Muslim Environmentalists, Activism, and Religious Duty

Muslim Environmentalists, Activism, and Religious Duty Rosemary Hancock, The University of Notre Dame Australia On a humid evening in July 2013, a group of nine Muslims met in a house in Washington D.C. to plan for the upcoming month of Ramadhan. After praying the evening prayer together, the group broke up into smaller working groups – one planning a month of social media posts, another preparing a series of outdoor prayers and meditation walks, and another organising a community Iftar. This was no religious study circle or youth group. These nine Muslims were members of Green Muslims D.C., an Islamic environmental group based in Washington D.C., who were planning to use Ramadhan to educate Muslims in their community on their Islamic duty to care for the environment, and to mobilize local Muslims to participate in environmental actions. Further, this group was not alone in gearing up to mobilize Muslims to the environmental cause during Ramadhan. Islamic environmental organisations, individual Muslim activists, and some environmentally-aware Mosques across the US and the UK were planning similar environmental education and action campaigns for Ramadhan. Inspired by an environmental reading of Islamic scripture and tradition and with a wide range of experience in grassroots activism, Muslim environmental activists like those described above often see environmentalism as a religious duty in Islam. The organisations and activists in this chapter run grassroots environmental initiatives, teach other Muslims an environmental interpretation of Islamic scripture and tradition, occasionally engage in environmental direct action, and promote environmental responsibility. The vast majority of their activism is directed towards Muslim communities. In this chapter, I discuss Islamic environmental activism in light of research into the civic engagement of Muslims in the US, UK, and Australia. Like the findings of empirical research into the civic engagement of Muslim youth and the significance of mosques and Islamic institutions on political participation, my own research demonstrates the active involvement of Muslims in the US and UK in grassroots politics. Rather than focus on how Muslim institutions may or may not facilitate civic engagement, I analyse the way in which political participation becomes part and parcel of religious practice and obligation. In evaluating the efficacy of such a synthesis of religious and civic-political practice, I argue that framing environmental responsibility and action as a religious duty is, on its own, ineffective in mobilising Muslims to environmentalism, and that most of the environmental activists in my study have been mobilised due to a pre-existing commitment to grassroots action or personal relationships with people undertaking grassroots action. This chapter is based on doctoral research conducted with six Islamic environmental organisations in the United States of America and Great Britain in 2012-13. Two of these organisations - the Muslim Green Team (MGT) and Green Muslims D.C. - were in the United States, and four – the Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Science (IFEES), Wisdom in Nature (WIN), Sheffield Islamic Network for the Environment (SHINE), and 1 Reading Islamic Trust for the Environment (RITE) - were in Great Britain.1 Data was collected from two primary sources: textual data in the form of the organisations’ websites, newsletters, promotional material, and some internal organisational documentation; and key-informant semi-structured interviews with 17 Muslim environmentalist activists2 - the founders and (where possible) most active members of the six environmental groups, along with two independent activists. Of the six organisations, three were active at the time of research whilst three were in abeyance. The organisations were identified and selected through concatenated and overlapping online searches utilising three search engines,3 access was gained to the organisations through gatekeepers (the founders of prominent Islamic environmental groups) and the participants were selected through snowball sampling.4 The activists themselves come from diverse ethnic and educational backgrounds. Almost all were university educated, with some either in or recently completed graduate school at the time of the research. Muslim Voluntary Civic Engagement Since the mid-2000s, much academic attention has been paid to the positive influence of religious organisations on the civic engagement of their members, in large part driven by the work of Robert Putnam on social capital in the United States. Putnam’s social capital theory is rooted in a communitarian understanding of democracy in the tradition of Tocqueville that sees associational life as essential to the formation of social capital and through it, civic engagement (Wagner 2008). Putnam (1995) argues that religious communities provide networks, norms, and social trust - all things that form the basis of the cooperation and coordination necessary for effective civic engagement. For many citizens, religious communities act as training grounds where members learn the skills necessary to participate in public life (Levitt 2008). Civic engagement, in Putnam’s work, refers ‘to people’s connections with the life of their communities, not merely with politics’, and he argues that widespread civic engagement is essential to the healthy functioning of democracy (Putnam 1995, 665). Writing from the United States, Putnam and his collaborator Campbell claim that in a society with declining engagement in collective organisations, active members of religious communities make better neighbours and citizens than their non-religious peers because of the benefits accrued from religious communities (Putnam and Campbell 2010). 