Islamic Ecotheology
摘要
The debate over environmental destruction, global heating, and humanity’s roll in the emission of greenhouse gases that threatens the Earth, humanity, and all animal and plant life, has been accompanied by a parallel debate over these same issues by Muslim thinkers. The reason is that these threats are not limited to countries in the West but undermine the conditions for life on the entire planet. One element of the debate in the West has been the role played by Christianity in the environmental and climate crisis. The Christian creation theology, which elevates human beings to lords of creation with sovereignty over the Earth, has been a prominent target of criticism. Its perspective has been accused of conferring legitimacy upon humanity’s plundering of nature. A similar viewpoint can be found in the Muslim creation theology, which presents human beings as the supreme creation in whose service God has created everything under the heavens. For Muslims, the question is how to engage with this criticism. Do Muslim theologians agree that Islam’s creation narrative and view of humanity have contributed to the overexploitation of the resources of nature? How do Muslim theologians regard Islamic creation theology’s view of the relation between humanity and God’s non-human creations?