately say that fiqh-law is the comprehensive blueprint
for the whole of Muslim life, covering the minutest detail of external human
conduct, both public and private. Within this enormous body of legal
regulations—which have now acquired a dogmatic character since the fiqh discipline
is now practically dormant—the principle of
him1
is particularly well developed in the
M1lik2
school, one of the four legal schools followed by the vast majority of Muslims.
But we note in the formally articulated and generally codified Islamic legal
writings several other environmental concepts derived directly from the two
primary material sources (u6ul
), the
Qur’1n
and Hadith
.
One such concept is that
of maw1t
, literally “wasteland.” Some fiqh-legists
have worked on
maw1t
in great detail; the concept typically appears in
the extensive discussions on rivers, canals, and other water resources, their
distribution and maintenance, rights and control. Similarly, for example,
arising directly out of the moral and conceptual ethos of the two
u6ul
are fiqh rules governing the
hunting, treatment, welfare, and use of animals, including birds. Once again,
note how Islamic law is meant to implement Islamic ethics—legal and moral
concerns belong to one and the same functional framework.
HUMAN NATURE AND THE NATURAL WORLD: QUR’¾NIC
EXCURSUS
Moving on the transcendental plane, the
Qur’1n
presents in its seventh
sura
that famous sonorous verse known to embody the
primordial covenant between humanity and its creator: “And when your Lord
extracted from the children of Adam, from their spinal cord, their entire
progeny and made them witness upon themselves, saying, Am I not your Lord? And
they replied, No doubt You are, we bear witness!”14
So powerful is the narrative here, and so deeply entrenched in the Muslim
consciousness is the expression alastu bi-rabbikum (Am
I not your Lord?), that the interrogative alastu has reverberated in the
mystical and poetic chambers of Islam until this day. We see here that humanity
in the very principle of its being has testified to
the lordship of God. In other words, human nature is essentially theomorphic.
To recognize God is to be in a natural state. Indeed, God had made human beings
in the best of forms;15
and, furthermore, to this supreme creature, to human beings, he subjected (shakhkhara
lakum, “He subjected to you”) all that is in the heavens and
the earth.16
But, then, in the next
breath the Qur’1n
links this metaphysical exaltation to a weighty moral burden. Humankind’s
superiority lies not in its enjoying any higher power or control or authority
among created beings; it lies rather in the fact that it is accountable before
God, such as no other creature is. This accountability arises out of the trust
(al-am1na
) that human beings accepted at their
transcendental origin. It should be observed at once that this
am1na
entails a kind of global trusteeship, and
this reading does no offense to the
Qur’1nic
concept of trust: “We did indeed offer the Trust to the Heavens and the Earth
and the mountains—but they refused to carry it, being afraid of it. But the
human being carried it: Ho! humankind is unfair to itself and foolhardy.”17
Note here the
cosmological ethos of a transcendental narrative. And note also the last
sentence—so enormous was the burden that the
Qur’1n
recognizes it by way of what Rahman called a “tender rebuke,” calling human
beings unfair to themselves and foolhardy.
We see here the
moral-naturalistic dimension of human theomorphism. Humanity cannot arrogate to
itself absolute power or unbridled control over nature: in the very principle
of its being, humanity was committed to following God’s
shar2
‘a, his Way. Furthermore,
this shar2
‘a was not given to humanity
as a fully articulated body of laws; rather, it was spread all over God’s signs
(1y1t
) in the form of indicators with probative
value (adilla). Recall that the term
1y1t
designates both the verses of the
Qur’1n
as well as the phenomena and the objects of the natural world. Thus the natural
world is a bona fide source for the understanding (fiqh) of
shar2
‘a, and therefore cannot be
considered subservient to human whims. Indeed, as we have noted, for human
beings to be on the earth is part of the divine plan; to be human is by
definition to be in the flow of history. There is, then, no justification in
the Qur’1nic
context to consider human existence in historical time a curse, or to deem
nature as something opposed to grace, or to consider salvation as a process of
the humbling of the natural by the supernatural. Echoing Mircea Eliade, one may
say that all nature, indeed, is capable of revealing itself as cosmic
sacrality.
Quite evident too is the
ethical thrust of the frequent
Qur’1nic
declaration that God has made the natural world “subject to” human beings. This
clearly does not mean that nature is subject to man’s unbridled, exploitative
powers—for it is God’s command (amr), not that of the human being, that
nature obeys (see below). We note that the expression sakhkhara lakum
(“he made subject to you . . .”) appears always with its attending moral
dimension. So: “It is all from Him. . . . And He hath made subject to you
whatsoever is in the heavens and whatsoever is in the earth—It is all from Him.
Lo! herein indeed are portents for those who reflect.”18
The point is made frequently and with overwhelming rhetorical force:
| |
He has
made subject to you the night and the day, the sun and the moon, and the
stars—they are in subjection by His command (amr): Surely, in this are
signs for those who reflect!
|
| |
And the things on this earth which He has
multiplied in colors diverse—indeed, in this is a sign for those who recollect! |
| |
It is He Who had made the sea subject [to
His law], that ye may eat thereof flesh, tender and fresh, and that ye may
extract therefrom ornaments to wear—See, how the ships plough the waves! So ye
seek of the bounty of God: Perhaps ye shall be grateful!19 |
Nature’s intelligibility to the human intellect, on the
one hand, and its quality of yielding itself to human works and sustaining
human life, on the other, both flow from the same principle of amr:
| |
Seest thou not that by His command (amr)
God has made subject to you all that is on the earth? And that by His command
He has made subject to you the ships that sail through the sea? He withholds
the sky from falling on the earth—but for His leave. For God is Most
Compassionate and Most Merciful to humankind. |
| |
It is He Who gave you life, and then He
will cause you to die, and then He will bring you back to life again: Ah,
humankind is most ungrateful!20 |
In this natural-transcendental
linkage, the moral question is fundamental. The
Qur’1n
promulgates what one may call a cosmology of justice, a cosmology that takes
into its fold two realms at once, the human and the cosmic—or, rather, the
human within the cosmic. As for the human realm, a concern for social
justice runs throughout the
Qur’1nic
text, even in its chronologically earlier verses whose focus is on metaphysical
issues such as the oneness of God, the Beginning and the End, and the finitude
of the world. The dignity of the disabled,21
the rights of the indigent and particularly of orphans,22
honesty in trade dealings,23
feeding of the poor,24
condemnation of greed, and admonishment against hoarding wealth25—all
these concerns are to be found from the earliest of the
Qur’1nic
verses, which are, by general scholarly consensus, the most powerful and the
most sublime in their stylistic embellishment.