1 All six of these organisations attracted relatively small numbers of activists and members – the most active, Green Muslims D.C., had around 20 people either active or loosely involved with the organisation. Both SHINE and MGT were in abeyance during my fieldwork – prior to taking a hiatus, SHINE had contracted to only two active members. For greater detail on these organisations, see Hancock (2018). 2 The 17 participants were aged between 18 – 80 years in age (although were predominantly under 40), and included 8 women and 9 men. 3 Utilising the internet to locate organisations limits the sample, in that it will only identify those organisations with an online presence. However, most social movement groups do have an online presence (Hanna 2013). Further, as there is no ‘population list’ there is no way to know whether all possible organisations have been identified to select from. Earl (2013, 402) argues that it is possible, through the concatenated and overlapping searches conducted in this study, to identify what an ordinary user of the internet would be likely to come across, which can then be used as a ‘comprehensive sampling frame’. 4 As environmentalism was a relatively marginal concern in Muslim communities at the time of my research, the pool of participants was small - with many activists either knowing each other, or knowing of each other. 2 Putnam’s theory of social capital has strongly influenced the field of research examining religious civic engagement since the late 1990s. It must, however, be treated with some caution. How the social capital of a community - its networks, norms, and social trust - lead to political or civic engagement is not adequately specified (Annette 2011, 390). There are also two forms of social capital: bonding and bridging. Where bonding social capital, as the name suggests, creates internal cohesion and cooperation in any particular community or group, bridging social capital creates cohesion and cooperation between communities and groups (Wood and Warren 2002, 9). Arguably, the type of social capital most important for democracy is bridging social capital; while the social capital developed within religious community groups is more likely to be of the bonding type (Wood and Warren 2002, 9; Annette 2011, 390). Until recently, most of the literature examining the relationship between religion and civic engagement has focused on Christian denominations and churches with scare attention paid to whether Islam and Islamic institutions play the same role in the civic engagement of Muslims (Read 2015). Indeed, where churches are typically understood to be sites of societal integration, mosques are often viewed - both in media representations and in policy discourse - as potentially undermining integration by creating islands of self-segregation (Peucker and Ceylan 2017, 2406). This lacuna in research has been steadily filling in recent years with studies of Muslim civic engagement that seek to challenge the ways in which governments in the UK, the US, and Australia have constructed Muslim communities and youth as ‘problematic’ and Islam as potentially at odds with democratic citizenship (Harris and Roose 2014; Oskooii and Dana 2018; Peucker 2018; Read 2015; Roose and Harris 2015; Vergani et al. 2017). In multiple studies conducted across the US, UK, and Australia, researchers have found a positive relationship between various aspects of Islam and civic engagement. Regular attendance at mosque (Oskooii and Dana 2018) or other organizational involvement in the Muslim community (Read 2015; Vergani et al. 2017), religiosity, and perceived discrimination (Sirin and Katsiaficas 2011) are all positively related to Muslim civic engagement. Some Muslims even feel that they have a responsibility to be engaged in the wider community to counter Islamophobia and negative stereotypes about Muslims (Peucker 2018), a trend that, as I discuss below, is also found amongst Muslim environmentalists. Responding to stereotypes that Muslims are disengaged from civic engagement and formal politics, research in the US demonstrates that Muslims have equivalent rates of participation to the general US population (Read 2015), whilst others assert that low levels of political participation amongst Muslim youth are not indicative of a trend related to Islam itself, but rather reflect broader changes to political participation amongst youth more generally (Harris and Roose 2014). Evidence does exist that Muslim citizens, particularly youth, feel alienated from mainstream politics and ‘British’ or ‘American’ cultural identity. Levitt (2008, 774) found that religious migrants (from multiple faith traditions) disproportionally disagreed with certain aspects of American culture such as sexual permissiveness; DeHanas (2016) had similar findings in his comparative study of Jamaican Christians and Bangladeshi Muslims in London. However, disagreement with parts of the