Environmentalism and Islam in Our Times
If ever there was doubt that some sort of theory of environmentalism has taken root within modern Islamic discourse, Osama Bin Laden's recent diatribe against the West for global warming of all things probably puts an end to the matter. When the homicidal Bin Laden advocates some sort of ethic of environmentalism, you know this idea that in Islam we protect the environment has gone viral.
There are I think a few interesting observations that might be made about this. The most obvious is that it demonstrates I think a new direction to Islamic fervor that I have been writing about, see this piece on what I call the Death of Islamic Law. The piece itself focusses on what is the true source of law in Muslim societies. Shari'a might be selectively enacted by the state, and Islamist and secularist will not be engaged in debate about how much selective enactment there should be. But at the end of the day, selectivity is the standard to which all adhere, really conservative Islamic Party and really secular party alike, using no yardstick and no consistent standard (repugnancy is not a consistent standard in application anywhere, Islamic constitutionalism is therefore deeply overrated, that's part IV of the piece). Islamic law is really in our times for ALL (including Islamist groups) therefore just a set of ideas that a state might want to think about as it develops its largely transplanted legal and political system, nobody wants a comprehensive Islamic system based on classical juristic theory, everyone wants to drop some of those rules for Western transplants, the only question is where, and how many.
The objection I am receiving most often to this is one that seems to conflate "The Death of Islamic Law" by which I mean the use of fiqh as a means to create a legal system, as opposed to supply a few useful ideas here and there, with "The Death of Islam" which would mean nobody cares about the religion anymore. The latter I think you'd have to be living in a cave to think, but that Islam is important does not mean that "Islamic law" is the basis of the legal or political system.
Environmentalism is a good place to explore this precisely because there is no "Islamic law" on environmentalism, the vast corpus of rules that comprise the shari'a have no material on it. Go to the classical sources, you're not going to have an outline of what types of environmental practices are permitted, what are not, Sarakhsi has no Book on Ecology, nor does Qarafi or Kasani or anyone else. So whatever differences I have with many of my Islamic law studying colleagues on the importance of the integrity of the so-called legal tradition to Islam in understanding modern Islamic practices, I think they'd have to agree that in some areas, like environmentalism, the legal traditon isn't that relevant because it has nothing to say, and environmentalism is one of those areas. (Just as I'd have to concede on the limited nature of the relevance of the tradition in other areas where there were detailed rules and they still have some application of course).
Nor is shari'a going to be extended in any sort of fiqh like manner to cover environmentalism in any sort of comprehensive fashion. I don't doubt one might get clerics to start indicating that littering is a sin, or even edicts from Najaf, say, to Baghdad, that it is a government's obligation under Islam to clean the streets of trash, but that's not a legal system. That's random rules inspired from an ethic that are neither comprehensive, nor complete. Does Islam support cap and trade? Is recycling paper required by Islam? What if there is no recycling facility within 200 miles? What if one is 10 miles away but a person has no car? And so forth. And those, including perhaps not a few American Muslims, rolling their eyes and thinking "who approaches religion like that, you're missing the 'spirit' of the faith" should take a look at any classical work on shari'a, or any modern Najaf jurist for that matter and examine for themselves whether or not such casuistic hair splitting is or is not the essence of our legal tradition, because it is. I'm not suggesting that's a bad thing, or a good thing, but if we're going to talk of the legal tradtion, that's the tradition.
No, what you have instead in environmentalism is an environmental ethic, not a shari'a system. I would certainly argue that it is not one mandated by sacred text, the SAME verses used to support this ethic were used when I was a child to suggest environmentalism was a Western plot with no recognition in Islam. Essentially, and in dramatically reduced form, the pro-environment theory arises from the fact that the Qur'an is replete with verses pointing out the glory of creation, the heavens, the earth, the trees, the mountains, the stars, and so forth, as evidence of God's Beneficence. Humanity is left as khalifa, or God's representative, of this bounty. A fortiori, the representative has an obligation to protect his Lord's interests,which is the environment. Absolutely workable, absolutely legitimate.
But you could take those same verses, as people did in the 1970's, to prove its opposite. The bounty of the heavens and the earth is often, though not always, tied to humanity's exploitation of them, which God encourages. The verses do thus indicate that God spread the earth like a carpet before man so that he could travel on it, he made water in a manner that allowed ships to travel over it, he provided animals that could be eaten, springs that could be drunk, and from this a "representative" isn't one who has to protect it, but to turn it to humanity's use, to find more means (like digging for oil) through which God's bounty for humanity might be used by humanity. In the Qur'an, Mary is dying of thirst and God tells her to shake from this root, and from it will spring clear water. It is not a fantastic leap of imagination to move from this to an impoverished society that miraculously discovers oil beneath its worthless sand. Not to exploit that land is like turning down God's gift.
