بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
In the name of Allah, the all-Compassionate, the Merciful. All praise and thanks is due to the One who is in control, high above His creation, whose mercy surrounds everything and who listens to the prayers of His creatures and who gives to us when we ask him. So I ask Him that he shades us on the day when there is no shade and gives us refuge on the Day when our earth is turned into another earth, and that he shields us from the Fire and gives us good deeds when our record is opened before Him. And I ask him that he brings us with the Messenger of Allah, upon whom by blessings and peace, blessings and peace greater than all of the rain that ever falls on the earth from the beginning of the earth to the end of it, and greater than all of the seeds that ever grow with that rain from the beginning of the earth to the end of it, and greater than all of the breaths of every creature and created thing that ever breathed upon this earth from the beginning of time until the end of it.
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
وَسَخَّرَ لَكُم مَّا فِي السَّمَاوَاتِ وَمَا فِي الْأَرْضِ جَمِيعًا مِّنْهُ ۚ إِنَّ فِي ذَٰلِكَ لَآيَاتٍ لِّقَوْمٍ يَتَفَكَّرُونَ
And he subjected for you all that is in the heavens and what is in the earth. Indeed in that are signs for a people who think. (45:13)
الله الذي خلق السماوات والأرض و أنزل من السماء ماء فأخرج به من الثمرات رزقا لكم و سخل لكم الفلك لتجري في البحر بأمره و سخر لكم الأنهارز و سخر لكم الشمس والقمر دآئبين و سخر لكم اليل و النهار. و ءاتاكم من كل ما سألتمواه و إن تعدوا نعمت الله لا تحصوها إن الإنسان لظلوم كفار
God is He who created the heavens and the earth and caused water to come down from the sky and brought forth its fruits for your sustenance. He has constrained for you the vessels so that they may sail through the sea by His command and the rivers also He has subjected to your service. He has also subjected to your service the sun and the moon, both constant upon their courses; He has subjected to you the night and the day. He has given you of all that you asked of Him; if you try to count God’s favours, you will not be able to count them; surely humanity is very unjust and ungrateful. (Ibrahim: 32:34)
As we look at the environmental destruction wrought by humanity, many people now cast the finger of blame upon the Abrahamic religions, with their teachings that God subjected the earth to us, for legitimising and encouraging exploitative attitudes that led us along the path to where we are today. For example:
“The lens of the world created by the religious teachings of stewardship has shaped the way in which humans view their environment. Environmental stewardship is rooted in the relationship between humans and the environment (Berry 1). The Judeo-Christian Scripture teaches that humans were created to rule over the rest of God’s creations, as illustrated in the following passage:
God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth” (“Origins of Stewardship”).
The idea of stewardship promotes an anthropocentric view of the natural world, in which humans have the ability and right to control God’s other creations, both living and non-living. This teaching has influenced how humans in early civilizations through the age of exploration have viewed the world.
… Environmental stewardship has resulted in exploitation and hierarchy. Scripture says that “man named all the animals, thus establishing his dominance over them. God planned all of this explicitly for man’s benefit and rule: no item in the physical creation had any purpose save to serve man’s purposes” (White 4). Stewardship’s notion that humans have the ability and right to control God’s other creations has been used to justify the exploitation of natural resources.”
http://fubini.swarthmore.edu/~ENVS2/sierra/Essay2.html
It is interesting to reflect upon these arguments in the light of the Holy Qur’an. But first, let us reflect upon our dependence upon God and upon his mercy to us in giving us inumerable blessings. Does not Allah show us our dependence on Him and his mercy to us in each moment, right through our lives, with every inhalation and exhalation? No sooner do we feel the need to breathe in, and do so, than we feel the need to breathe out, and do so. And from the plants of our living planet comes this air that we breathe, for they too are breathing in and out and this gives us our air. Round our planet circulate vast currents of air, winds that regulate the temperature, blowing rain-bearing clouds that shade the planet and distribute moisture, bringing life and freshness. Pleasant perfumed breezes or wild exhilarating gales like the roaring current of air that one time threatened to blow us off the cliffs on the West coast of Wales. We faced it, arms wide to its full force, and imagined ourselves flying. On these winds people sailed around the world in wooden boats, before the help of fossil fuels. These winds benefit us in ways not immediately apparent. The dust from long dead fish from a vast dried-up lake in a desert region in Africa, dead 1000 years, are picked up and blown across the Atlantic to give natural fertility to the naturally poor soils of the Amazon. Who does all of this? Allah, who brings death from life and life from death.
