9/18/2006

Virginia Muslims cite Koran to fight global warming

Islamic group joins interfaith initiative

Ecology and You

Erik Curren

erik@planetdharma.com

"In the Koran, God said that He created nature in a balance or mizam, and that it is mankind's responsibility to maintain this fragile equilibrium," says Richmond-based Islamic leader Dr. Imad Damaj. "We cannot maintain it by blaming each other, but must do so by working together."

Last week, the faith-based movement to fight global warming came to Virginia when a coalition of environmental and religious groups issued a report showing that average temperatures in the state's major cities have risen alarmingly over the last five years.

I asked Rev. Pat Watkins, one of the religious leaders involved in the announcement, why global warming is an issue for the devout.

"Global warming is an indication that God's creation is suffering a bit," says Watkins, a Methodist clergyperson and member of the Virginia Interfaith Center. "There are all kinds of different theologies in terms of creation. But if all people of faith understand that God had some kind of hand in creation, then how can we participate in harming creation, and how can we not do something to restore creation?"

For the last few years, religious devotees have started beating the drum louder and louder that global warming is a big threat to God's creation. Most notably, in February a group of 86 Evangelical Christian leaders released a public letter calling for more aggressive action to limit global-warming pollution, saying this was a "pro-life" position dictated by the Gospels. Signers included Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life, Rich Stearns, president of World Vision, and Todd Bassett, national commander of The Salvation Army.

This movement is significant because it takes climate-change activism out of liberal big cities and green-friendly states like California and into conservative, red-state America.

Last week's announcement about heating in Virginia came from U.S. Public Interest Research Group, Wetlands Watch and the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy and echoed the concern that religious leaders have already expressed about global warming, but with a focus on Virginia.

"Another difference is that now there's such a growing network of consensus in and out of the faith community," says Jim Burke, co-chair of the Committee on Stewardship of Creation for the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia. "In the last 18 months, there's been a momentum that we're in this together."

As a Muslim leader, Imad Damaj, also affiliated with the Interfaith Center, often finds himself having to answer questions about terrorist attacks. But now, with the chance to talk about global warming, he says that it's a big issue for Muslims as it is for other Americans. And Damaj worries that climate change threatens America's national security.

"Terrorism is a big issue, but global warming could also be an issue of national security," says Damaj. "If there's an increase in the intensity of hurricanes, that means we'd have to be prepared for worse storms and provide all sorts of measures to protect people's homes and property and then to rebuild afterwards. This would cost billions of dollars. We have all sorts of factories and ports, and if affected that could become a serious national-security issue."

Damaj is president of the Virginia Muslim Coalition for Public Affairs in Richmond (www.vmcpa.org). His group was founded six years ago to "communicate the truth about the mercy, peace and justice of Islam" to Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

The group sends speakers, including Damaj, to talk about Islamic issues at mosques, to secular audiences, to the press and to political leaders around the state. VMCPA has also joined other faith-based groups on community service projects. Members have built homes with Habitat for Humanity, have served lunches and dinners to the homeless with the Roman Catholic group Caritas and have organized forums for political candidates and voter-registration drives.

"Our effort is to integrate the Muslim community into the community at large. We help to build bridges to the faith community and also to the non-faith community as well," says Damaj. There are more than 250,000 Muslims and more than 55 mosques in the state.

To help local ecology, three years ago Damaj's group planted 100 trees in a riparian area of Pocahontas State Park in Chesterfield County. Ever since, they have cared for the trees on a regular basis. They also do an annual cleanup of the James River. "I can't describe the amount of junk we take from the river. We take out things like bicycles, microwaves and tires. It's our fourth year of doing it," Damaj says.

The Muslim faith doesn't just encourage eco-friendly behavior, but it requires its adherents to be good stewards of the environment, according to Damaj.

"It's almost a commandment from God at all levels. The word 'earth' is mentioned in the Koran 485 times. You can consider the Koran as a 'green' book, if you want to look at it this way. It describes man and woman as people who 'walk on the earth in humility.' There are a lot of interpretations of that, but one is that you need to protect the earth you walk on. Preservation is more than a good policy recommendation; it's a matter of faith. And that's why we join with our brothers and sisters from other faiths as well as government and industry to work together to help the earth. It's going to require the efforts of all of us."

Damaj says the Koran teaches personal responsibility and instructs Muslims to act on their conviction that global warming is a threat to God's creation. The Richmond Islamic leader urges Virginia Muslims to put this Koranic teaching into practice.

"Anything that will encourage a decrease in emissions and more clean energy we support. Sometimes small things can have big effects. We ask people to buy less, consume less, reduce their shower time by five minutes, take public transportation or walk and install more energy-efficient appliances in their homes."

But Damaj says that individual efforts won't be enough, and that to avoid dangerous threats to the earth's climate government needs to limit carbon-dioxide pollution. Damaj joins his colleagues in the statewide interfaith community in supporting the Safe Climate Act (H.R. 5642), sponsored by Rep. Henry Waxman of California. The bill would encourage clean energy and cut U.S. greenhouse gas pollution 15 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050.

Damaj says there's no fundamental difference between Islam's approach to protecting the earth and calls to stewardship from Christianity or other major religions. But there may be a difference in emphasis.

"Probably the biggest minor difference is in the concept of ownership and guardianship. In Islam everything belongs to God. Our role is khalifa, or guardianship. President Bush has used this word to talk about how extremists aim to create a worldwide Muslim empire or caliphate. But the word comes from the Koran and refers to guardianship of the earth. It demands self-restraint and concern for the other. This concept may be a little different from other traditions. But the differences are not major at all, and in fact this is one of the common-ground issues we have to work together on."

With recent hype from the White House and the less responsible right-wing news outlets about how the war on terror is being waged against America by "Islamic fascists," it may be tempting for some to join what could become a new McCarthy-style witch-hunt against fellow citizens who follow the Islamic faith.

Yet, amid all the irresponsible name-calling and shortsighted jingoistic hype today, it is more important than ever to remember that, despite cultural or religious differences, Muslims have the same concerns as the rest of America. They want to practice their faith in peace, care for their families, enjoy successful careers and contribute to their communities. And increasingly, like people of faith from across the religious spectrum, Muslims see global warming as an affront to God's order on earth.

The silver lining in the immense storm cloud of global warming is that it has already started to bring together Americans of varied faiths.

If we take a more reasoned approach to the threats to the American way of life and Western civilization, we will see that it is time to reject fear-mongering.

First, vilifying Muslims and the faith of Islam, practiced by more than a billion people worldwide, is counterproductive to preventing terrorism. Indeed, it just angers extremists and encourages them to hate America more.

Second, while terrorism is horrific to those affected, a growing minority of national-security authorities say that terror attacks are a less pressing threat to the U.S. than global warming. Even worse, water and food shortages created or exacerbated by global warming could increase civil unrest in the Middle East and make terror attacks against U.S. and other rich-country targets more likely in the future.

Devout Americans of all faiths say that it is time to confront the real enemy - our own use of polluting fossil energy. And if scientists are right, we only have 10 years to forestall catastrophic climate change. Fighting global warming could well be the true mother of all battles. In that case, we will need every mosque, church and synagogue in the land to help save the climate that cradled Adam and Eve, a climate that a higher power created to cradle our own children down to the seventh generation and beyond.

Erik Curren is a regular contributor to The Augusta Free Press. Curren is the author of Buddha’s Not Smiling: Uncovering Corruption at the Heart of Tibetan Buddhism Today. More information about Curren's works is available on-line at www.alayapress.com. The views expressed by op-ed writers do not necessarily reflect those of management of The Augusta Free Press.