RNS
NEWS FEATURE
Muslims
go ‘green’ for Ramadan
By
MICHELE CHABIN
©2010 Religion News Service
JERUSALEM (RNS) — When
Mohammad Rabah prays during the holy month of Ramadan, he makes a special
effort to conserve water during ritual purifications.
When his family breaks the
monthlong sunrise-to-sunset fast, Rabah tries to consume healthy food
grown close to his home in the northern Israeli town of Um El Fahem.
Rabah, the director of his
region’s environmental equality unit for the Arab sector, aspires
to live the way he asks others to live: mindful of the environment.
In 2008, with help from the
Israeli government, Rabah organized a conference aimed at helping imams
— Muslim spiritual leaders — improve the environment in
their communities.
Rabah created and distributed
educational materials, including CDs with quotes from the Quran, Islam’s
holiest book, which underscore the importance of moderation, conservation
and environmentalism. The imams, in turn, shared the materials with
their faithful.
The initiative has expanded
into monthly meetings, and just before Ramadan began this August nearly
80 imams gathered to discuss how best to maximize environmental responsibility
during this holiest of Muslim holidays.
During the past two or three
years, Muslim environmental activists in many parts of the world have
made a concerted effort to encourage their fellow Muslims to embrace
“green” practices, especially during Ramadan.
Like Catholics who forgo
gas-guzzling vehicles during Lent, and Jews who use sustainable products
while cleaning for Passover, Muslims are promoting ways to be kind to
the environment, just as the Qur’an commands.
Muslim texts overflow with
phrases that resonate with environmentalists.
“The Qur’an tells Muslims to ‘eat and drink, but waste
not by excess,’ ” Rabah said, “and the Prophet Muhammad
said it is forbidden to waste water while doing ‘wudu’ —
the Islamic ritual ablution — ‘even if one lives near a
river.”’
Even so, the modern-day emphasis
on “greening” Ramadan is quite new, said Arwa Aburawa, an
England-based journalist and blogger who specializes in Muslim environmentalism.
“The fact that there
is an entire month dedicated to moderation and limiting waste is a pretty
amazing thing, and its green principles are hard to ignore: eat less,
waste less and remember those who are less fortunate than ourselves.
These principles are at the centre of the green movement.”
While moderation is at the
very core of Ramadan, “there are probably a lot of Muslims out
there who are living greener lives during Ramadan but who don’t
necessarily make the link” between their religious observance
and mainstream environmentalism,” Aburawa said.
What’s new, Aburawa
noted, “is that a younger generation of Muslims are recognizing
that link and are articulating it a lot clearer to the wider green community.”
In Chicago, Muslims of all
ages have welcomed the realization that Ramadan and environmental responsibility
go hand-in-hand.
In 2009, the Council of Islamic
Organizations of Greater Chicago launched a ‘green Ramadan’
campaign among its 63 member organizations. This year, the council published
a “Green Ramadan Resource Pack” that includes suggestions
on how to use earth-friendly paper products, save water and safely recycle
appliances.
“Our lives are becoming
full of excesses and indulgences,” Zaher Sahloul, chair of the
council, told reporters during the unveiling of the resource pack. “We
use fasting in Ramadan to cap our eating, our drinking and our impulses,
so why do we not use it to protect our planet?”
The response has been heartening,
said Feras Abdelrahman, the council’s youth and civic engagement
co-ordinator. “About 15 of our organizations have so far formally
adopted ‘green’ practices during Ramadan.”
The campaign encourages Muslims
to prepare smaller portions of food to lessen waste, to consume less
meat and to purchase locally harvested food whenever possible, not only
to reduce their carbon footprint but also to support local farmers.
It also urges the use of water filters instead of bottled water, and
low-energy light bulbs and appliances, and to install recycling bins
wherever people congregate.
Last year, several of the
council’s member organizations encouraged recycling, carpooling
to and from the mosque, and utilized e-fliers instead of paper.
In a similar vein, the website
www.islamic-relief.com offers tips for “ethical eating”
during Ramadan that include a recommendation to buy meat from animals
treated in a humane way; and fair-trade products through a trading partnership
that offers farmers a fair price.
In Muslim towns and cities
in Israel, Friends of the Earth Middle East will distribute fliers toward
the end of Ramadan in September asking Muslims to discard animal carcasses
at specially prepared dump sites so the bones can be disposed of properly,
and in order to minimize odors and the risk of disease, said Gidon Bromberg,
the organization’s director.
Taleb Al-Harithi, a Palestinian
environmentalist and director of the Palestine Peace Society, said the
Middle East, with its scarce natural resources and strong religious
faith, is the ideal place to apply religious principles to safeguard
the planet.
“In Egypt, in the time
of the pharaohs, it was a sin to spit into the Nile. Even if 99 per
cent of the people do good for the environment, and only one per cent
does bad, the environment is tainted,” Al-Harithi said.
Copyright 2010 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No
part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written
permission.
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