Islam and Environmentalism (640 words)

The essay explores the following questions:
How does Islam understand the relationship of humans and material creation?
What is the place of the human in the created world and why?
Is nature sacred?
Why or why not?
What Muslim traditions lead to positive ecological implications?
Which might have negative implications?

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Islam and Environmentalism
How does Islam understand the relationship of humans and material creation? According to Nasr traditional Islam, does not draw a dichotomous line between nature and man, in the same way, Western science tends to do. In Islam, there does not tend to be a dualism between and soul and body. Phenomena observed in the natural world are “signs” of the supernatural, and of Allah, the Author of the “book of nature” (88). The place of the human in the created world is both to be a servant to Allah and to be vice-general of the created world. Nature is sacred because nature is a means to gain access to God’s wisdom (Nasr 92). However, in Islam there is a tension between dominating nature to contemplating its forms, a tension that is brought on by Islam’s influence with modernity....