Four Contemporary Voices of Eco-Islam on Climate Change

This paper presents four distinguished theorists and activists within the environmental discourses in Islam, or what could be called Islamic eco-theology or eco-Islam, and their views on climate change. These four scholars are Fazlun Khalid (1932-), Ibrahim Abdul-Matin (1977-2023), Nawal Ammar (1958-), and İbrahim Özdemir (1960-). Khalid is the leading figure of Islamic environmentalism and the founder of the Islamic environmental organization Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Sciences (IFEES). Abdul-Matin is the founder of an Islamic environmental movement called the Green Deen and was an advocate of an eco-sensitive lifestyle. Throughout her work, Nawal Ammar has emphasized the diversity within Islam based on various indicators such as geography, technology, culture, education, socio-economic status and political engagement. In discussing environmental ethics, Ammar has used the Arabic word hay’a, which could have a positive impact on the concept of nature. İbrahim Özdemir is a Turkish scholar and the first Muslim to complete a Ph.D. in Islam and environmental philosophy. He was part of a group of Muslims who began to reflect on Muslim perceptions of the environment and climate change in response to the 2015 Paris conference. This later resulted in the Islamic Declaration of Climate Change.

These scholars and activists are selected because of their importance and inspiration for the development of the environmental thinking and environmental action. They also represent different interpretations of Sunni Islam. Although Sufism contains a rich tradition of environmental understanding, this paper focuses primarily on the Sunni textual tradition and the environmental activism based on the interpretations of that textual tradition. The aim is not to conduct a Qur’anic study, but to present the interpretations and arguments of these four scholars and activists through the concepts of social justice, reinterpretation and, radical environmentalism.