So certainly the doctrine is contingent,as all doctrine is, but as noted at the outset, when Bin Laden starts to advocate the first of these, the pro-environmental stance, it's fairly clear the stars are aligned for now in its direction. And in our times, with Islamic fervor running high, that might well mean that Islam will be used as an ethic to advance environmental policy, at least in rhetoric. But that's different from saying that "Islamic law" has to control the outcome in an Islamic state and people demand an Islamic state. In environmentalism, that's easy to see because there is no law to speak above. You're not going to be able to stand up in a legislature and demand cap and trade because God's Law is superior to man's law, you don't have the resources in the legal tradition to make that claim plausibly, the most you'll be able to say is God wants us to preserve the environment and this is the best way to do it. And that might well have some influence. And other points might have influence too, among them "this will cost too much", "my constituency could use the work", "the oil companies bribed me to say no" and who knows what else. The decision ultimatley taken is thus influenced by a strong ethic of Islam, and other factors, and the state decides which of these it's going to adopt. Islam counts, but so do other things that claim no heritage and no basis in Islam. It's not that political influences affect the outcome of what is Islamic, it's that the state uses Islam as one of many factors, in determining an outcome.
I'd only argue the same holds true when Islamic "law" is in play, that in other areas when the legislator can shout it's God's Law and you have to follow it and has rules she can bring forward with unquestined pedigree, she doesn't really mean that. She doesn't say that for all rules of fiqh which she's have to if she is serious. Instead, she consciously adopts (or more likely quietly supports) rules from Western law that have no basis in fiqh in other areas, my paper uses negligenceas the example, there are others. So the question "is codification of Islamic law a distortion of Islamic law", a debate my colleagues love after first posed by Schacht fifty years ago, to me is a red herring. who cares? The reason I say who cares is that even if it isn't, certainly in any state I can think of, codifications are more often than not NOT grounded in Islamic law but Western transplant, and that includes Iran and that includes Saudi and that includes the Tanzimat codificatins of the Ottomans except the Mecelle. Read Iran's Civil Code and explain to me how its definition of contract is based on Shi'i rules set forth by the Grand Ayatollahs. It's not, the theories of the Ayatollahs have been ignored in favor of French transplant, and that in a state run by Ayatollahs. That's worthy of some thought right there. If "God's Law is superior to man's", the rhetoric that supports countless Islamist movements, was real to them, how could you explain this?
I don't think you can, except by rendering this idea obsolete and more rhetoric than reality. Islamic law, thus, really isn't "law" anymore, it's more a political influence, one of many, to which the state might pay attention as it decides on a proper course of action with respect to any given field of law, accorded no more prima facie validity than a competing draft of legislation in the same area by a lobby which decries the use of shari'a in a modern state. State decides what to do then. Read the paper for more, welcome your comments after you've read it.
HAH
There are I think a few interesting observations that might be made about this. The most obvious is that it demonstrates I think a new direction to Islamic fervor that I have been writing about, see this piece on what I call the Death of Islamic Law. The piece itself focusses on what is the true source of law in Muslim societies. Shari'a might be selectively enacted by the state, and Islamist and secularist will not be engaged in debate about how much selective enactment there should be. But at the end of the day, selectivity is the standard to which all adhere, really conservative Islamic Party and really secular party alike, using no yardstick and no consistent standard (repugnancy is not a consistent standard in application anywhere, Islamic constitutionalism is therefore deeply overrated, that's part IV of the piece). Islamic law is really in our times for ALL (including Islamist groups) therefore just a set of ideas that a state might want to think about as it develops its largely transplanted legal and political system, nobody wants a comprehensive Islamic system based on classical juristic theory, everyone wants to drop some of those rules for Western transplants, the only question is where, and how many.
The objection I am receiving most often to this is one that seems to conflate "The Death of Islamic Law" by which I mean the use of fiqh as a means to create a legal system, as opposed to supply a few useful ideas here and there, with "The Death of Islam" which would mean nobody cares about the religion anymore. The latter I think you'd have to be living in a cave to think, but that Islam is important does not mean that "Islamic law" is the basis of the legal or political system.
Environmentalism is a good place to explore this precisely because there is no "Islamic law" on environmentalism, the vast corpus of rules that comprise the shari'a have no material on it. Go to the classical sources, you're not going to have an outline of what types of environmental practices are permitted, what are not, Sarakhsi has no Book on Ecology, nor does Qarafi or Kasani or anyone else. So whatever differences I have with many of my Islamic law studying colleagues on the importance of the integrity of the so-called legal tradition to Islam in understanding modern Islamic practices, I think they'd have to agree that in some areas, like environmentalism, the legal traditon isn't that relevant because it has nothing to say, and environmentalism is one of those areas. (Just as I'd have to concede on the limited nature of the relevance of the tradition in other areas where there were detailed rules and they still have some application of course).
