We've all witnessed, at one point or another, a protest staged by one or more members of that environmental outfit known as "Greenpeace." Chaining themselves to some bridge as part of a campaign, crashing high-profile gatherings and turning them into a circus, even getting verbally and physically confrontational with whoever or whatever they've decided to protest — these are just a few examples of what can only be described as pretty aggressive behavior. So what's the point? The point is perfectly innocent and pure: protect the environment!
"Environmentalism," in its modern sense, is one of the products — natural or manufactured, you decide — of the Industrial Revolution and the age of industrialization that followed. In the Western world of the 1970s, reeling from what was then the worst economic slump since the Great Depression, environmentalism was one of several rising currents that surfaced through various channels: anti-Vietnam War sentiment, the wave of dissident youth movements sweeping the globe, and so on. The movement took on many different forms and grew increasingly political over time. The issues environmentalists made their bread and butter were: the rapid pollution of nature, the steady depletion of resources, the brutal slaughter of certain animals — particularly endangered ones — for their fur or body parts, population growth, nuclear proliferation fueled by the Cold War, and ostensibly, raising public awareness about all of the above. Also in the '70s, a group of volunteers who would come to be known as Greenpeace started making a name for themselves and setting the agenda through their protest activities. Then in the '80s, the phrases "Global Warming" and "Climate Change" began sprouting up — phrases we now can't seem to escape no matter where we turn.
The environmentalist wave kept growing, and the capitalist West wasted no time exporting it to the rest of the world. Sentences dripping with doom-and-gloom prophecy and cranked-up agitation — "after the year 2000 we're toast," "there'll be water wars by such-and-such year," "we need to get the pandas to mate," "hurry up I can't breathe" — seeped into everyday life. Everyone was being called to step up, everyone had to do their part! Sure, fine — but who exactly stripped nature bare and left it in this state in the first place? The Africans hacking away at each other with machetes and dying of starvation? The Middle East, effectively writing a dissertation on how not to develop under the thumb of Western puppet regimes? The rest of the world just barely beginning to see the light of day? No! The culprit is none other than the Postmodern West — which holds a professorship in ruthless exploitation of human labor, plundering anyone outside its club, consuming at a breakneck pace, and generally knocking the world off its axis. Could it be any other way? But credit where credit is due: these people have a slick operation that keeps the whole world watching, slack-jawed, like a crowd gaping at a tightrope walker. Trash the planet, drain the water, turn the earth inside out — then stir up the left-wing and atheist groups who are so strung out they can barely see straight, market them to the world with a fresh coat of paint that says "look, these are our critics, they're not working for our interests, they're cursing us out — you should stand behind them," launder your sins by setting up massive research institutions studying global warming and climate change, deploy Greenpeace across the developing world, keep those countries' public opinion tied up with these and similar "not-in-my-backyard" type organizations, have them protest nonstop, make sure those countries regret even thinking about building a nuclear plant, work the idealistic youth as unpaid volunteers who think they're fighting for a noble cause.
There are a few things about environmentalist groups that really stand out. For instance: solutions that are anything but rational — utopian, theoretical, detached from reality. Endless disaster scenarios. An organizational style that leans hard left and seems less concerned with getting to the root of the problem than with chasing surface-level fixes. And a membership that looks less like a cross-section of working, functional adults and more like a crew stacked with girls — though apparently well-equipped to squeeze a few dollars out of the next naive young man who wanders by. That said, there are also the genuine environmentalists — the ones who've retreated to a mountain or a village, who do organic farming and ride bikes, who get by on a single pair of clothes and shoes, who've sworn off money, who never set foot in a city or a crowded settlement again. In short, the ones who've actually minimized their carbon footprint. But they're the exception, not the rule. The environmentalist friends out there burning gas to "raise awareness" and attend rallies, blasting the AC in the summer heat, rocking their Nikes and clutching their iPhones while calling themselves humanists — or better yet, "animalists" — don't exactly come across as the most sincere.
So, does being an environmentalist — that is, being someone who genuinely cares about nature more than most — require fitting the profile described above? Of course not. Being a conscious Muslim is more than enough to qualify as an "environmentalist" (granted, the examples we see in practice aren't particularly inspiring — but that's a separate conversation). A Muslim, first and foremost, does not waste. And without wasting, they and everything around them stays clean. Not wasting — being frugal, economical, and using only what one needs — is a cornerstone for anyone who claims to care about nature and the future. Study after study, year after year, confirms this. Waste and extravagance in the Western world (and unfortunately, among those of us with an eager habit of imitation) are at staggering levels. If we tackled just this one issue alone, the fight would come cheap and the gains would be enormous. Greening spaces, planting and tending trees, using resources wisely and fairly, showing compassion to animals both used and untouched, protecting the ecosystem around us — these are principles that count squarely as "environmentalism" and "protecting the environment," and they are praised across countless hadith and narrations. A Muslim who takes their faith seriously does not disrupt the delicate balances of nature, takes only what they need, and does their best to repair whatever damage has been done.
So — no need for doom-mongering, no need to join some foreign-backed organization or funnel money into it. Being a frugal, faith-conscious Muslim with a low carbon footprint is quite enough!
