Helping Islam's green shoots grow

| Nazry Bahrawi | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

In battling climate change, Indonesian Muslims have led their counterparts elsewhere in promoting the idea that Islam must not be a fair-weathered faith when it comes to environmental degradation.

They did so without the prodding of a grand conservation blueprint such as that unveiled at this month's UN-funded Alliance of Religions and Conservation meeting at Windsor Castle. Among the plan's many targets is the transformation of the 10 most sacred Islamic cities into eco-friendly sites in the next five years.

Rather, Indonesian activists have acted independently to push for the greening of Islam in a movement that could be traced back some two decades when discourses about environmental conservation first appeared in the rhetoric of the Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), Indonesia's two largest Islamic grassroots organisations.

In recent years, both have set up branches focused on implementing environmental programmes. For instance, the NU is working closely with the ministry of forestry to battle the depletion of trees brought about primarily by illegal logging in Indonesia's national forests.

Two years back, a group of NU clerics even went as far as issuing a fatwa against the government's plan to build a nuclear power plant in central Java. They reason that nuclear fallout is plausible as Indonesia is situated along the seismically active Pacific "Ring of Fire" fault line.

Even Islamic boarding schools or pesantren – once considered a hotbed of extremism – have turned over a green leaf. For instance, the Ilmu Giri school conducts programmes for farmers to replenish trees in their vicinity. Its founder, Nasruddin Anshory, preaches that the felling of one tree must be replaced by the seeding of two.

Meanwhile, the nation's environment ministry has launched an eco-pesantren programme in about 90 schools in the Yogyakarta province to impart practical knowledge on preserving and developing the environment.

In a world suffering from an environmental deficit, Indonesia's godly green shoots are a positive sign. Yet they could also wither. If mismanaged, the positive hype generated by the surging Islamic eco-activism could quickly degrade into an eco-jihad.

This warning was issued by leading Indonesian environmental activist Fachruddin Mangunjaya. While he downplays the possibility that green causes could be hijacked by extremist groups, he cautions that a confrontation could break out between the state and lay Muslims if Indonesia's national council of religious leaders continues to protest against the government's plan to build a nuclear power plant by 2016.

Furthermore, implementation of conservation programmes has been wanting in some areas. In the past several years, the practice by Indonesian farmers of clearing farmland by burning vegetation has been widespread, bringing about the south-east Asian haze.

Such glitches suggest that Indonesia is not yet a model of religious conservationism. To this end, one of the nation's foremost tasks should surely be to translate its eco-activism into a comprehensive eco-theology.

Here, Indonesia should propound an Islamic philosophy of environmentalism that is not just flora-centric but fauna-friendly too. Yet Indonesian Muslims have only demonstrated a proclivity for the former.

Embracing such an ideal is tricky considering that meat consumption is a natural part of the Islamic way of life. While it is unrealistic to expect Muslims to stop eating meat, the burgeoning halal industry in Indonesia – and other parts of the Muslim world too – runs the risk of degenerating into a capitalistic venture that sees animals existing merely to satiate man's needs.

Averting such an unscrupulous commodification of Islam necessitates a re-interpretation of the term khalifah in the oft-quoted Surah 2:30 of the Qur'an that describes man's role on Earth. Scholars have popularly interpreted khalifah as "vicegerent", implying that man is a supreme ruler over other beings. Such an interpretation justifies the indiscriminate exploitation of animals.

If Indonesians are serious about religious environmentalism, they would be the first to heed Birmingham-based Islamic environmental activist Fazlun Khalid's proposal to reinterpret khalifah as "vice-regent". This latter term denotes that man's mandate on Earth is to not to rule but merely act in the name of another higher authority – namely, God. Muslims are thus required to treat other living beings with trepidation and humility. Such a paradigm shift would naturally give rise to efforts to treat cattle humanely.