culture does not equal rejection, or a lack of respect (Levitt 2008, 774). DeHanas (2016) demonstrates that young Bangladeshi Muslims in London 3 feel alienated from the formal political sphere, believing their voices were not heard by politicians, that their votes did not have a meaningful effect, and that politicians were untrustworthy and corrupt. But alienation from formal politics is not the same as apathy, and certainly did not equate to a lack of civic engagement: the young Muslims in his study had equivalent or even higher rates of civic engagement as the average British citizen (DeHanas 2016). The findings of these studies demonstrate a) that the Islamic religion is not only not antithetical to democratic citizenship, but generally is positively related to democratic citizenship, and b) that Islamic religious institutions and communities provide much the same civic-political benefits to their members as other religious institutions and communities. Comparably little attention, however, is paid to the ways in which civic engagement and political participation may serve the religious needs or goals of Muslim citizens and communities. Peucker’s explorative and comparative study of Muslims in Australia and Germany concluded that a primary driver of civic engagement amongst his participants was faith: they saw ‘active citizenship […] as an act their faith obliges them to perform and they will be rewarded for [it] by God’ (Peucker 2018, 566). Similarly, Vergani et al. found in their explorative study ‘unexpected points of overlap between religious beliefs and active citizenship practices in a republican tradition, with its emphasis on striving for the common good’ (Vergani et al. 2017, 72 original emphasis). Religious faith is intimately bound up with how religious people conceive of a good society, and religious activists construct ‘theologies of change’ (Levitt 2008, 772), which make sense of their political participation in terms of their religious faith. DeHanas (2016) discusses what he calls ‘revival activism’ - when individuals from a religious tradition ground their political action in their faith, ‘social change occurs as more and more individuals act in faith […] as more people take hold of faith they will make society better’ (DeHanas 2016, 173). In this telling of religiously grounded civic-political action, the religious revival and the social change are of equal import - if not one and the same thing. Evidence of revival activism (or at least, a desire to see it occur) is present in Islamic environmentalism: a number of environmentalists in this study expressed that environmental change would happen if/when more people adopted an ‘authentic’ practice of Islam (Hancock 2018). Islamic Environmental Activism Environmentalism is a marginal, but growing concern in Muslim communities. Although environmental crises effect many Muslim-majority countries and environmental action happens across the Muslim world, the most consciously “Islamic” environmentalism emerges from Muslim communities in the diaspora (see Hancock 2018). In constructing an Islamic approach to environmental action, Muslim activists and scholars draw on the Islamic scriptures and intellectual tradition. There are three common theological touchstones of Islamic environmentalism: Khalifah, Tawhid, and Mizan. Khalifah means ‘steward’ or ‘successor’ and comes from the Qur’an, where God states: “I am putting a successor (Khalifah) on earth” (2:30). This verse, and the other seven verses relating to humanity’s role as Khalifah, are typically cited by Muslim environmentalists to demonstrate that humans are destined to care 4 for the earth in order to pass it on to successive generations (Abu-Hola 2009; Abu-Sway 1998; Setia 2007). That this task is divinely ordained means, as we shall see in the data analysis below, that Muslim activists believe care for the earth to be a religious duty. Tawhid refers to the absolute monotheism that characterises Islam, and amongst environmentalists is interpreted to mean that all of creation is one with God. Sanctity is thus given to both humans and the natural world due to their shared created nature (Nasr 1996). Finally, Mizan is usually related to justice and balance, in the sense that God ‘weighs the balance’ of humanity’s deeds. Muslim environmentalists also use Mizan to discuss the ‘delicate balance’ of the natural world, meaning the complexity of ecosystems and the relationships between living creatures, their habitats, and indeed the very laws of nature (Khalid 2017). This environmental theology is matched by the articulation of uniquely Islamic environmental law. Historical Islamic law (Fiqh) contains a variety of prescriptions regarding water and land management. This is unsurprising, as the Islamic religion emerged in a desert region where the survival of early Muslim communities depended upon careful conservation of water and management of grazing and agricultural land (Ali 2016, 174; Bentham 2003, 10). Muslim environmentalists call for the revival of laws regarding, for example, the designation of environmental protected zones - Hima and Harim – which are modelled on the protected zone around the Holy city of Mecca (El-Deen Hamed 1993; Dutton, n.d.). Environmentalists argue these zones can be established to protect endangered ecosystems and wilderness areas. Others, utilising the juristic practice of reasoning