Ecology and Islam.

• Author: Walberg, Eric
• Position: Abdul-Matin's "Green Deen"

Muslim Americans are slowly beginning to make their mark on their conflicted society. There are more Muslims than Jews in the US now--approximately 5 million. They are the most diverse of all American believers, 35 % born in the US (25 % Afro-American), the rest immigrants from southeast Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Traditionally they have voted Republican, but have shifted to the Democratic and Green parties in recent years.

Ibrahim Abdul-Matin is the son of black converts, raised in New York, a community organizer now environmental adviser to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. His book about Islam and the environment, Green Deen, is a stimulating overview of both the US environmental movement and how American Muslims are becoming part of it, bringing their own unique perspective.

Abdul-Matin sees the weakness of the environmental movement today in its secular, legalist approach to problems: pass enough laws and you can curb the negative practices of business and consumers and push them along an environmentally-friendly path.

But this, as he shows here, is not enough. He interprets Islam's focus on One Creator as giving "humankind the opportunity to be one and to have a common purpose," to bring back ethical principles into our daily lives. He points to six principles which underlie Islam and shows how they relate to our relationship to the environment:

* understanding the Oneness of God and His creation (tawhid);

* seeing signs of God (ayat) everywhere;

* being a steward (khalifah) of the Earth;

* honoring the trust we have with God (amana) to be protectors of the planet;

* moving toward justice (adl); and

* living in balance with nature (mizan).

Deen or din, meaning religion in Arabic, is used in the Quran to refer both to the path along which righteous Muslims travel to comply with divine law (Sharia) and divine judgment or recompense, which all humanity must inevitably face--without intercessors--before God. The word probably derives from the Persian Zoroastrian concept Daena--insight, the Eternal Law. In Hebrew din means law or judgment. In Islam, the word implies an all-encompassing way of life lived in accordance with God's divine purpose as expressed in the Quran and hadith.

The author recalls a moving childhood experience, hiking on Bear Mountain near New York, his first time in the wilds. He watched as his father cleared a spot in the forest to pray, explaining to him, "The Earth is a mosque." He considered other religions as a youth but reaffirmed his father's decision to follow the deen, "a living tradition that is spiritually nourishing and intellectually coherent."

For Abdul-Matin, there is no conflict between religion and science--humans are the best of God's creation...