But these concerns
operate within the universal field of cosmic justice; human relations thus
acquire their meaning by virtue of their location at the very core of natural
law. This effectively forges a conceptual link between natural law and moral
law—natural law is never violated as things run their customary course;
moral law ought not to be violated. The
Qur’1n
speaks of the existence of a cosmic balance (m2z1n
) and declares that everything except God
is “measured out” (qadar, qadr,
taqd2r
)—that is, everything is given its natural
principle of being and its place in the larger cosmic whole—and this is
precisely the meaning of the amr (command) of an entity, a concept I
shall take up again a little later. The same message is expressed in a moral
language: “God intends no injustice to any of His creatures. To Him belongs all
that is in the heavens and the earth.”26
The dread of humankind
“corrupting the earth” (fas1d
fi’l-ard
), the catastrophe such transgression will
unleash, and exhortations against it loom so large that they hang like a
backdrop in the
Qur’1nic
cosmology of justice. The creation of the world was not a frivolous or trivial
act: “And We have not created the heavens and the earth and what is therein
purposelessly—that is the view of those who reject [the truth] or who are
ungrateful.”27
Created with divine deliberation, nature is so coherently interconnected and
integrated, and works with such regularity and order, that it is God’s prime
miracle: if good is done to it or in it, good will return; if evil is wrought
to it or in it, what accrues is sheer terror:
| And you
see mountains and think them solid [and stationary] but they are fleeting like
clouds—such is the artistry of God Who has well-completed [the creation] of
everything. He is well acquainted with all that you do.
|
| |
If any do good, good will accrue to them
therefrom; and they will be secure from the terror of the Doom. And if any do
evil, their faces will be thrown headlong into the Fire.28 |
It ought to be recognized that
the Qur’1n
does contain verses that prima facie give the impression that the
natural world and all its creatures exist for the sake of human beings, but it
would be a gross oversimplification to view such declarations in a moral
vacuum. “In considering all these verses,” wrote the outstanding jurist of
medieval Islam Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), “it must be remembered that God in his
wisdom brought into being these creatures for reasons other than
serving human beings. In these verses God only
explains the [human] benefits of these.”29
It is interesting to note in this context that among the three grand
monotheistic faiths, Islam does not have to carry the burden of any scriptural
imperative to “subdue” the earth and seek to establish “dominion” over the
natural world. There is a clear and explicit answer to the question as to where
and to whom belongs the dominion over the natural world, an answer so obvious
in the overall drift of the
Qur’1n
that it is expressed rhetorically: “Knowest thou not that to God belongeth the
dominion of the heavens and the earth!?”30
And again: “Yea, to God belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth. And
to God is the final goal [of all].”31
Ironic though it may
seem, human superiority—humans being created in the best of forms (f2
ahsani
taqw2m
), and humans being considered in the
Islamic tradition the noblest of creatures (ashraf al-makhluq1t
)—turns out to be a supremely humbling
quality. And the
Qur’1n
does humble humanity by saying that the creation of the rest of the cosmos is a
matter greater than the creation of people: “Assuredly the
creation of the heavens and the earth is [a matter] greater than the creation
of human beings: Yet most people understand not!”32
We do not have exclusive claim to the earth, for “the earth He has assigned to
all living creatures.”33
And all living creatures are natural communities, with their own habitat, their
own laws, and their inviolable natural rights: “And there is no animal in the
earth nor bird that flies with its two wings but that they are communities like
yourselves.”34
One is here reminded of
a medieval Arabic fable found in the famous
Ras1’il
(Epistles) collectively written in the
tenth century by the fraternity that called itself
Ikhw1n
al-@
af1’
(Brethren of Purity). This colorful and
dramatically constructed fable is about a company of animals who present their
case before the king of the jinn (genies), raising the question of
whether human beings are superior to animals, and if so in what respect. The
verdict is “natural and inevitable”:35
human beings are superior to the animals—but not because they enjoy any higher
moral or functional status. They are superior because of their heavy moral
burden, of being the custodians of the earth. As God’s regents on the earth (Khal2fat
All1h
fi’l-Ard
), they are accountable for their acts;
nonhuman animals are not. The verdict, handed down by a nonhuman creature,
reads further:
| |
Let man not imagine . . . that just
because he is superior to the animals they are his slaves. Rather it is that we
are all slaves of the Almighty and must obey His commands . . . Let man not
forget that he is accountable to his Maker for the way in which he treats all
animals, just as he is accountable for his behavior towards his fellow human
beings. Man bears a heavy responsibility. . . .36 |
QUR’¾NIC
NATURALISM AND THE NATURE-PROPHECY PARALLEL
If one makes an analytical excursion into the
Qur’1nic
discourse on the created world, three defining characteristics of nature fall
into sharp perspective: first, that natural phenomena have regularity, internal
coherence, and elegance, and that they are self-sustaining; second, that nature
as a whole has, within its own being, no logical or metaphysical warrant to
exist; and, finally, that nature is an embodiment of God’s mercy, or, more
fully, that God’s mercy is expressed through the creation of nature. These
defining characteristics, one notes, do not appear in the
Qur’1nic
narrative in a doctrinal or even textual isolation from one another—they are
frequently spoken of in the same breath, in the same passages, and in the same
vein; together, they make a conceptual whole.
The principle of
autonomy of nature—that it is regulated by its own laws—manifests itself
forcefully in the fact that whenever the
Qur’1n
speaks of the actual cosmological processes of natural
phenomena—and it does so quite often—it speaks in naturalistic terms. Thus, the
human being was a natural creation: Adam was fashioned out of baked clay (6al61l
), from mud molded into shape (ham1’
masnun
);37
from dust (tur1b
);38
from a blood clot (‘alaq);39
from earth (t2n
)40
that produced through a confluence of natural processes an extract,
sul1la
, that functions as reproductive semen.41
In fact, there exists a fully biological account:
| |
Humankind
We did create from a reproductive extract of clay. Then We placed it as a drop
of sperm in a receptacle, secure. Then we made the sperm into a clot of
congealed blood. Then of that clot We made a fetus lump. Then We made out of
that lump bones and clothed the bones with flesh . . . So blessed be God, the
Best of Creators!42 |
References to nature, natural
forces, natural phenomena, and natural beings abound in the
Qur’1n
; out of its 114
suras
some 31 are named after these. In all cases, the physical world in its real
operation is described in a naturalistic framework, in the framework of
physical forces and processes that occur uniformly and with regularity. Thus,
we see here the contours of a theistic naturalism:
| |
Why! do
they not look at the sky above them? How We have built it and adorned it and
there are no gaps in it?
