Can religion and environmental protection become a common work? What should be the role of religion regarding environmental issues? This article from Kathryn M. Werntz explores the impact of a fatwa made in Indonesia to halt illegal wildlife trafficking.
This religious law, issued earlier this year by the Indonesian Council of Ulama, the country’s top Muslim clerical body, could prove to be much more effective than governmental law, for a number of reasons cited in the article. The view is Qur’an based, and related to several Muslim led projects worldwide designed to raise awareness on the way we treat our planet and our habitat. This sort of faith based effort, which gives spiritual reasons to preserve our environment might well touch people’s hearts and souls more deeply than secular efforts alone.
The article leads us to ask more broadly: What role should religious communities take worldwide to protect the environment. Can the global community of believers find in their faith the drive and the means to tackle the current global environmental crisis? For example, could a leading Christian and developed nation such as the United States of America learn from the efforts of their Indonesian Muslim brothers and sisters?
If Religions want to keep relevant on the global scale, we should synergize more to tackle issues relevant to all communities, creating real interfaith efforts, based not solely on dialogue and talks, but also on common actions and projects to solve problems with an interfaith based approach and substantial cooperation. Environmental protection is a transcendental problem on which Religions working more closely together can pioneer ways to bring positive change rooted in spiritual principles.
For more information, please check the following links :
http://www.ifees.org.uk/story-activities-cat68-page298