from analogy (Qiyas), argue that prohibitions in the Sunnah (the traditions about the Prophet’s life that are used as guidance by Muslims) against using water sources or pathways as places to relieve oneself can be extended to create regulations against pollution (Abu-Sway 1998). The environmental theology and law which is the foundation of Islamic environmentalism is unique, but the actual work undertaken by the Islamic environmental organisations and activists in this study has many similarities with that undertaken by secular environmental organisations. Muslim environmentalists on occasion attend protest marches (IFEES members attended climate change rallies in the UK), organise direct action (WIN staged a protest about rising sea levels in Brick Lane, London), or engage in environmental community service such as tree-planting (MGT) or litter picking (SHINE). However, the vast majority of their activities are focused on educating fellow Muslims about environmentalism in Islam. The organisations in this study typically run lectures and workshops at mosques and Islamic community centres and aim to, at least, encourage the adoption of environmentally friendly practices like recycling and, at best, motivate other Muslims to become environmental activists themselves. I have argued elsewhere (Hancock 2018) that the solutions proposed for environmental crises, and modes of activism utilised by Muslim environmentalists, make their activism primarily cooperative in nature. Rather than directly challenge the state or argue for revolutionary wholesystem change, most Muslim environmentalists work within the status-quo and argue for changes that can be undertaken on an individual (or perhaps community) level such as reducing consumption, recycling, and the reduction of fossil-fuel use. The majority of the activists had pre-existing commitments to either the environmental movement or to civic engagement through other causes. For example, the founder of WIN had 5 been heavily involved in the anti-Iraq war movement in Brighton, whilst the founder of MGT had been on the board of her local Muslim Students’ Association chapter. Others had been members of secular environmental organisations like Greenpeace or the Sierra Club before joining their Islamic environmental organizations. Of the remaining activists, one - the founder of SHINE - found his experience running the organisation led him to become involved in other forms of civic engagement: his environmental activism led to activism on poverty and racial discrimination, and to his election to the local committee which ran Sheffield Environment Week. Environmentalism as a Religious Duty Almost all the Muslim activists in this study, either explicitly or implicitly, saw environmentalism as a religious duty required of them as Muslims. This ‘duty’ is to fulfil the role of Khalifah mentioned in the section above: to be a conscientious steward of the earth. Some stated this outright in their interviews, such as Elizabeth: ‘Well, it [environmentalism] is a duty, that’s my understanding. Similar to Christianity we’re guardians or stewards since the time of Adam. We’re supposed to be looking after it [the earth].’ Summreen thought environmentalism was a ‘God-given’ duty: I think it’s our duty to be doing it [environmentalism], and our responsibility […] you think you’re carrying out your God-given duties by being an environmentalist. You’re caring for God’s earth and you’re caring about all of His creation and trying to do, there is this thing about good deeds - and environmentalism is part of the good deeds. Summreen mentioned that there are ‘good deeds’ a Muslim should perform. The idea that Muslims can accrue good deeds that will have a positive impact on the Day of Judgement what Camrey called ‘brownie points’ - and that environmentalism is part of those good deeds, recurred throughout the interviews. This is closely related to the idea of Khalifah: if humans have been given a role to fulfil on earth, they will be judged according to how well they fulfilled this role by God. Elizabeth said: People are aware that as Muslims this [life] is a test, and they are going to be judged for all their deeds. They are so concentrated on the obvious things: trying not to backbite, trying to keep their prayers on time and stuff like that. If they are told that this [environmentalism] is on the list as well then they will at least try. Zainab noted that the responsibility is such that failing to act environmentally will accrue bad deeds for oneself, with serious spiritual consequences: I think that a lot of people have no idea of how much of an obligation we have. And how much their actions can […] be possibly accumulating bad deeds for themselves in a larger - what do you call it? Cosmological sense. That teaching Muslims about the responsibility of Khalifah will have a positive effect on behaviour was evident in the experience of at least one organisation. The Islamic Foundation 6 for Ecology and Environmental Science (IFEES) was invited to Zanzibar to run a series of workshops on Islam and Ecology for fishing communities. These communities had adopted the practice of dynamiting the local reefs to catch fish, a highly destructive and unsustainable fishing method. Environmental organisations had for some time been attempting to change the behaviour of the fishermen with no success, but the workshops by IFEES were effective in convincing the fishermen to stop using dynamite. Fazlun, the IFEES activist who ran the workshops, said: ‘They got the message of the Khalifah, and they said we can disobey manmade laws but we can’t disobey God’s law.’ Nabeel, the founder of SHINE, had a similar experience running workshops for Muslims on Islam and Ecology. -Although taken aback by the unfamiliar content, his audience were nonetheless receptive to the idea that environmentalism was a religious duty: We would set up a talk [on Islam and Ecology] and just talk about - so according to the Qur’an this [environmentalism] is your duty. A lot of the time, it was just saying - did you know? And that shocked people. Do I have to do that? Actually yeah, you do. Some of the interviewed activists even admitted that they were not nature-lovers, but that they were simply motivated by the belief that environmentalism was a religious and moral duty: I don’t actually feel I have the same passion for environmentalism as a lot of the people around me. So for me […] it’s sort of like something that has to be done. So I think with the people around me there is this love of nature, there is this deep connection with the environment around them, the natural environment around them and for me it’s a lot more like - we’re destroying our world and that’s really wrong. […] For me it’s more an obligation. It’s a religious obligation, it’s a practical obligation as well but more than anything it’s a religious, moral obligation. Although most of the environmentalists expressed in some form or another that stewardship of the earth was a religious duty, fewer explicitly articulated that environmental activism was a duty: yet all the participants were, in fact, activists of some kind. The reasons Muslim environmentalists gave for engaging in activism were varied. Two of them saw civic or political participation to be a religious obligation for Muslims. Discussing the goals of the youth program she helps organise, Bhawana said: A balanced understanding, a comprehensive understanding of Islam […] motivates them to be closer to God and be active and positive influences in society. So work on yourself and your own spiritual state, and also work on your own faults and try to improve as a person. But then go out and give service to people, broadly. For Bhawana, that meant encouraging Muslim youth to not only be involved in the Muslim community, but to get involved in organisations and initiatives that serve the wider community as well: What we wanted to do was help promote volunteerism amongst youth […] and outside the Muslim community. So there was a lot of people who would do 7 volunteer stuff within the community and help in the Mosque, but we wanted the youth to be involved with other community organisations so, every month we would do stuff like local food banks and special Olympics. You know, things like that. Nabeel, meanwhile, stated: The message in Islam is if you’re sat down comfortable, something is wrong. If you’re sitting at home happy and comfortable, your meal is being served, then start to worry, because you’ve got to go out there. You’ve got to help people, you should be doing something that is testing you. It was more common, however, for activists to state that Muslims should be civically or politically engaged to counter Islamophobia. Ameena thought Muslims had a responsibility to join secular or inter-faith environmental groups, rather than to form Muslim-only groups for just that reason: ‘We need Muslims at the table to counter Islamophobia […] the table is ready and waiting for Muslims. And they’re usually just not engaged or they’re just not aware.’ Summreen and Camrey both saw the potential of environmentalism as an issue to bring Muslim communities together with non-Muslim communities: Islam and the environment, I think it’s quite a good [issue] to bring Muslims and non-Muslims [together], to build understanding between them. Because Islamophobia in this country […] it’s really bad here, but I think it’s a really good thing to bring people together. (Summreen) Maybe we can use environmentalism as a conduit to kind of, ease tension or build relationships between other people we don’t know, other communities we don’t know. (Camrey) However, despite the belief that environmental action was an opportunity to bring Muslim and non-Muslim communities together in political collaboration, the vast majority of work undertaken by the Islamic environmental organisations in this study was focused only upon their own Muslim communities, and engaged only Muslim activists. Discussion The research on the function of religious communities in accumulating social capital and facilitating political participation challenges the assumption that some belief systems, like Islam, are incompatible with democratic participation and the older bias that religion more generally is antithetical to social change. By framing their environmentalism as a religious duty, Muslim activists also challenge the perceived dichotomy between political action and religious practice prevalent in many Western liberal democracies. I have argued elsewhere (Hancock 2015, 2018) that the incorporation of religious ritual and practice into the actions undertaken by Muslim environmentalists (such as their staging of environmentally-themed Iftar) coupled with the synthesis of their religious