|
| |
And the earth—We
have spread it out, and set thereon mountains, standing firm, and produced
therein all manner of beautiful growth. This, for the observation and
commemoration of every created being who reflects. |
| |
And We send down
from the sky rain, charged with blessings. And We produce therewith gardens and
grains for harvests. And tall and stately palm trees with shoots of fruit
stalks, piled over one another—as provision for God’s servants. And We give new
life therewith to the land dead. . . .43 |
In an even more robust expression of naturalism, the
refrain re-emerges:
| |
And the earth—We have spread it out, set
thereon mountains firm and immovable, and produced therein all kinds of things
in due balance (mauzun
). And We have provided therein livelihood
(ma‘1yish
)—for you and for those whose sustenance (rizq)
does not depend on you. And there is not a thing but its bountiful sources are
with Us; and nought do We send down unless it be in due and knowable measure (bi-qadrim
ma‘lum
). |
| |
And We send down winds to fertilize
vegetation in abundance, then cause the rain to descend from the sky, therewith
providing you with water in plenty—though you are not the guardians of its
sources. . . .44 |
| |
We fashioned humankind out of baked clay,
from mud molded into shape. And, in the time preceding, We had fashioned the jinn
from the fire of scorching winds.45 |
The
Qur’1n
, then, admits the principle of natural causation, avowing the sum total of
natural processes as the proximate, autonomous, efficient causative forces
operating in the world. It is the fertility of the earth, we see, and the
natural qualities of water, and favorable winds—in other words, certain natural
phenomena themselves—that causally but proximately explain all vegetation; it
was rain that revived dead and uncultivable land, and it was clay that
constituted the substratum for the human animal as a natural entity. Besides,
in what is to be legitimately considered an anthropological vein, all this in
its turn is causally related to human livelihood (ma‘1yish
) and actual subsistence of the human
community—the narrative here brings into clear view activities and processes
such as land cultivation, harvest, fertility, production of gardens, yielding
of fruits and grains; it speaks of real, as distinct from metaphysical, human
provision (rizq), with its attending economic and social ramifications.
It is the dual principle
of cosmic justice, which we have examined earlier, and this thoroughgoing
naturalism that explains a central doctrine of
Qur’1nic
ethics—that of {ulm
al-nafs (self-injury).46
Indeed, this doctrine embodies a moral tenet that seems to carry the seeds of a
comprehensive ecological philosophy. As I have said elsewhere,47
in the actual world as it exists in the immediate palpable reality, human
beings are part of nature; they are a natural entity, subject
fully to the laws of nature just like any other entity, participating as an
integral element in the overall ecological balance (m2z1n
) that exists in the larger cosmic whole.
And this means that to damage, offend, or destroy the balance of the natural
environment is to damage, offend, or destroy oneself. Any injury
inflicted upon “the other” is self-injury,
{ulm al-nafs—and
this is a prime doctrinal element in the foundations of
Qur’1nic
ethics: “Whoever transgresses the bounds of God has done wrong but to himself”;48
and again: “God wronged them not, but themselves they wronged.”49
The rule is that wrongdoing ultimately recoils back upon the perpetrator—for
when the balance is willfully disturbed, this disturbance takes the culprit too
into its fold.50
On the other hand, the
naturalistic posture of the
Qur’1n
is attended by an epistemological posture that has fundamental heuristic and
methodological consequences for the human search for natural knowledge. There
is nothing in the cosmos that does not possess a due balance (mauzun
), and nothing that is not fully
differentiated and measured out in a way that it is beyond the comprehension of
the human intellect; everything, we read, exists in a knowable measure (bi-qadrim
ma‘lum
), and the cosmos is thus, in principle,
intelligible. The epistemological point is compelling: there exist immutable
laws to regulate nature, these laws are both uniform and subject to systematic
cognition, and they are captured when human reason casts its net. Indeed, in
the Qur’1nic
narrative we find virtually countless exhortations for the use of reason,
appearing often in the pathos of the subjunctive: “Perhaps you may exert your
mind!” or “They might perchance reflect!” or “May you not see?” or “Would you
not exercise your intellect?” or “What! Would you not reason out?” So,
heuristically, we have here a
Qur’1nic
anchorage for a scientific exploration of the cosmos, an exploration with which
humanity has been squarely charged.
This links our discourse
with both the second defining characteristic of nature as it appears in the
Qur’1n
and the methodological implications of its epistemological stance, which we
just examined. Throughout, I have been pointing out a fundamental feature of
the Qur’1nic
narrative—namely, that it identifies the locus and ground of the
real and the temporal in the transcendental and the eternal, constantly forging
a link. And so the second defining element of nature we already noted: nature
is nonultimate, for within its own being it has no logical or metaphysical
warrant to exist. Nature exists only because God had bestowed existence upon
its being. A plant did not bring about its own existence; it received existence
and thus became a sign (1ya
) of something beyond itself. And again,
it was through an act of divine mercy (rahma
) that humankind found itself
in existence, for within itself lay no inherent principle to cause this
existence. The ontological point is that the existence of nature in historical
time is a flowing process of a cosmic observance of God’s amr.
Let me take up the
Qur’1nic
notion of amr again. Recall that the word literally means “command.” At
the mechanistic level, one may consider amr to be a denotation of a
universal operative principle whereby every created natural entity plays its
assigned role and takes its assigned place as an integral element in the larger
cosmic whole. Thus, amr is the specific principle of being of each thing
in relation to that of all other things,
inhering in it according to the command it uniquely receives from God. This can
be put in another way: laws of nature express God’s commands, commands that
nature cannot possibly violate—and this explains why the entire world of
phenomena is declared muslim by the
Qur’1n
: “Do they, then, seek an obedience other than that to God, while it is to Him
that everyone [and everything] in the heavens and the earth submits (aslama)?”51
So once again, we have here an integral conceptual system in which the
transcendental is coherently linked to the naturalistic, the temporal. Nature
originates in and ultimately recoils back into the transcendental.
But at the operational
level—and here is the methodological point—amr can be viewed
legitimately to be a system of independent, self-governing, and self-sustaining
laws of nature. Thus it was the amr of a mango seed to grow into a mango
tree; and that of an egg to hatch into a bird; and that of sperm to develop
into an embryo; and that of the oceans to sustain a multiplicity of life in
their bosom; and that of the sun to rise from the far horizon. In the
scientific investigation of the physical world, then, in this process of the
human intellect’s discovery of natural laws as such, no nonnaturalistic, no
nonrational principle need be invoked. But there is a caveat: such
investigation is without reference, and therefore meaningless, if it remains
suspended without being anchored ultimately in the transcendental from which
issues forth moral imperatives—that is, moral law, God’s
shar2
‘a.
And this leads us finally to
the third defining characteristic of nature given by the
Qur’1n
: nature is an embodiment of God’s mercy. Indeed, given that God’s will is not
bound by any other will, and given further that God is omnipotent, he could
well have chosen the chasm of utter nothingness as opposed to the creation of a
full plenitude of being. That he chose the latter is a manifestation of his
mercy (rahma
). Louis Gardet once observed that in the
totality of the
Qur’1nic
teaching God’s mercy and his omnipotence are inseparable: “These two
perfections,” he wrote, “are the two poles of divine action, at the same time
contrasted and complementary.”52
God’s creative action is a special expression of his mercy—for not only did he
bestow being upon his creation; he also provided sustenance for that creation,
and sent guidance for that creation; and made himself the very end (al-¾
khir)53
to which the entire created world was commanded by him to return finally.
