Quran and Science

Allah has commanded Muslims to respect and revere the environment


As Muslims came together in celebrating the 35th anniversary of Earth Day on April 22, they recalled with pride Islam’s stance on environmentalism.


In the Quran, men and women are viewed as God’s vicegerents on Earth. (2:30). God created nature in a balance (“al-mizan”) and mankind’s responsibility is to maintain this fragile equilibrium through wise governance and sound personal conduct.


The Quran also describes the believing men and women as those who “walk on the Earth in humility.” (25:63). Scholars have interpreted this verse, and others like it, to mean that Muslims are to protect nature’s many bounties given to them by the Almighty. Preservation is therefore more than a good policy recommendation - it is a commandment from God.


There are more than 700 verses in the Quran that exhort believers to reflect on nature


For example, the Quran states: “And it is He who spread out the earth, and set thereon mountains standing firm and (flowing) rivers; and fruit of every kind He made in pairs, two and two; He draweth the night as a veil over the Day. Behold, verily in these things there are signs for those who consider.” (13:3).


According to Islamic beliefs, the Earth is a sanctuary in which mankind was made to dwell in comfort. The vast oceans, forests and mountains that make up this bountiful planet have been subdued by God for our enjoyment and productive use. Further, God compels Muslims in the Quran to respect and revere the environment when He says, “Greater indeed than the creation of man is the creation of the heavens and the earth.” (40:57)


Prophet Muhammad (Pbuh) told his followers they would be rewarded by God for taking care of the Earth. He said: “If any Muslim plants any plant and a human being or an animal eats of it, he will be rewarded as if he had given that much in charity.” (Sahih Al-Bukhari, 8:41) He also compared Muslims to a “fresh tender plant” that bends, but does not break, when afflicted with life’s inevitable calamities. (Sahih Al-Bukhari, 7:547)


Another tradition of Prophet Muhammad (Pbuh) or hadith, quotes him as saying: “If the Hour (Judgment Day) is about to be established and one of you is holding a palm shoot, let him take advantage of even one second before the Hour is established to plant it.”


An example of Muslims taking ownership of their divine obligation to protect the environment was seen recently when the people of Tanzania reversed a growing trend toward ecological destruction through a policy of sustainable fishing and environmental preservation based on the principles of the Quran. Prior to implementation of the educational program, over-harvesting by fishermen on the Muslim-majority island of Misali had threatened the area’s aquatic eco-system. But thanks to an indigenous campaign to remind local inhabitants of Islam’s respect for nature, those who earn their living from the sea learned the benefits of protecting the region’s bio-diversity.


In Islamic history, Ottoman civilization provides us with another example of the seriousness with which Muslims have traditionally taken their environmental obligations. Ottoman viziers, or ministers, advising the sultan on matters of administration and policy regularly encouraged moratoria on matters deemed potentially damaging to future generations.


Innovations in technology, for example, were hotly debated among scholars, all of whom recognised the importance of considering the long-term impact on both society and the environment.


In Islam, even the Earth has inalienable rights endowed by its Creator.


Sound ecological principles are not limited to Islam, and should be acted upon by practitioners of other faiths. Together we can tackle the environmental problems that besiege our planet.


(The writer is with the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). He can be reached at jbrockwell@cair-net.org).

The lack of traditional scholars, whether in Islamic law, in hadith, or Qur’anic exegesis has given rise to an understanding of the religion that is far from the truth.


Perhaps the biggest challenge in learning Islam correctly today is the scarcity of traditional ulama. In this meaning, Bukhari relates the sahih, rigorously authenticated hadith that the Prophet (Pbuh) said, 


“Truly, Allah does not remove Sacred Knowledge by taking it out of servants, but rather by taking back the souls of Islamic scholars [in death], until, when He has not left a single scholar, the people take the ignorant as leaders, who are asked for and who give Islamic legal opinion without knowledge, misguided and misguiding” (Fath al-Bari, 1.194, hadith 100).


The process described by the hadith is not yet completed, but has certainly begun, and in our times, the lack of traditional scholars—whether in Islamic law, in hadith, in tafsir ‘Qur’anic exegesis’—has given rise to an understanding of the religion that is far from scholarly, and sometimes far from the truth. For example, in the course of my own studies in Islamic law, my first impression from orientalist and Muslim-reformer literature, was that the Imams of the madhhabs or ‘schools of jurisprudence’ had brought a set of rules from completely outside the Islamic tradition and somehow imposed them upon the Muslims. But when I sat with traditional scholars in the Middle East and asked them about the details, I came away with a different point of view, having learned the basis for deriving the law from the Qur’an and Sunnah. 


And similarly with Tasawwuf—which is the word I will use for the English Sufism, since our context is traditional Islam—quite a different picture emerged from talking with scholars of Tasawwuf than what I had been exposed to in the West. My writing will present knowledge taken from the Qur’an and sahih hadith, and from actual teachers of Tasawwuf in Syria and Jordan, in view of the need for all of us to get beyond clichés, the need for factual information from Islamic sources, the need to answer such questions as: Where did Tasawwuf come from? What role does it play in the din or religion of Islam and most importantly, what is the command of Allah about it? 


As for the origin of the term Tasawwuf, like many other Islamic discliplines, its name was not known to the first generation of Muslims. The historian Ibn Khaldun notes in his Muqaddima: 


This knowledge is a branch of the sciences of Sacred Law that originated within the Ummah. From the first, the way of such people had also been considered the path of truth and guidance by the early Muslim community and its notables, of the Companions of the Prophet (Pbuh), those who were taught by them, and those who came after them. 


It basically consists of dedication to worship, total dedication to Allah , disregard for the finery and ornament of the world, abstinence from the pleasure, wealth, and prestige sought by most men, and retiring from others to worship alone. This was the general rule among the Companions of the Prophet (Pbuh) and the early Muslims, but when involvement in this-worldly things became widespread from the second Islamic century onwards and people became absorbed in worldliness, those devoted to worship came to be called Sufiyya or People of Tasawwuf (Ibn Khaldun, al-Muqaddima [N.d. Reprint. Mecca: Dar al-Baz, 1397/1978], 467).


As for the origin of the word Tasawwuf, it may well be from Sufi, the person who does Tasawwuf, which seems to be etymologically prior to it, for the earliest mention of either term was by Hasan al-Basri who died 110 years after the Hijrah, and is reported to have said, “I saw a Sufi circumambulating the Kaabah, and offered him a dirham, but he would not accept it.” It therefore seems better to understand Tasawwuf by first asking what a Sufi is; and perhaps the best definition of both the Sufi and his way, certainly one of the most frequently quoted by masters of the discipline, is from the sunnah of the Prophet (Pbuh) who said:


Allah Most High says: “He who is hostile to a friend of Mine I declare war against. My slave approaches Me with nothing more beloved to Me than what I have made obligatory upon him, and My slave keeps drawing nearer to Me with voluntary works until I love him. And when I love him, I am his hearing with which he hears, his sight with which he sees, his hand with which he seizes, and his foot with which he walks. If he asks me, I will surely give to him, and if he seeks refuge in Me, I will surely protect him” (Fath al-Bari, 11.340–41, hadith 6502);


(To be continued)