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Abstract
The year of 2022 is to pass witnessing a plethora of international conferences on challenging environmental and ecological issues like climate change, depleting biodiversity, decreasing natural resources and coveted sustainable development. The recent globally celebrated United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP 15) which resulted in the landmark Kunming-Montreal Agreement is an instance to state. However, the miserable fact is that all these organizational treaties remain in rhetoric, rarely producing effective results. Here, the Quran, a divine revelation dictated to prophet Muhammad as Muslim believes, along with other religious and material discourses makes an infallible cure for the chronic menaces of this ecological world (including macro- and microcosm) laying down a unique model of interaction between human and nature. The bond between human and nature is so strongly tied that the Quran has traced it to the origin from soil i.e. a complex natural component though it was a planned creation not a phenomenon of evolution. Furthermore, more than 700 ecological verses of the holy text mention human-nature proximity and its different aspects. Necessarily, the relation of origin should be maintained at a prospect of existence that is possible only through balanced and proportional maintenance even if a single component, for the Quran declares it’s also a community or nation in itself (Quran, 6:38).
The Quranic model of environment conservation is based on a correlation of utilization with preservation restraining from israaf (overconsumption) and fasaad (corruption/damaging) visioning a wide framework of individual and social as well as religious responsibility which feel more sincere and emotional rather than injectional. As it’s indispensable to identify the causes of a problem at a prospect to reach a comprehensive solution, Quran has explicitly described this cunning human impact as global corruption…caused by people’s actions (Quran, 30:41) for their exhaustion or overexploitation of perfectly created balance (Quran, 54:49). At the same time, the Quranic observations to mitigate and then eliminate the ensued consequences includes unsurpassable and pragmatically applicable frameworks to be carried out. Revamping the ecological and greenery mission which are deeply rooted in the divine text of holy Quran, the concepts of holistic lifestyles promoted by Islam and the Prophet like tawassut (moderation), tabsurah (observation), zuhd (living with austerity), mizaan (proportioned balance), even jihad (struggle) are studied now with different viewpoints (Joded Odeh Al-Jayyousi). The work sincerely delves into these panaceas elaborating the concept of fitra (nature) which is ingrained in all practices of Islam. Along with this, the analysis tries to give an insight into the pragmatic sense of Quranic solutions for the ecological crises the world of human-nature is facing now, unlike multiple international covenants. Still, the core message of the Quran is still to be explored in further diffusive dimensions.
Keywords: Environment, ecology, protection, Quran, fitra, biodiversity
(This abstract was submitted by the author for Academia Commune on Quran and Emerging Discourses, 2022, organized by Majmau Group of Institutions in collaboration with University of Kerala.)
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