Plentiful in the
Qur’1n
are references to the bounty of nature as an unfalsifiable expression of God’s
mercy. Indeed, this is the very refrain of the chapter al-Rahman
, The Merciful, a collection of verses
unique in the codex for its stylistic beauty, its rhythm and rhyme and cadence,
and its lush imagery. Speaking eloquently of nature’s bounty and the
naturalistic cosmic order as constituting divine favors and blessings, and
asking rhetorically how they can possibly be denied, the
Qur’1n
says:
| |
The sun
and the moon follow courses exactly computed. And the stars and the trees, both
alike bow in adoration. And the Firmament—God has raised it high, and set the
Balance . . . It is He Who has spread out the earth for His creatures: Therein
is fruit and date palms, with their clusters sheathed. Also corn, with its
leaves and stalk for fodder, and sweet-smelling plants. . . . |
From this arises the resounding question that serves
here as the refrain: “So, which of the favors of your Lord will you deny?”
Again, turning back to the world in a naturalistic vein: “He created human
beings from sounding clay, like the potter’s . . . He let free the two seas
that meet together, between them is a barrier that they do not transgress . . .
Out of them come pearls and coral. . . .” Then comes the finale: “Of God seeks
[its sustenance] every creature in the heavens and on the earth. Every day in a
new splendor does He shine!” The undercurrent of the intervening refrain flows
on: “So which of the favors of your Lord will you deny?”54
But this vast plenitude of
being we call the cosmos was also an embodiment of God’s
tanz2l
(sending down) of guidance (hid1ya
) to humanity. The
shar2
‘a, we have already noted,
is not given ready-made in the form of a systematic, fixed, and fully
spelled-out corpus of divine instructions for the creation of a moral order.
Rather, it is up to humankind to exercise its moral and intellectual faculties,
its amr, and perpetually construct and reconstruct God’s
shar2
‘a through an understanding
(fiqh) of the guiding signs (adilla) that are provided in two
modes—one of them the
1y1t
constituting the natural world. Thus, by
virtue of what I would refer to as the
Qur’1nic
dynamics of
tanz2l
, nature is accorded the status of a
legitimate source for the very knowledge of
shar2
‘a—a status that is divinely
sanctioned. And a dynamic process of ever-new
shar2
‘a constructions it is,
since human knowledge could never claim, nor is it capable of acquiring,
epistemological certainty or finality.
But then God’s guidance also
came in a direct
tanz2l
in a clear and articulate language (bay1n
); this second mode of sending down adilla
was the Qur’1n
, that is, the Speech (Kal1m
) of God himself. Given this, we have here
a remarkable metaphysical equivalence between natural entities and revelation,
and thereby between nature and prophecy. Indeed, in numerous
Qur’1nic
passages the creation of nature is coupled with the revelation of the verses of
the Qur’1n
, and this has led many medieval Muslim sages to speak of an intimate
connection and ontological parallel between the two; they spoke even of the
identity of the two.55
So just as nature represents the inexhaustible logoi of God,56
so does the Qur’1n
, but even more so—since, in fact, while the former is referred to as
1y1t
, the latter is the clarification (taby2n
)57
of these
1y1t
, the bringing home of these
1y1t
(nu6arrifu’l
-1y1t
),58
and the detailing of these
1y1t
(fa66alna’l
-1y1t
).59
The verses of the
Qur’1n
are often said to be clear
1y1t
(1y1t
bayyyin1t
), or, simply, clarifications or
manifestations (bayyyin1t
). Note that this last expression is never
applied to nature, and this creates a hierarchy of God’s signs—a hierarchy in
which the Qur’1n
remains epistemologically prior.
Just as natural entities
exist in the form of real-historical objects, so God’s revelation is delivered
by a real-historical Prophet, a human apostle who is no god and no supernatural
being but is “from amongst yourselves.”60
And just as nature is a guide, so is the Prophet a guide (h1d2
)61
par excellence. Just as nature receives and follows God’s
amr, so does the Prophet receive “a spirit from (God’s) amr”62
that the Prophet himself and the rest of humanity ought to follow.
And just as natural entities, God’s
1y1t
, express and manifest God’s mercy, so was
Prophet Muhammad
, the one chosen to receive God’s speech, his
1y1t
, “nothing but a mercy (rahma
) to all beings.”63
Given the uncompromising
and radical monotheism of Islam, nature can never acquire divine status. Any
idea of nature worship would crack the very core of Islam. But with this in
view, one notes a further and delicate parallelism between nature and prophecy.
The Qur’1n
does speak of obeying the Prophet, his authority deriving from God. In
juxtaposition to this, we place an interpretation of the great
fourteenth-century
Qur’1n
commentator Ibn
Kath2r
: When the Qur’1n
calls God “the Lord of the worlds (Rabb al-‘¾
lam2n
),”64
it means the Lord of different kinds of creatures,
says Ibn Kath2r
. Muslims affirm, he points out, that they submit to the Creator who made them
and who made all other worlds. But, then, the commentator adds: “Muslims also
submit themselves to the signs of the existence of the Creator and his
unity. This secondary meaning exists because the word ‘1lam2n
(worlds) comes from the same root [out of
which stems the word ‘alam, which means ‘sign’].” Note that Ibn
Kath2r
is not alone in looking at the matter in this way.65
So one may say that while the
Qur’1n
teaches obedience to the Prophet as God’s delegated commander, it also teaches
obedience to the laws of nature. This generates an attitude of tremendous
respect for the cosmos, and also implies, inter alia, a divine
stricture prohibiting the destruction or injury of the natural environment.
PRACTICAL ISSUES: MODELS OF CONDUCT AND ISLAMIC
LAW
In the famous Correct
(@
ah2h
)
Had2th
collection of al-Buk1r2
(d. 870), we read the elegant saying of the Prophet: “The earth has been
created for me as a mosque (masjid) and as a means of purification.”66
Indeed, to declare the whole earth not only pure in itself, but also purifying
of that which it touches, is to elevate it both materially and symbolically.
The word masjid literally means a place of prostration, and prostration
involves touching the ground. Thus, by virtue of this
Had2th
, the earth in its entirety acquires and manifests sacrality. And here we have
a standard situation: an elaboration and extension of a
Qur’1nic
principle, which in this particular case appears in 5:6. It is, in effect, a
bringing of a
Qur’1nic
rule into the human fold of action and conduct.
