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You are here: Home >> Interview >> Birmingham: Interview with the founder of the IFEES, Fazlun Khalid

23.06.2010 Birmingham: Interview with the founder of the IFEES, Fazlun Khalid

"What the mainstream NGO's could not do over years we achieved in 24 hours"

(gm) – Prince Charles commended a project in Zanzibar where IFEES [Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Sciences] played a major role, in a speech delivered on Islam and the Environment at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford yesterday under the aegis of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. This project which has received world wide acclaim was the first ever in which environmental ethics derived from the Qur'an was taught. The Zanzibari fishermen stopped dynamiting coral reefs soon after they participated in the first workshop on Islam and Conservation in 1998.

"These are schemes that are close to my heart, but the Oxford Centre keeps me informed of many others. Working in Muslim countries, the World Wildlife Fund has found that trying to convey the importance of conservation is much easier if it is transmitted by religious leaders whose reference is Qur'anic teaching. In Zanzibar, they had little success trying to reduce spear-fishing and the use of dragnets, which were destroying the coral reefs. But when the guidance came from the Qur'an, there was a notable change in behaviour. Or in Indonesia and in Malaysia, where former poachers are being deterred in the same way from destroying the last remaining tigers."

We spoke with Fazlun Khalid, english Muslim veteran activist and founder of the internationally acclaimed Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Sciences (IFEES) about his project in Zanzibar, about the Islamic foundations of environmental thinking and the relation between the ecological crisis and an globally unsustainable monetary architecture.

Question: What prompted the Prince of Wales to commend the IFEES project in Zanzibar?

Fazlun Khalid: He was indicating something. He was saying that Muslims are doing this work and he regards it positively. He was referring to the work we are doing in Zanzibar, and also in Indonesia.

Question: What fields do your projects cover, what is your main aim and with whom are you co-operating?

Fazlun Khalid: the impulse for our Zanzibar project was the fact that the fisherman in Zanzibar were dynamiting the coral reefs because they were not getting enough fish. As a result the breeding grounds of the fish were being destroyed. The other NGO's like Care International, which is an American organisation, could not stop the fisherman from dynamiting the coral reefs. They called us to organise a workshop and training materials based on the Qur'an. We did this workshop and it proved to be an immediate success. What the mainstream NGO's could not do over years we achieved in 24 hours. Within one day they stopped dynamiting the coral reefs.

If was for the simple reason that the people realised that we are Allah’s khalifa. We have been given the responsibility to look after His nature - from which we benefit. Therefore they stopped.

Question: A lot of people are informed about the ecological degradation and the decimation of species but it seems to be very difficult for people also to change their behaviour. What is necessary for Muslims and non-muslims alike, not just to be informed about the ecological crisis, but also to change their behaviour in order to work and to live in an environmentally friendly way?

Fazlun Khalid: Speaking from an Islamic perspective, the answer to this question is to begin with the understanding of what Tawhid means when we talk about it in terms of ecology. Tawhid means that there is only one universe, created by the One creator. And that the universe functions logically within His creational paradigm.

Everything in His creation is connected. There is no disruption. In order for us to understand uniquely that we are the only sentient being in creation which can reason we have the faculty to reason which no other being has. We can use this faculty to destroy or to protect.

But, unfortunately we have been taking more out of the environment than putting into it. The ultimate result of that is environmental destruction.

Talking about the perspective of Tawhid, Allah says in the Qur'an that He is 'al-Muhit', He is the Encompasser. This refers to that which other people term the 'holistic', I suppose. Allah encompasses His creation. Another thing is that Allah says in the Qur'an that "Allah’s creation is a greater matter than you." Although Allah has given us intelligence, He is reminding us not to be so arrogant as to think that we govern His creation.

We have to learn this lesson. Unfortunately, the modern situation that we have got into is that we have a model of the capitalistic nation-state whose primary objective is to increase the living-standard of the people. The people want more and more, and the only way to do it is by exploiting the earth. This cannot go on because the resources are finite.

We need to come to the realisation that, in order to save ourselves from ecological disaster, we need now to begin to put more in than we take out.

Question: There are currently many debates inside the Muslim world, some are fruitful and many are not. How does it come about that the 'usual suspects' who are the leaders of the debate inside the Muslim world – from the 'ulama, to the political speakers and the media leaders – hardly ever speak about ecological issues?

Fazlun Khalid: That is a very interesting question and there are many answers to this, and these are quite complex. If we follow the Islamic paradigm of 'submission' – which is what Islam is, and if we had followed the example of our role model – which is the Messenger of Allah, then there would not have been any of these environmental problems.