goals with their political goals5 demonstrates 5 For example, one participant would only eat meat that he himself had hunted and killed. He undertook this 8 that religious and political action are one and the same thing for many of these Muslim environmentalists. The drive of the volunteer activists in this study to dedicate significant amounts of personal time and resources on environmentalism demonstrates both the political capacity within Muslim communities, and their engagement in issues of widespread social and political importance. Just as scholars have argued that Islamic communities and institutions provide the same political benefits to their members as do the institutions of other religious traditions (Jamal 2005; Oskooii and Dana 2018; Peucker and Ceylan 2017; Read 2015), so the politics that emerge from Muslim communities have limitations that can be found in other religious traditions. By framing environmentalism as a religious duty, the goal of environmental action risks becoming individualised: a Muslim should be an environmentalist in order to draw closer to God, to fulfil their divine purpose as Khalifah, or to create a more ‘authentic’ practice of Islam. DeHanas (2016) found a similarly inward-looking and individualistic focus to the Christian and Muslim civic engagement he studied in London. He argues that by focusing on individual responsibility and individual action, religious activists often fail to address the underlying structural causes of political issues. This is also the case with much Islamic environmentalism - a fact recognised by some of the more politically experienced activists themselves in my study. Khalid, an independent activist based in the Bay Area notes that, ‘religion can lend itself very quickly to an individual focus, like the thought that you need to fix yourself’ and that Islamic environmentalism generally is: Very neo-liberal in that sense, in that it is focused on the individual changing the way they live, so they are a product of the space they’re in. And I don’t think many of them have the […] language to understand that’s even a neoliberal thing. By far the most common kinds of changes advocated for by the Muslim environmentalists in this study was for their mosques and fellow Muslims to adopt recycling or composting, for people to consume less, buy organic produce, and reduce their fossil fuel usage. This type of political behaviour is consistent with the kind of ‘lifestyle activism’ identified by social movement theorists (Haenfler, Johnson, and Jones 2012; Crossley 2003) as common in the wider environmental movement, where individual lifestyle practices are moralised and politicised. Such practices are also consistent with research into the changing nature of youth political participation that shows youth more likely to engage with economic boycotts, donations to charity, and ethical consumption practices than with collective political action (Pattie, Seyd, and Whiteley 2004). This atomised mode of political engagement has already been found amongst Muslim youth in Australia who engage in what Harris and Roose (2014) call ‘do-it-yourself’ citizenship practices rather than in formal political action alone. Some Islamic environmental organisations did propose more radical systemic change to the economic system, in particular due to the Islamic prohibition against financial interest, but such a structural focus was less common. The individualistic bent to Islamic environmentalism is, I argue, both part of broader trends towards atomised political action, and due to Muslim practice both as a protest against what he diagnosed as an environmentally destructive and immoral industrial livestock system in the United States, and because he believed hunting drew him closer to God through an appreciation for creation. 9 environmentalists framing environmentalism as a religious duty - and in the process become trapped by the norms of religious individualism and spiritual improvement. Muslim environmentalists predominantly work within their own communities, and seek to influence and recruit fellow Muslims, and mostly do not (with some exceptions, discussed below) work cooperatively with activists and groups outside their community. Framing environmentalism as a religious duty makes sense in this context, but simultaneously restricts the appeal of the environmental work undertaken. Given the argument that it is bridging, not bonding, social capital that is essential for effective political participation (Wood and Warren 2002; Annette 2011), the restricted audience for much Islamic environmentalism would appear to do little to promote cross-community relations and societal or political integration.6 As discussed in the section above, some of the activists themselves wish to use environmental action to counter Islamophobia in society, but this requires working collaboratively or in coalition with other religious and secular environmental groups. In the UK in particular, collaborative work comes with some risks. Some of the activists in the UK did experience Islamophobia when trying to engage with non-Muslims, with one being bullied by members of local environmental groups and another reflecting that: People have a certain […] defensive mechanism towards you because of who you are. […] Straight away, like it or not, you have come as a Muslim and straight away people put you in a