In one important sense,
Had2th
, as a discipline, can of course be described simply as a practical enterprise:
it is a phenomenon of translating broad and general principles of the
Qur’1n
into detailed rules for the actual practice of the community. One may say that
Had2th
brings metaphysics into the domain of history. But more than that, it has an
independent status too, for
Had2th
adds new practical issues to those found in the
Qur’1n
, sometimes even amending them or choosing between differing
Qur’1nic
positions on the same question. But it remains a practical enterprise
nonetheless—the life of the Prophet, his established tradition (sunna),
is a perfect model for all Muslims to follow; indeed, emulation (ittib1
‘) of this model is a requirement
for the Muslim.
As a standard feature,
Had2th
collections are corpora of authenticated reports of prophetic traditions,
thematically classified; the body of reports under a single broad theme
constitutes a Book (Kit1b
), and these books strung together
constitute the whole collection. In the
Sunn2
Islamic world—and to this belong the vast majority of Muslims—the most
authoritative of
Had2th
collections are held to be the “Six Corrects”
(@
ih1h
Sitta),67
among which the cited “Correct of al-Bukh1r2
” enjoys primacy; the
Bukh1r2
corpus has 88 Books. The range of subjects covered in these collections is
enormously wide, since
Had2th
is aimed at comprehending universally all aspects of private and public,
individual and collective life. Diffused throughout the body of a single
Had2th
collection one finds concerns, expressed with a degree of urgency, pertaining
to the natural environment, its status, its relation to human life, and what we
may call environmental ethics. These concerns do not appear as isolated issues
in their own right, to be sure; rather, they are fully integrated into a host
of naturalistic, moral, and practical principles that form the core of
righteous conduct.
Typically, among its
many parts the
Bukh1r2
collection includes separate books on animal sacrifice, agriculture and land
cultivation, medicine, hunting, and water and irrigation. The “Book of
Agriculture” is rich in material concerning the environment, speaking of the
nobility of sustainable cultivation of land and encouraging it with
moral force. Issues of land irrigation and the strict law of equal sharing of
water are found in the “Book of Distribution of Water,” of course, but also in
the “Book of Ablution”; the report I cited at the beginning of this section
comes from the “Book of Tayammum” (ritual ablution performed with
earth). Also, spread all over one finds a very large number of reports
concerning the treatment of animals and pastures, as well as what one may call
animal rights. And in the “Book of Generalities” (al-J1mi
‘) of the famous collection al-Muwatt1’
of
M1lik
ibn Anas (d. 795), the Master of the
M1lik2
school of law, one finds a reference to the important principle of
him1
—land protection and consecration—which is
there linked, in its very essence, to the question of social and economic
justice. So we see that much relevant material exists in
Had2th
collections, but this material exists as such, without having received any
theoretical treatment in the framework of a system of environmental or
ecological ethics. All we have is a body of classified reports, like case law
collections, and this is what
Had2th
is.
But in the Islamic legal
writings the principles contained in
Had2th
reports are identified and subjected to a highly sophisticated processing into
a rigorous body of legal theory. These legal writings, often considered the summum
bonum of the literary output of the Islamic intellectual culture,
embody the discipline of fiqh, a word that literally means
“understanding,” as we have already noted. Fiqh, or the Islamic science
of jurisprudence, is a systematic and fully structured theoretical search for
God’s
shar2
‘a, or Way, that had to be gleaned from and constructed out of
the myriad adilla (here, legal indicators) provided for reflection
throughout God’s
1y1t
. In concrete disciplinary terms, fiqh
is the determination of the legal status (hukm
) of an act, a determination arrived at
through the application of correct, though not epistemologically
certain, procedural rules (u6ul
). These rules of correct procedure had
been established by the middle of the ninth century, with the formal structure
of logical inferences from the sources of law (u6ul
al-fiqh) fully
articulated. The supreme material source of fiqh-law was, of course, the
Qur’1n
—but next to that, and sometimes parallel to and in addition to it, was the sunna
(custom) of the Prophet, which was by then available in authenticated
Had2th
collections. Again, true to Islam’s claim that it is a complete way of life, fiqh-laws
are as a whole meant to be universal in scope—that is, comprehending all
conceivable human acts. One may say, then, that fiqh is the structured
articulation of the totality of Islam in its external functional manifestation.
The case of
him1
constitutes a pertinent example. As I have
already indicated, this principle appears in the
Muwatt1’
; it is reported as a
Had2th
of the Prophet’s rather well-known companion and the second Rightly Guided (R1shid
) caliph ‘Umar ibn al-Khatt1b
, his word having derivative prophetic authority:
| |
‘Umar ibn
al-Khatt1b
said to his freedman . . . whom he had placed in charge of
him1
, “Beware of the cry of the oppressed for
it is answered. Do admit to
him1
the owners of small herds of camel and
sheep . . . By God! this is their land for which they fought in pre-Islamic
times and which was included in their terms when they became Muslims. They
would certainly feel that I am an adversary [for having declared their land
him1
]— but, indeed, had it not been for the
cattle to be used in the cause of God, I would never make a part of people’s
land
him1
.”68 |
It is clear from this report that the principle of
him1
, which I shall explicate further, is at
once an ecological issue as well as one of distributive justice and fairness.
This twin significance of the principle is amply illustrated by the fact that
it is explicitly invoked in the “Book of Business Transactions” of the highly
respected
Mishk1t
al-Ma61b2h
(Niche for Lamps), a manual of
Had2th
deriving from a work of one al-Baghaw2
(d. c. 1116);69
the book in question is concerned with the ethics of trade and commercial
dealings. In the @ah2h
of
Bukh1r2
too it is found in a chapter with the same title,70
as well as in the “Book of [Equitable and Fair] Distribution of Water.”71All
this further reinforces the point:
him1
is both an environmental concern and an
ethical issue of fair public policy.
But it remained up to the fiqh
legists to develop the
him1
principle systematically into a legal
entity amenable to legislation, and this process is carried out, by definition,
in the framework of practical ethics. In fact,
him1
had a long history of abuse. The word,
literally meaning “protected, forbidden place,” names a pre-Islamic institution
whereby some powerful individual or a ruling chief declared a piece of fertile
land forbidden to the public or out of bounds. This was generally an
exploitative act of dispossession and land confiscation. By virtue of
him1
, those in power arrogated to themselves
exclusive grazing, watering, and cultivation rights within the area the ground
covered. Islam abrogated this practice and transformed the institution. Thus we
read in the Qur’1n
, “O my people, this is the camel of God, which is for you a sign (1ya
). Leave it to graze on the land of God.”72
And in the Bukh1r2
we have the
Had2th
: “Nobody has the right to declare a place
him1
except God and His Messenger.”73
In this way,
him1
became a symbol of redress and restoration
of justice and gradually acquired a status close to that of
haram
(see below), in that it denoted a
sanctuary, with its flora and fauna receiving special protection.74
But the environmental
dimensions of the institution of
him1
are readily apparent, and the
M1lik2
school of law, in particular, has developed these dimensions, preserving their
intimate connection with social and ethical balance. Thus, four conditions were
to be met for a piece of land to qualify as a possible
him1
: First was the condition of need and
fairness.
