Islam and the Environment

Amid all the discussion about how peaceful or violent the world's second-largest religion is, I thought I would take the time to learn more about how environmentally-friendly Islam is - or tries to be.

After my introduction to Islam, I wanted to know more about what the religion teaches about how humans should treat the natural world. So I sat down with a former student of mine who was kind enough to send me some Quranic verses and Hadith sayings and discuss them with me.

I'm confident that many of us could write for hours on how we interpret the verses and sayings below (as well as all other verses and sayings within Islam), but that's not my style. I'm going to keep it simple - short and sweet. So I've organized the post like this:

First, the English translation of the verse or saying. Second, my (extremely brief) interpretation of it and how it relates to environmental science.

This is by no means an exhaustive list. I left some verses and sayings out for the sake of time and space. However, this does nothing to change my conclusion: that Islam has good intentions for the environment :)

Quranic Verses

“And [they are] those who, when they spend, do so not excessively or sparingly but are ever, between that, [justly] moderate.” (25: 67)

Don't use more than or less than what you need. Moderation is key. I believe that this rule applies to everything in life, especially renewable and non-renewable natural resources that we use to survive and thrive. Take what you need to improve your standard of living but leave some for the people who will come after you.

“And when he goes away, he strives throughout the land to cause corruption therein and destroy crops and animals. And Allah does not like corruption.” (2:205)

Man does a good job of "corrupting" the land. We pillage the earth to make money and improve our lives. But God doesn't like this. He doesn't like when we "corrupt" the land by unnecessarily depleting resources and creating waste.

“And it is He who sends the winds as good tidings before His mercy, and We send down from the sky pure water. That We may bring to life thereby a dead land and give it as drink to those We created of numerous livestock and men.” (25: 48-49)

It will be windy before a storm or rain event. And when the rain comes, the water will bring life to the plants and animals below. Sounds about right.

Prophetic Sayings (Hadith)

The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: "You should not pass urine in stagnant water which is not flowing then (you may need to) wash in it."

Don't go #1 in standing water in case you need to bathe in it afterwards. This is still a huge issue in developing countries around the world. People bathe in water that was previously used as a bathroom and/or trashcan and get sick and/or die.

A Bedouin came to the Prophet (peace be upon him) to ask him about Wudu' (ablution), so he showed him how to perform Wudu', washing each part three times, then Prophet said: “'This is Wudu. Whoever does more than that has done badly, done to extremes and done wrong.”

Again, don't use more than you need. Conservation is key - especially when it comes to water in an arid region.

The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: “A woman got into Hell-Fire because of a cat whom she had tied, and thus it could not eat, and she did not let it free so that it could devour the vermin of the earth, until it died.”

Treat all living things on earth the way you would yourself or your loved ones, including not killing them. Live and let live. Also, be nice to kitties!

The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: "If the Final Hour comes while you have a palm-cutting in your hands and it is possible to plant it before the Hour comes, you should plant it."

If you have a chance to plant a tree - plant the tree. They're important. We need them. They serve an important role in ecosystems and for humans.

The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: "When a man was walking on the road, he found a thorny branch and removed it. Allah appreciated his action by forgiving him."

Better to leave the natural world as untouched as possible. It knows what it is doing - the epitome of sustainability.

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5 Lessons I Learned from Starting a Sustainability Program

In addition to my teaching responsibilities at Effat University, I was given the opportunity to develop and lead a sustainability program for the school - and I will be sharing my experiences (both good and bad) here. Feel free to follow along as I update everyone on the program and please, please, please feel free to provide any comments, suggestions, criticisms, etc.

This first post looks back on my first year as a full-time teacher and part-time sustainability coordinator, the trials and tribulations, and the lessons I learned.

When I was first given the go-ahead to tackle this role, I was lost to say the least. I had ideas on where and how to begin, but had trouble moving forward with them. I have a pretty solid environmental science background and I understand sustainability principles pretty darn well. But looking back - I'll be doing that a lot this post - that simply wasn't enough. In fact, it really only helped a little bit. I quickly realized I had a lot of learning to do.

I also had a lot of questions, with the most obvious being: How does one go about improving the social, economic, and environmental performance of a university? And less obvious questions like: Should we report? What should be included in the report? What aspects of sustainability should we focus on? Has the university attempted anything like this before? Who should be involved? How will it be managed? How do I institutionalize it?

While attempting to find answers to these and many other questions, I got many things wrong. But I did get one thing right: I knew that without leadership support and commitment to the cause, the chance of the sustainability effort being a success and leading to positive change was zero.

So I contacted our President and set up a meeting. I went into the meeting with an explanation of what sustainability is, how it would benefit us, and the issues I wanted to tackle, but that was not nearly enough. That first meeting was also our last one for the year.

It has been a slow-go, with more downs than ups. The downs included waning leadership support, low participation from the community, and an environmental performance assessment that flopped - all of which were my fault. I can only attribute so much of that failure to the fact that I spent most of my time teaching. Rather, it had more to do with the steep learning curve I went through and not having a clear path forward.

The good news now is that I'm turning a corner and beginning to understand exactly what steps I need to take. As I go through this period of enlightenment, I thought I would share with you 5 lessons I learned from this past year as a part-time sustainability coordinator:

1) We were already "doing" sustainability. The university naturally wants to reduce costs, improve processes, and conserve scarce or expensive resources. How do you do that? By becoming more efficient with the resource inputs (energy, water, food, operational materials, etc.). For example, 90% of our gray water from campus buildings is used for irrigation. There were also plenty of people already interested and/or committed to these types of initiatives.

2) A formal report isn't necessary - at least not right away. A GRI-compliant report is great for understanding your impacts, communicating those impacts to stakeholders, and recognition and promotion of your efforts, but it isn't mandatory. If you really want to report, keep it simple at first and don't be afraid to report on the not-so-good stuff as well. Perhaps start by posting your commitment to sustainability and a few key pieces of data on your organization's website.

3) Communicate better with leadership. Tell them exactly what a sustainability program would entail, how it would benefit the organization and the bottom line, and have an overarching strategy before trying to sell it to them (more specific strategies can come later). Continue to keep leadership in the loop with what is happening with the program. I'm using monthly progress reports.

4) Do an assessment. Establish a benchmark. Once you know where you stand, then you can decide where you want to go and how to get there. Depending on the resources available, the assessment can be simple or more complicated. I suggest focusing on the sustainability aspects deemed most material and that will also have the most impact, like energy, water, and waste/recycling.

5) You can't do it by yourself. A huge part of leading sustainability efforts is educating the community, raising awareness, and building and managing relationships with stakeholders. Just like any other accomplishment in life, you can't do it by yourself. Embed it in the culture.

Peter Graf, Chief Sustainability Officer at SAP, learned some similar lessons.

I hope this helps!

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