A Spiritual Approach to the Environment

The environmental crisis is not the result of only material causes, since it is also rooted in a spiritual crisis that arose in the modern West, although few realise this truth.

In the midst of much discourse and concern about the environmental degradation today, most people in the West, and many in the Islamic world, believe that the solution to the environmental crisis lies simply in a wise and correct application of modern science and technology and a wise and correct practice of modern economics.

To create an Islamic environmental program on any level, Muslims must pay attention not only to material and social elements, but above all to the spiritually and intellectually false understanding of nature as a secular entity rather than God’s creation, and they must revive authentic Islamic teachings concerning God’s creation and man’s relation to it.

 

Excerpts from an article in Renovatio – The Journal of Zaytuna College, titled, ‘Salient Features of an Islamic Framework for Environmental Sustainability’ by Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Munjed M. Murad.

Articles from Renovatio can be accessed online or by buying the Renovatio books form the Zaytuna College bookshop.