Him1
was to be governed not by the whim or
greed of some powerful individual or group, but by people’s generally felt need
to maintain a restricted area; that is, it had to be an act pro bono.
Second, under the condition of what we may call ecological proportion, the area
to be declared as
him1
could not be too large, for this would be
disproportionate. Third was the condition of environmental protection—the area
under the
him1
protection was not to be built upon or
commercialized, nor was it to be cultivated for financial gain. Fourth was the
condition of social welfare; the overriding aim of
him1
was the economic and environmental benefit
of the people.75
This provides the outline of a concrete environmental policy concerning
protected areas.
A similar institution
articulated by the legists is that of
haram
(or
har2m
)—sacred territory, inviolable zone,
sanctuary. Mecca was a
haram by
the decree of God Himself.76
Here, for example, no animal of the game species is ever put to death. By
extension
haram became
an environmental institution; it is often discussed in the section devoted to
wasteland in legal works. Izzi Deen writes, “The
har2m
is usually found in association with
wells, natural springs, underground water channels, rivers and trees planted on
barren lands or
maw1t
[wasteland]. There is [in some parts of the Islamic
world] a careful administration of the
har2m
zones based on the practice of the Prophet
Muhammad
and the precedent of his companions as recorded in the sources of Islamic law.”77
It is quite striking
that there exits in the
Had2th
corpora an abundance of reports concerning plants and trees, land cultivation
and irrigation, crops, livestock, grazing, water distribution, water sources
and their maintenance, wells and rivers, water rights—all this is most
promising material for our contemporary environmental concerns. Thus, in a
report in Bukh1r2’s
@ah2h
, the Prophet is quoted as saying, “There
is none amongst the believers who plants a tree, or sows a seed, and then a
bird, or a person, or an animal eats thereof, but is regarded as having given a
charitable gift [for which there is great recompense].”78
So praiseworthy and noble is the task of a sustainable cultivation of
land that even in Paradise (al-Janna, which significantly
means “the Garden”), existing beyond the physical world, it does not come to an
end. So we read the Prophet telling his companions:
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One of the inhabitants of Paradise will
beseech God to allow him land cultivation. God will ask him, “But are you not
in your desired state of being”? “Yes,” he will say, “but I would still like to
cultivate land” . . . When the man will be granted God’s leave for this task,
he will sow seeds, and plants will soon grow out of them, becoming ripe and
mature, ready for reaping. They will become colossal as mountains. God will
then say: “O Son of Adam, gather”!79 |
In another place, the Prophet is reported to have said:
“When doomsday comes, and someone has a palm shoot in his hand, he should plant
it.”80
This saying accords a prophetic sacrality to all life: the bounty of nature is
a good in itself, even at Doom—a good beyond any immediate or
conceivable benefits that one may draw from it.
In the
Bukh1r2’s
section on issues concerning the use, ownership, management, and distribution
of water, one finds a meaningful play on the word
fadl
, which means both “excess” and “grace”:
“[Among the] . . . three types of people with whom God on the Day of
Resurrection will exchange no words, nor will He look at them,” the Prophet is
said to have declared, “. . . [is] the one who possesses an excess of water but
withholds it from others. To him God will say, ‘Today I shall withhold from you
my grace (fadl2
) as you withheld from others the
superfluity (fadl
) of what you had not created yourself.’”81
Note the moral principle
here linking the real to the transcendental: it was not humankind that created
water; God is the creator. Indeed, while in its legal developments the question
of the ownership of wells, rivers, and other natural drinking and irrigation
sources became a complex one, one thing remained abundantly clear on the moral
plane: water must be shared equally, as the Prophet is consistently and
insistently reported to have taught. This egalitarian ethical principle yields
far-reaching ecological consequences: by virtue of this principle, no living
individual, and this includes animals, can be deprived of water if it is
available; likewise no piece of cultivable land, irrespective of its ownership,
can be left without irrigation if water resources have the capacity. Again, and
even more strongly, the “Book of Business Transactions” of the
Mishk1t
quotes the Prophet’s solemn declaration of
a fundamental rule: “Muslims share alike in three things—water, herbage, and
fire.”82
One is astounded to see
how a large number of these
Had2th
principles were developed in their most minute detail, layer after layer, point
by point, in the writings of fiqh-jurists, and woven into the vast legal
fabric of normative ethics. A monumental example of such work is the
Hid1ya
of the twelfth-century jurist al-Marghin1n2
, held to be the most authoritative single work
of the
Hanaf2
school of law, followed by the majority of Muslims. In this grand manual,
already translated into English in the eighteenth century,83
one finds detailed discourses on wasteland (maw1t
) and, in this connection, systematic
discussions of water rights and resources and their maintenance.
The
Hid1ya
contains an extensive “Book on the
Cultivation of Waste Lands” with sections on the definition of
maw1t
, the rights of cultivating it, the
treatment of adjacent territories, the status of adjacent territories, water
courses in
maw1t
, matters related to aqueducts running through the
maw1t
, and so on. There is a large section here
on waters, including issues of control and direction of flow, a large section
on digging canals, on rivers, their kinds and cleaning, and rules with respect
to drains and water courses. There is, furthermore, a whole section on water
rights, which discusses the right to alter or obstruct water courses, dams, the
digging of trenches, the construction of water engines or bridges, water
vents—the minutiae here are daunting.84
Even more striking than
the abundance of Prophetic reports on vegetation and irrigation is the
existence in the
Had2th
corpora of a large body of traditions, admonitions, rules, and stories
concerning animals, their treatment, rights, natural dignity, and even their
unique individual identities. Contained in the “Book of Striving” (Jih1d
) of the
Muwatt1’
is the resounding tradition about horses:
“In the forehead of horses,” the Prophet is quoted as saying, “are tied up
welfare and bliss until the Day of Resurrection.”85
Such compassion and care for animals is reflected in the same book in an
account of the Prophet wiping the mouth of his horse with his personal cloth.