Nor is shari'a going to be extended in any sort of fiqh like manner to cover environmentalism in any sort of comprehensive fashion. I don't doubt one might get clerics to start indicating that littering is a sin, or even edicts from Najaf, say, to Baghdad, that it is a government's obligation under Islam to clean the streets of trash, but that's not a legal system. That's random rules inspired from an ethic that are neither comprehensive, nor complete. Does Islam support cap and trade? Is recycling paper required by Islam? What if there is no recycling facility within 200 miles? What if one is 10 miles away but a person has no car? And so forth. And those, including perhaps not a few American Muslims, rolling their eyes and thinking "who approaches religion like that, you're missing the 'spirit' of the faith" should take a look at any classical work on shari'a, or any modern Najaf jurist for that matter and examine for themselves whether or not such casuistic hair splitting is or is not the essence of our legal tradition, because it is. I'm not suggesting that's a bad thing, or a good thing, but if we're going to talk of the legal tradtion, that's the tradition.
No, what you have instead in environmentalism is an environmental ethic, not a shari'a system. I would certainly argue that it is not one mandated by sacred text, the SAME verses used to support this ethic were used when I was a child to suggest environmentalism was a Western plot with no recognition in Islam. Essentially, and in dramatically reduced form, the pro-environment theory arises from the fact that the Qur'an is replete with verses pointing out the glory of creation, the heavens, the earth, the trees, the mountains, the stars, and so forth, as evidence of God's Beneficence. Humanity is left as khalifa, or God's representative, of this bounty. A fortiori, the representative has an obligation to protect his Lord's interests,which is the environment. Absolutely workable, absolutely legitimate.
But you could take those same verses, as people did in the 1970's, to prove its opposite. The bounty of the heavens and the earth is often, though not always, tied to humanity's exploitation of them, which God encourages. The verses do thus indicate that God spread the earth like a carpet before man so that he could travel on it, he made water in a manner that allowed ships to travel over it, he provided animals that could be eaten, springs that could be drunk, and from this a "representative" isn't one who has to protect it, but to turn it to humanity's use, to find more means (like digging for oil) through which God's bounty for humanity might be used by humanity. In the Qur'an, Mary is dying of thirst and God tells her to shake from this root, and from it will spring clear water. It is not a fantastic leap of imagination to move from this to an impoverished society that miraculously discovers oil beneath its worthless sand. Not to exploit that land is like turning down God's gift.
So certainly the doctrine is contingent,as all doctrine is, but as noted at the outset, when Bin Laden starts to advocate the first of these, the pro-environmental stance, it's fairly clear the stars are aligned for now in its direction. And in our times, with Islamic fervor running high, that might well mean that Islam will be used as an ethic to advance environmental policy, at least in rhetoric. But that's different from saying that "Islamic law" has to control the outcome in an Islamic state and people demand an Islamic state. In environmentalism, that's easy to see because there is no law to speak above. You're not going to be able to stand up in a legislature and demand cap and trade because God's Law is superior to man's law, you don't have the resources in the legal tradition to make that claim plausibly, the most you'll be able to say is God wants us to preserve the environment and this is the best way to do it. And that might well have some influence. And other points might have influence too, among them "this will cost too much", "my constituency could use the work", "the oil companies bribed me to say no" and who knows what else. The decision ultimatley taken is thus influenced by a strong ethic of Islam, and other factors, and the state decides which of these it's going to adopt. Islam counts, but so do other things that claim no heritage and no basis in Islam. It's not that political influences affect the outcome of what is Islamic, it's that the state uses Islam as one of many factors, in determining an outcome.
I'd only argue the same holds true when Islamic "law" is in play, that in other areas when the legislator can shout it's God's Law and you have to follow it and has rules she can bring forward with unquestined pedigree, she doesn't really mean that. She doesn't say that for all rules of fiqh which she's have to if she is serious. Instead, she consciously adopts (or more likely quietly supports) rules from Western law that have no basis in fiqh in other areas, my paper uses negligenceas the example, there are others. So the question "is codification of Islamic law a distortion of Islamic law", a debate my colleagues love after first posed by Schacht fifty years ago, to me is a red herring. who cares? The reason I say who cares is that even if it isn't, certainly in any state I can think of, codifications are more often than not NOT grounded in Islamic law but Western transplant, and that includes Iran and that includes Saudi and that includes the Tanzimat codificatins of the Ottomans except the Mecelle. Read Iran's Civil Code and explain to me how its definition of contract is based on Shi'i rules set forth by the Grand Ayatollahs. It's not, the theories of the Ayatollahs have been ignored in favor of French transplant, and that in a state run by Ayatollahs. That's worthy of some thought right there. If "God's Law is superior to man's", the rhetoric that supports countless Islamist movements, was real to them, how could you explain this?
I don't think you can, except by rendering this idea obsolete and more rhetoric than reality. Islamic law, thus, really isn't "law" anymore, it's more a political influence, one of many, to which the state might pay attention as it decides on a proper course of action with respect to any given field of law, accorded no more prima facie validity than a competing draft of legislation in the same area by a lobby which decries the use of shari'a in a modern state. State decides what to do then. Read the paper for more, welcome your comments after you've read it.
HAH
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