How ungrateful and arrogant are people. Alive on this planet for only a few brief moments, we complain against Allah’s wisdom with our imperfect understanding, with the breath he has given us. We take advantage of His blessings, such as the regularity of the trade winds, and the ocean currents, and then use them to steal from each other, and even to steal each other, in imperial wars, colonisation and slaving. We asked for knowledge, but as our power and knowledge grows, so did the despoliation and destruction of what we have been given. We slaves were given a sacred trust and treated it as our slave, a slave with no rights and no honour, mistaking subjection for subjugation.
The Ikhwan us-Safa were aware of the difference between subjection and subjugation in their tenth century tale, the case of the Animals versus Man in the Court of the King of the Jinn. The animals take the humans to court for abusing and exploiting them. They pointed out that although the earth and what is in it is constrained and subjected to our benefit, this does not mean we can exploit it, because Allah tells us that the sun, the moon, the night, the day, the wind are subjected to us, and we have no control over them whatsoever and are powerless in the face of extreme weather events. At the end of the Ikhwan us-Safa’s tale, the humans realised that they were going to lose the court case so they discussed what to do. Some of the humans (the city folk) said that they would sell the animals quickly so that they would no longer be responsible for them and thought that they would also make a big profit from that. The more sensible humans from the countryside pointed out that humans were entirely dependent on animals to live, and so they all agreed to settle out of court.
“But the pastoral Arabs, Kurds, Turks, and nomads said, ‘If we do that, by God, we perish! Great God! Don’t even think about it!’ ‘How so?’ the town folk asked. ‘Why,’ they said, ‘if we did this, we’d be left with no milk to drink or meat to eat, no woollen clothes or blankets, no furnishings of hair or fleece, no shoes or sandals, no water skins, rugs, bedding, or covers. We’d be naked, barefoot, miserable, and sick. Death would be better for us than such a life. And the people of the cities would suffer the same fate.”
We now live in a world in which the vast majority of people live in cities, and have figured out how to make clothing and goods from artificial fibres and plastics, which are now filling up our seas. That imaginary court case was a thousand years ago. How will it be for us when creation’s true owner calls us to account in His court?
Even if people do not fear being called to account on the Day of Judgement, then surely they are starting to suspect that the very planet might call us to account if it turns from a paradise into a hell. How will it be for us if the winds change from bringing refreshing moisture and fresh air in due measure and bring instead inundation, hurricanes and fires?
To the extent to which human beings have used the verses of the sacred texts to justify exploitation, then the fault lies not in the texts or in their author, but in their interpretation and implementation by humans who are blinded by greed to their vulnerability, their lack of real power and control, and their very mortality. Do not blame the religion – blame the supposed devotees!
إِنَّمَا مَثَلُ الْحَيَاةِ الدُّنْيَا كَمَاءٍ أَنزَلْنَاهُ مِنَ السَّمَاءِ فَاخْتَلَطَ بِهِ نَبَاتُ الْأَرْضِ مِمَّا يَأْكُلُ النَّاسُ وَالْأَنْعَامُ حَتَّىٰ إِذَا أَخَذَتِ الْأَرْضُ زُخْرُفَهَا وَازَّيَّنَتْ وَظَنَّ أَهْلُهَا أَنَّهُمْ قَادِرُونَ عَلَيْهَا أَتَاهَا أَمْرُنَا لَيْلًا أَوْ نَهَارًا فَجَعَلْنَاهَا حَصِيدًا كَأَن لَّمْ تَغْنَ بِالْأَمْسِ ۚ كَذَٰلِكَ نُفَصِّلُ الْآيَاتِ لِقَوْمٍ يَتَفَكَّرُونَ (24)
The life of this world is assuredly like water that We send down from the clouds, then the vegetation of the earth, of which men and cattle eat, mingles with it and the earth is embellished and looks beautiful, and its owners think that they have power over it; then by night or by day, Our command comes and We make it as reaped corn, as if it had not existed there a day before, Thus we expound signs to a people that reflect. (10:24)