Asked why, he replied: “Last night I was rebuked [by God] for not looking after
my horse.”86
Again, in Bukh1r2’s
“Book of Water,” we have this report:
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The one
to whom his horse is a source of reward is the one who keeps it in the path of
God, and ties it by a long rope in a pasture or a garden. Such a person will
get a reward equal to what the horse’s long rope allows it to eat in the
pasture or the garden. And if the horse breaks its rope and crosses one or two
hills, then all marks of its hoofs and its dung will be counted as good deeds
for its owner. And if it passes by a river and drinks from it, then that will
also be regarded as a good deed on the part of its owner. . . .87 |
Appearing in the “Book of
Jih1d
” in the
Mishk1t
is a set of rules that the Prophet
pronounced concerning the treatment of camels. “When you travel in fertile
country,” he said, “give the camels their due from the ground, and when you
travel in time of drought make them go quickly. When you encamp at night keep
away from the roads, for they are where beasts pass and are the resort of
insects at night.”88
It is remarkable that a sensitive concern for animals does not disappear from
the horizon even during military engagements. In the same book, there exists a
particularly stern admonishment against animal abuse—“Do not treat the back of
your animals as pulpits, for God the most high has made them subject to you
only to convey you to a place which you could not otherwise reach without much
difficulty.”89
Likewise we have a fable
from the Prophet in
Bukh1r2’s
“Book of Agriculture”: “While a man was riding a cow, it turned toward him and
said, ‘I have not been created for this purpose [of riding]; I have been
created for plowing.’”90
Here we have the
Qur’1nic
principles of amr and qadr, effectively the principles of natural
and moral law and ecological balance, translated into practical ethics. And
again, in the “Book of
Jih1d
” of another @ah2h
(Correct)
Had2th
collection, the Sunan of
Abu
D1’ud
(d. 888), one tradition clearly implies—and note that this implication is
recognized by Muslim commentators—that each animal is to be considered as
an individual, since the tradition speaks of animals being given
proper names (“a donkey called ‘Af2r
”).91
Quite remarkably, this individuation effectively admits a unique identity
on the part of each and every member of a given animal species. One wonders,
then, if Islam constitutes an exception to the “speciesism” of the classical
world—as I have said elsewhere, this would indeed be a highly fruitful question
to pursue.92
Rather well-known in the
Islamic world is the
Had2th
story of a woman who was condemned to hellfire “because of a cat which she had
imprisoned, and it died of starvation. . . . God told her, ‘You are condemned
because you did not feed the cat, and did not give it water to drink, nor did
you set it free so that it could eat of the creatures of the earth.’”93
This Had2th
story forms the basis of the fiqh-legislation that the owner of an
animal is legally responsible for its well-being. If such owners are unable to
provide for their animals, jurists further stipulate, then they should sell
them, or let them go free in such a way that they can find food and shelter, or
slaughter them if eating their flesh is permissible. Given the requirement that
animals should be allowed as far as possible to live out their lives in a
natural manner, keeping birds in cages is deemed unlawful.94
Large sections, or
books, devoted exclusively to the hunting of animals and game, and animal
sacrifice, are a standard feature of the
Had2th
corpora. All of this is treated with an ethical focus, underlying which is a
particular conception of the natural environment that ultimately derives from
the Qur’1n
. At the same time, this ethical treatment of the issue generates both a
philosophical and a moral attitude to the physical world that is uniquely
Islamic, an attitude that manifests itself as an actual fact of the practices
of Islamic societies. It is most instructive to recall E. W. Lane noting in his
famous nineteenth-century work Manners and Customs of
the Modern Egyptians: “I was much pleased at observing
their humanity to dumb animals.” But Lane found that the Egyptians had
subsequently lost some of their traditional sensitivity to animals, and he
explains: “I am inclined to think that the conduct of Europeans has greatly
conduced to produce this effect, for I do not remember to have seen acts of
cruelty to dumb animals except in places where Franks either reside or are
frequent visitors.”95
The Egyptians’ “humanity
to animals” appears to be the moral harvest of Prophetic teachings with its
numerous ecological ramifications. In fact, there is in the
Mishk1t
the saying of the Prophet, “If anyone
wrongfully kills [even] a sparrow, [let alone] anything greater, he will face
God’s interrogation.”96
We read in the same collection how vehemently the Prophet condemned the
practice of branding animals; the story is narrated that he saw a donkey
branded on the face, and it upset him so much that he invoked God’s curse: “God
curse the one who branded it!” In fact, it is explicitly stated here that
“God’s messenger forbade striking the face of an animal or branding on its
face.” Similarly, he is reported to have forbidden all forms of blood sports,
including inciting living creatures to fight with one another, or using them as
targets—“The Prophet cursed those who used a living creature as targets.”97
The unusual intensity of this condemnation is to be gauged by the fact that
these accounts speak of the Prophet cursing, and this is an exceptional feature
of his character as it is portrayed in the tradition. In the same vein and with
clear ecological dimensions, we have a story in
Abu
D1’ud’s
Sunan: “Once a companion of the Prophet was seen crumbling up bread for
some ants with the words, ‘They are our neighbors and have rights over us.’”98
Islam does not prescribe
vegetarianism and, of course, killing of certain kinds of animals for food is
permitted, but only if the animal is killed in a specified manner and—in
order to prevent cruel and arrogant tendencies from developing—God’s name is
pronounced over it. Islamic tradition has it that it is precisely the
prevention of human arrogance and the inculcation of an ecological sensitivity
in which lies the wisdom (hikma
) of the whole idea of
Dhabh
(lawful killing of animals for food).
Thus, there exist in
Had2th
collections exceedingly detailed instructions concerning animal slaughtering. A
report in the
Mishk1t
has the Prophet saying, “God who is
blessed and exalted has decreed that everything should be done in a good way,
so when you kill [an animal] use a good method, and when you cut an animal’s
throat you should use a good method, for each of you should sharpen his knife
and give the animal as little pain as possible.”99
It is declared reprehensible by the Prophet to let one animal witness the
slaughtering of another, or to keep animals waiting to be slaughtered, or
sharpening the knife in their presence—“Do you wish to slaughter the animal
twice: once by sharpening your blade in front of it and another time by cutting
its throat?”100
The jurist
Margin1n2
, whom we have already met, has a whole chapter
on Dhabh
in his
Hid1ya
; elaborating the matter in the finest of
its details, as it was his manner, he writes:
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IT is
abominable first to throw the animal down on its side, and then to sharpen the
knife; for it is related that the Prophet once observing a man who had done so,
said to him, “How many deaths do you intend that this animal should die? Why
did you not sharpen your knife before you threw it down?” IT is abominable to
let the knife reach the spinal marrow, or to cut off the head of the animal.
The reasons . . . are, FIRST, because the Prophet has forbidden this; and,
SECONDLY, because it unnecessarily augments the pain of the animal, which is
prohibited in our LAW.—In short, everything which unnecessarily augments the
pain of the animal is abominable . . . IT is abominable to seize an animal
destined for slaughter by the feet, and drag it . . . IT is abominable to break
the neck of the animal whilst it is in the struggle of death. . . .101 |
We have already noted the rule
of equal sharing of water, and this rule makes no distinction between human
beings and animals. Thus, for example, in the “Book of Ablution” of the
Bukh1r2
corpus, as well as in other corpora, there is the account of a man
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who was
walking along a road and felt thirsty. Finding a well, he lowered himself into
it and drank. When he came out he found a dog painting from thirst and licking
at the earth. |
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He therefore went down again into the well
and filled his shoe with water and gave it to the dog. For this act God
Almighty forgave him his sins. The Prophet was then asked whether man had a
reward through animals, and he replied: “In everything that lives there is a
reward.”102 |
“In everything that lives
there is a reward” may be considered a broad central principle of Islam’s
environmental ethics.