certain box. You’re either quite aggressive, or you’re quite extreme, whatever it is, but people have that (Nabeel). One of the environmental organisations in this study, UK-based Wisdom in Nature, did manage to recruit non-Muslims to their organisation and work collaboratively with a variety of environmental and community organisations outside their immediate Muslim community. They organised public forums on climate change with Rising Tide and the World Development Movement, and workshops at conferences held by the Campaign Against Climate Change; they also organised a ‘Fast for the Planet’ action campaign with St Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace. Wisdom in Nature consciously rejected explicit identification with the Muslim community, changing their name from the London Islamic Network for the Environment, and prioritising the recruitment of members with grassroots political experience over religious identification or belief. Although Wisdom in Nature was better integrated in wider grassroots politics than the other environmental organisations in this study, this was to a large extent due to the core members’ networks within left-wing grassroots politics in the UK, particularly those of the founder Muzammal, and the group’s utilisation of common left-wing organising practices (such as consensus decision making and non-hierarchical organisational structure). Of all the organisations, they were also the least explicitly ‘Islamic’, although the core members of the organisation were all Muslim and much of the group’s literature was grounded in Islamic theology. Religious identity may be of primary importance to significant sectors of Muslim communities (see DeHanas 2016), but it is also relatively unremarkable and just one aspect of other Muslims’ identity. Research on the role of Islam in civic and political participation risks reducing the complexity and diversity of Muslim communities and 6 This is not to suggest that these activists or groups need to better integrate – for most the prime focus of their activism is to promote better environmental behaviour within their Muslim community. 10 individuals by only discussing their ‘Muslim-ness.’ Ultimately, framing environmentalism as a religious duty has limited effectiveness for Muslim activists. There is some evidence to suggest that the framing may be appealing or intellectually convincing to some Muslims, from the positive feedback the activists report getting in their workshops and lectures. However, there is very little evidence demonstrating that this framing has any concrete effect on behaviour. The IFEES workshop in Zanzibar, where Fazlun convinced local fishermen to stop dynamiting the reef, is one (self-reported) example. Without further empirical research, it is impossible to measure the effectiveness of framing environmentalism as a religious duty on environmental behaviour change amongst Muslims. Relying on religious framing to motivate Muslims into environmental activism was largely ineffective, according to my study findings. Of the six environmental organisations in this study, three were in abeyance during the research period because they could not recruit sufficient numbers of participants to sustain their activism. The primary factors driving the Muslim environmentalists into their activism was their pre-existing commitments to and networks within the environmental movement. Activists came to their first Islamic environmental meeting because they were asked by a good friend, or because they knew and respected the leader of the environmental group (Hancock 2018) and most described an existing affinity to the environment, whether through a love of hiking and camping, or involvement in a secular environmental group prior to joining (or founding) an Islamic environmental group. However, we must be careful not to ascribe failure to Muslim environmentalists because they struggled to mobilise Muslims into the environmental movement. The goals of most of these groups is primarily to educate their fellow Muslims about the environment and effect environmental behaviour change – not to create a mass mobilization for environmentalism. Further, insofar as many of the activists were convinced that environmentalism is a religious duty incumbent upon Muslims, they also seek to fulfil their religious duty through their environmental activism. Although there is insufficient evidence to say whether or not the organisations in this study were successful in creating environmental behaviour change in their Muslim communities, they were very active with their education efforts and – perhaps more importantly for their individual consciences – felt that their activism was indeed the fulfilment of their religious duty. Conclusion This chapter has outlined the work of Islamic environmental organisations and Muslim activists in the US and UK, analysing how environmental action is understood and framed as a religious duty and the effect of this on the environmental action of the organisations, and their efficacy in mobilising people to their cause. I have argued that the kinds of actions undertaken by Muslim environmentalists is predominantly individualistic and reflective of broader trends towards the atomisation of political participation; framing environmentalism as a religious duty typically reinforces this individualism. The Islamic framing also restricts the resonance of their 11 message to the Muslim community – most organisations self-restrict their activism to the Muslim community anyhow, and so this is not an issue in terms of their organisational goals. However, by remaining within the bounds of the Muslim community Islamic environmental organisations are unlikely to build the kind of bridging capital necessary for broader civic engagement for the environment. References Abu-Hola, Imfadi. 