Islam is very intensively conservationist. It doesn't speak the ecological language because it doesn't need to. We need to realise that the environmental and ecological language mainly emerged in this civilisation in the last century as a reaction to what the human beings were doing.

This is not to say the Muslims before this current civilisation were all very holy and good. They were equally destructive, but their destruction was contained within the paradigm of Islam. There were answers and means of dealing with these issues.

I would say that if people had the practice of the Rasul there would not have been any environmental destruction. The problem emerged as a result of secular-orientated models that turned people’s faces away from Allah and from the practice of the Rasul.

Now, that allowed the people to dominate Allah’s nature. This was not a conscious process, but resulted from following a Western capitalistic model and in saying that we needed to prosper and to progress. Today, all this means is merely material prosperity and material progress. This is the root cause of environmental destruction. In order to be materially prosperous we need to exploit the earth. Muslims are very much part of this today.

As you can see, the whole aspect of 'Islamic banking' has in this aspect nothing to do with Islam, because this banking model has been devised by certain people in order to achieve the prosperity the West achieved – in the hope that there is no contradiction of the Qur'an. The fact of the matter is that people do not understand the current financial system. No matter how many intellectual arguments and somersaults you do, you cannot escape the fact that today's financial system is a haram system – according to Islamic jurisprudence and the Qur'an.

At the root of the environmental issues is the financial issue. The banking system continues to create money out of nothing. And the 'Islamic banking' system does not operate independently but is very much hooked into the global banking system.

The point I am getting at here is a very important one. Money can be created today – as it has been created for the past 200 years – in an infinite way. It can be created out of nothing. Then this created money is addressed to the earth which is finite. This arithmetic is lop-sided; it doesn't make sense. If you continue to create money in an infinite way and then apply it to resources which Allah has created as being finite then the only scenario to be expected in the long-term is environmental destruction.  Question: There are high-tech models like the Masdar projects as well as grass-root projects in Indonesia or Egypt. Do you see the possibility of a counter-current within the Muslim world of re-directing the people to a lifestyle which is eco-friendly?

Fazlun Khalid: You have given me some examples but there is a line I would like to draw between these. Firstly, you have been talking about Abu Dhabi creating a 'green city'. Now, that may be in the short-term a good PR exercise but I think that it will do nothing about the environmental protection in the long-term.

If the ruler – instead of creating a 'green city' – had said that each one of us should contain our consumerism, should reduce our consumption and then we would reduce the oil output in order to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions that would have been the answer. In fact, this perpetuates the problem. They mean well and they are good people but they need to find out who their advisers are and from where they are coming from.

It would have been far better to have sent this money to grassroots projects, like the ones you where talking about, like the farms in Egypt or the forest conservation in Indonesia. I feel that in the absence of action by the higher authorities, the solution lies with the people. This is where our success is. We can build on it because that would be an education for ourselves.

For me, big mega-projects like building 'ecological cities' are in a sense contra-productive. They could use this money to train the 'ulama, to change the school curricula and to change attitudes. Also they should realise that the use of fossil fuels is causing more and more trouble for people - by creating global warming. They could reduce their production of oil and still have a good life. The fact of the matter is that the oil will then last longer and thus will sustain them longer.

Today, they make a lot of profit out of the oil and invest it into foreign businesses and so on. In terms of the current capitalistic business model this would appear to make sense. But what they need to realise is that the whole edifice of Western capitalism is under threat. It could collapse and all these investments would disappear. If this happens – after reducing their output – they would have at least oil under their feet.

Today, there is no such long-term thinking.  Question: For the Muslims living in the West and especially those in Europe who do not have the means to change the rules of the whole society, can you suggest three things that every Muslim, every Muslim consumer, could do right away in order to do his bit?

Fazlun Khalid: Of course. In our daily life, there are very simple and practical things we can do. Because we have to pray five times a day, we have to wash five times a day. We can at least follow the example of the Prophet and use less water. He used very little water while we use many litres of water in order to make the single action of wudu'. We can begin to conserve water. And we can start to grow our own food. We can begin to eat organic food and we can start to consider how to reduce carbon-emissions whilst we travel. For example, we can use public transport. There are lots of simple things that we can do.

But in the meantime, we need to understand what kind of society this is and how it is compromised in environmental terms – whether Muslims or non-muslims. If Muslims have the answer, they have to give it to other people. That can only begin from a practical demonstration of what they think is right. If it works other people will take it on.

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