So we see the richness of
Islamic material relevant to the question of the environment and ecology, and
we also note the sophistication of treatment this material received in the
Islamic culture, but the question is complex and larger. To capture a fuller
sweep of the question of Islam and ecology, we will have to cast a much wider
net—this essay does not even claim to contribute a smaller net; if anything, it
offers some of its twine.
ENDNOTES
| 1 |
See Henry Corbin, Avicenna and the
Visionary Recital (New York: Pantheon Books, 1960). Back
to Text |
| 2 |
Some samples of the first attitude are to be found in
Ziauddin Sardar, ed., The Touch of Midas (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1984); on resentment toward all things Western,
see the discussion of “Westoxification” in John Esposito, Islam and
Politics (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1984). In the third
view one would place the ideas of some of those called Modernists; see
Esposito, Islam and Politics; also Fazlur Rahman, Islam
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1979). Back
to Text |
| 3 |
Hamilton Gibb, Whither Islam? (London:
Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1932), 376. Back
to Text |
| 7 |
Seyyed H. Nasr is one of the pioneers who have
undertaken this exercising task. See Nasr, “Islam and the Environmental
Crisis,” The Islamic Quarterly 34 (4) (1991): 217–234; and
Nasr, The Encounter of Man and Nature
(London: Allen and Unwin, 1978). Back
to Text |
| 8 |
Cf. Hanna E. Kassis, A Concordance of
the
Qur’1n
(Berkeley: University of California Press,
1983). Back
to Text |
| 9 |
George F. Hourani, Reason and Tradition
in Islamic Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1985), 86. Back
to Text |
| 11 |
The literal meaning of zauj is, indeed, “equal
half”; in the creation story in the second chapter (verse 35) of the
Qur’1n
, this is the word used for the human being recognized by the tradition as Eve
(Haww1
). Back
to Text |
| 13 |
This is pointed out by Nasr, “Islam and the
Environmental Crisis,” 219. Back
to Text |
| 14 |
7:72. Translations of the
Qur’1n
used for this essay are The Holy
Qur’1n
, trans. Abdullah Y. Ali (Brentwood, Md.:
Amana Corporation, 1989); and The
Qur’1n
Interpreted, trans. Arthur
J. Arberry (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1955). Commentaries include
Ibn Kath2r
, Tafs2r
, in Muhammad A. al-Sabuni,
ed., Mukhta6ar
Tafs2r
ibn
Kath2r
(Beirut: Dar al-Qur’1n
al-Kar2m
, 1981). Back to Text |
| 16 |
2:22; 13:17; 14:32–33; 16:5–16; 16:80–81; 17:70;
21:31–32; 23:18–22; 43:10–12; 45:12–13; 55:1–78; 78:6–16. Back
to Text |
| 29 |
Maj
‘
Fat1w1
, quoted in Mawil Yousuf Izzi Deen
(Samarri), “Islamic Environmental Ethics,” in Ethics of Environment
and Development, ed. J. Ronald Engel and Joan Gibb Engel
(Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1990), 190; my emphasis. Back
to Text |
| 35 |
Denys Johnson-Davies, The Island of
Animals, Adapted from an Arabic Fable
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), viii. Back
to Text |
|
| 41 |
Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the
Qur’1n
(Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1989),
17. This work is a highly learned excursus on
Qur’1nic
themes by one of the finest modern scholars of our times. Back
to Text |
| 46 |
On {ulm
al-nafs see Hourani, Reason
and Tradition in Islamic Ethics. Back
to Text |
| 47 |
See my chapter “Islam” in A Companion to
Environmental Philosophy (Blackwell Companions to Philosophy
series), ed. Dale Jamieson (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001). It ought to be noted here
that this was the first articulation of my ideas on the question of Islam and
ecology, and readers will note some parallels in the present essay; this is
inevitable since the core of the primary normative sources remains constant.
Back
to Text |
| 50 |
The
Qur’1n
is replete with the verbal form of the root word
{alama (to do wrong) along with
several other verbal and nominal forms that morphologically arise out of it.
But for {ulm
al-nafs see particularly 2:231; 3:135; 7:23; 11:101;
27:44; 28:16; 34;19; 43:76. Back
to Text |
| 52 |
L. Gardet, “God in Islam,” Encyclopedia of
Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 30. Back
to Text |
| 65 |
See Izzi Deen (Samarri), “Islamic Environmental
Ethics,” 95. Back
to Text |
| 66 |
6@ah2h
al-Bukh1r2
, ed. and trans. M. Muhsin Khan (Chicago:
Kazi Publications, 1976–1979), I:331. Back
to Text |
| 67 |
These are named after the masters who compiled them,
thus: al-Bukh1r2
, Muslim (d. 875),
Abu
D1’ud
(d. 888), al-Tirmidh2
(d. 892) al-Nas1’2
(d. 916), and Ibn
M1ja
(d. 886). Back
to Text |
| 68 |
68Muwatt1
of
M1lik
ibn Anas, trans. Muhammad Rahimuddin (Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1985), no.
1830. Back
to Text |
| 69 |
69Mishk1
al-Ma61b2h
, trans. James Robson (Lahore: Sh.
Muhammad Ashraf, 1990), 592. Back
to Text |
| 74 |
See J. Chelhold, “Him1
,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam,
new ed., vol. 3, ed. H. A. R. Gibb et al. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971), 393. Back
to Text |
| 75 |
Wahba al-Zuhail2
, al-Fiqh al-Islam2
wa Adillatuhu, vol. 5
(Islamic Law and Its Material Foundations) (Damascus: Dar al-Fikr, 1984),
23–24; 571–575; quoted in Izzi Deen (Samarri), “Islamic Environmental Ethics,”
196. Back
to Text |
| 77 |
Izzi Deen (Samarri), “Islamic Environmental Ethics,”
190. Back
to Text |
| 80 |
Sunan al-Baihaq2
al-Kubr1
, quoted in Izzi Deen (Samarri), “Islamic
Environmental Ethics,” 194. Back
to Text |
| 83 |
83Hid1y
of al-Marghn1n2
, trans. Charles Hamilton (London: T.
Bensley, 1791); cited here is the reprint from the 2d ed. of 1870 (Lahore:
Premier Book House, 1957). Back
to Text |
| 85 |
85Muwatt1
of
M1lik
ibn Anas, trans. Rahimuddin (Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1985), no. 990. Back
to Text |
| 91 |
Sunan
Ab2
D1’ud
, trans. Wahid al-Zamân (Urdu) (Lahore:
Islamic Academy, 1983), 308–312. Back
to Text |
| 98 |
Quoted in Johnson-Davies, The Island of
Animals, xvii. Back
to Text |
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©
2001 by The American Academy of Arts and Sciences
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