2009. “An Islamic Perspective on Environmental Education.” Education 130 (2): 195–211. Abu-Sway, Mustafa. 1998. “Towards an Islamic Jurisprudence of the Environment.” Belfast Mosque, February. Ali, Saleem. 2016. “Reconciling Islamic Ethics, Fossil Fuel Dependence, and Climate Change in the Middle East.” Review of Middle East Studies 50 (2): 172–78. Annette, John. 2011. “Faith Communities, Communitarianism, Social Capital, and Youth Civic Engagement.” Ethnicities 11 (3): 383–97. Bentham, Jonathan. 2003. “The Greening of Islam?” Anthropology Today 19 (6): 10–12. Crossley, Nick. 2003. “Even Newer Social Movements? Anti-Corporate Protests, Capitalist Crises and the Remoralisation of Society.” Organization 10 (2): 289–305. DeHanas, Daniel. 2016. London Youth, Religion, and Politics: Engagement and Activism from Brixton to Brick Lane. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Dutton, Yasin. n.d. “Islam and the Environment: A Framework for Inquiry.” In Islam and the Environment. Earl, Jennifer. 2013. “Studying Online Activism: The Effects of Sampling Design on Findings.” Mobilization 18 (4): 389–406. El-Deen Hamed, Safei. 1993. “Seeing the Environment Through Islamic Eyes: Application of Shariah to Natural Resources Planning and Management.” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 6 (2): 145–64. Haenfler, Ross, Brett Johnson, and Ellis Jones. 2012. “Lifestyle Movements: Exploring the Intersection of Lifestyle and Social Movements.” Social Movement Studies 11 (1): 1– 20. Hancock, Rosemary. 2015. “Is There a Paradox of Religion and Liberation? Islamic Environmental Activism in the United States and Great Britain.” Journal for the Academic Study of Religion 28 (1): 42–60. ———. 2018. Islamic Environmentalism: Activism in the United States and Great Britain. London: Routledge. 12 Hanna, Alexander. 2013. “Computer-Aided Content Analysis of Digitally Enabled Movements.” Mobilization 18 (4): 367–88. Harris, Anita, and Joshua Roose. 2014. “DIY Citizenship amongst Young Muslims: Experiences of the ‘Ordinary.’” Journal of Youth Studies 17 (6): 794–813. Jamal, Amaney. 2005. “The Political Participation and Engagement of Muslim Americans.” American Politics Research 33 (4): 521–44. Khalid, Fazlun M. 2017. “Exploring Environmental Ethics in Islam: Insights from the Qur’an and the Practice of Prophet Muhammad.” In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Ecology, edited by John Hart, 130–45. John Wiley & Sons. Levitt, Peggy. 2008. “Religion as a Path to Civic Engagement.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 31 (4): 766–91. Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. 1996. Religion and the Order of Nature. New York: Oxford University Press. Oskooii, Kassra, and Karam Dana. 2018. “Muslims in Great Britain: The Impact of Mosque Attendance on Political Behaviour and Civic Engagement.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 44 (9): 1479–1505. Pattie, Charles, Patrick Seyd, and Paul Whiteley. 2004. Citizenship in Britain: Values, Participation and Democracy. Cambrige, UK: Cambridge University Press. Peucker, Mario. 2018. “On the (In)Compatibility of Islamic Religiosity and Citizenship in Western Democracies: The Role of Religion for Muslims’ Civic and Political Engagement.” Politics and Religion 11: 553–75. Peucker, Mario, and Rauf Ceylan. 2017. “Muslim Community Organisations - Sites of Active Citizenship or Self-Segregation?” Ethnic and Racial Studies 40 (14): 2405–25. Putnam, Robert. 1995. “Tuning In, Tuning Out: The Strange Disappearance of Social Capital in America.” PS: Political Science and Politics 28 (4): 664–83. Putnam, Robert, and David Campbell. 2010. American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us. New York: Simon & Schuster. Read, Jen’nan Ghazal. 2015. “Gender, Religious Identity, and Civic Engagement among Arab Muslims in the United States.” Sociology of Religion 76 (1): 30–48. Roose, Joshua, and Anita Harris. 2015. “Muslim Citizenship in Everyday Australian Civic Spaces.” Journal of Intercultural Studies 36 (4): 468–86. Setia, Adi. 2007. “The Inner Dimension of Going Green: Articulating an Islamic DeepEcology.” Islam and Science 5 (2): 117–49. Sirin, Selcuk, and Dalal Katsiaficas. 2011. “Religiosity, Discrimination, and Community Engagement: Gendered Pathways of Muslim American Emerging Adults.” Youth & Society 43 (4): 1528–46. Vergani, Matteo, Amelia Johns, Michelle Lobo, and Fethi Mansouri. 2017. “Examining Islamic Religiosity and Civic Engagement in Melbourne.” Journal of Sociology 53 (1): 13 63–78. Wagner, Antonin. 2008. “Religion and Civil Society: A Critical Reappraisal of America’s Civic Engagement Debate.” Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 37 (4): 626–45. Wood, Richard, and Mark Warren. 2002. “A Different Face of Faith-Based Politics: Social Capital and Community Organising in the Public Arena.” International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 22 (9/10): 6–54. 14