Thirteenth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

The Islamic discourse on environment now dates back over a half-century. Over its course, it comprised mainly of attempts to let the rich Islamic textual tradition speak to current ecological problems in which scholars, philosophers, social activists, and more recently also governmental institutions and NGOs have engaged. Especially over the last decade, this also led to various theorizations of this discourse revolving among others around the questions of authenticity and practical viability of the ‘Islamic environmentalisms’ (among others in a recent book by Anna Gade). In my contribution, I argue that the scholarly debate on the topic has not yet reached sufficient scope and depth, mainly for one reason: the overwhelming focus on the ‘ethical’ dimension of the Islam-environment nexus built upon the uncritically accepted supposition about the primacy of “values” in determining social agency vis-à-vis the environment (in fact originating in the foundational discourses of White and Nasr from 1960s and animating the discourse all along). Against that, I propose that a much broader outlook focusing on the long-term historical interaction of Muslim societies with their natural surroundings is desirable and that only it has the potential to move the study of the question forward and resolve some of its lingering discrepancies. This basically means to historicize the question and apply some of the cutting-edge knowledge from the field of environmental history to it. Such a turn, I argue, also opens some new fields of inquiry of interest to both historians and scholars of Islam.