The International Islamic Climate Change Symposium: Khidr Shrugs

Climate Change is big trouble. As an Indian Muslim solar engineer from the USA put it to me recently, it will make what is happening in Syria look small in comparison. It is primarily a consequence of the system of fossil fuelled industrial development ushered in by European colonialism. The transformations required for human and non-human societies to address climate change with justice and dignity are pretty mind boggling.

Al Khaliq ( Creator), Al Bari ( Evolver), Al Musawwir (Fashioner)

The Muslim context is weird as ever. Let's think of it as a Qur'anicly ecological cosmology, and a set of growing embodied practices, traditions and texts in living connection to places, environments and peoples bearing a variety of colonial wounds, capabilities and power relations. Like much of the world, for the historical Ummah, the post1492 period has largely been one of political, intellectual and industrial annihilation at the hands and systems of European colonial aggression.

Add to this the reality that the Muslim position (Obese oil sheiks, national elites, NGO developmentees and diasporas aside) is largely still at the negatively impacted, trapped but perhaps unknowing victim level and you might say that, we have 'a lot of work to do'.

It is very important not to serve as the developmentor's developmentee.
Growing numbers of Islamic Society graduates don't seem to get it though.
( Source: The Developmentia Project)

Which is why I am not pouring green algae all over the International Islamic Climate Change Symposium that will take place next week in Istanbul, just a bit. After all, many critical minds within the UK Muslim community are legitimately pissed over a certain organiser's commitment to public relations, anti-politics and neoliberalism over service, depth and cooperation.

Great British Fake Off?

Given that Nabi Khidr (our Green Man) taught us the difference between the apparent and the real through Nabi Musa, I sometimes wonder why 'ecoIslam' is such a PRfest. Then depending on mood, whether eco and green prefixatives are just forms of Preventitude. 


A Summit in Istanbul, the Symbolic Centre of the Muslim Ummah

The International Islamic Climate Change Symposium is being organised predominantly by western NGOs, Muslim and otherwise, including Birmingham-based Islamic Relief Worldwide and IFEES, US-based Greenfaith and Beirut-centred Climate Action Network ( nice bunch of briefings and positions). I wish the gathering receives and delivers justice and wisdom, and will be tuning in.

The proceedings will be live cast here  (below) on Monday and Tuesday, tweeted on #Muslims4Climate and promises to launch a finalised Islamic Declaration on Climate Change. While not the first globally orientated Muslim statement on climate change, I don't expect anything as beautiful as the Pope's recent publication of social doctrine on social, spiritual and ecological justice Laudato Si (Praise Him), in fact I just hope it is a significant improvement on the first draft.



Highlights from the schedule, detailed here, include. (NB. Istanbul time is 3 hours ahead of BST)

• A 5 minute opening remote address by Prod Seyyed Hossein Nasr, the spiritual and intellectual legend who has been writing about Islam, secularism, science, the sacred and the environment since the 60s. Monday 1045-1050 (Careful you dont blink or you will miss it.)
• A session of Climate Solutions and the Power of Faith, featuring IIED and ICCAD's Saleemul Huq and CAN's Mohammed Adow. Monday 1130-1300
• A short series of interventions from 'Muslim Faith Leaders'. Tuesday 1005-1020.

It is what it is, hopefully by the end of it some less familiar voices will be more familiar. Its not like they are going to march through Gezi Park crying 

Labbayk Labbayk Allahuma Labbayk.

What should be, however is another activity, where by the social, scholarly and political movements of Islam and the Muslims sensitise, hone and exercise their eco-politics and their creation-relations. It is not as if there is any lack of interpretive stimulus, whether through the experiences of Kelantan's floods, Karachi's recent heatwave or the coastal erosion and salinisation of Khulna.

A Decolonial Dua

Owner of Judgement, Everlasting, Protecting Friend

forgive us those foolish decisions,

which enclose noble futures,

as we make our way to the minbar.

Guide us in our knowledge adventures,

beyond the accumulation of certification

to generation, political epistemic emancipation.

Protect us from developmentors on the watchtower,

and their developmentees,

Preventing us, from helping us

Selling poverty pornography and non answers.

The continuing disaster of the poisoning of Bhopal and its people

This night thirty years ago was the last, and the beginning of the end for 25 000 people in the central Indian town of Bhopal. The Union Carbide pesticide factory leaked poisonous gas into its nearby environment, immediately killing thousands. To this date the land has not been remediated and people still suffer from birth defects. The International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal states that 150 000 battle chronic illnesses. The build up and aftermath of the disaster provide a vivid example of how things can go so wrong, and stay wrong, and how difficult it is to hold corporate entities to account.

The factory had been established in 1970 and is typical Green Revolution fare. It was located in the middle of India with help from the Indian government and no little diplomatic grease. Near its ultimate end, the factory was undergoing cost cutting, which affected health and safety.

Indians farmers were not so interested in buying its pesticides at the time, Indira Gandhi had been assassinated and Anti-Sikh pogroms (8 000 +) had ravaged the country just a month earlier. Her assassination was in response to the terrible (and SAS supported) Operation Bluestar mounted against the Sikh's Golden Temple in Amritsar, which left up to 5000 people dead. Not to mention the Nellie Massacre of Muslims in Assam (2000-5000) that had unfolded the year before.

Corporate propaganda.

Warren Anderson, CEO of Union Carbide died this autumn, escaping justice in this life. He was more wanted figure in India than Osama Bin Laden for the USA. Makes you wonder what kinds of justice there are for situations like this.

Corporations continue to enjoy more-than-human rights.

I got to watch Ravi Kumar's Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain at #ReframingDisaster last weekend, and found it to be beautifully written, complex and saddening/maddening.

Dow Chemicals, who were involved in the manufacture of nuclear weapons, Agent Orange and Napalm aquired Union Carbide in 2001. Dow is a huge commercial concern, with 50k+ employees and $50billion + annual revenue. It is a pity that Fight Club is not real.

On another note, there is an ummahtic connection from the UK to the town, via its first purpose built mosque. Bhopal used to be ruled by Queens called Begums (Beg-Om: Mothers of Warriors)

The 1860 Pearl Mosque at the heart of Bhopal, built by Begum Sikander Jahan.

Woking Mosque in the 1930s, the first purpose built mosque in the United Kingdom (1889).
It was financed largely by Begum Shah Jehan, who it bears the name of to this day

Resources

Bhopal Medical Appeal
Good background info and campaign materials

Raj Keswani, 
Bhopal based journalist and Union Carbide whistle blower reflects on the tragedy (Hindi)

The Yes Men Sting Operation
Claiming to be Dow Chemicals, the social justice activists fooled the BBC into believing Dow, who had 3 years earlier acquired Union Carbide, was taking responsibility.

Bhopal: Facing 30
A photography project, that honours surviving families with regal portraits.

Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain (Trailer)

Martin Sheen interview, he plays Union Carbides CEO

[New Word] Envornamentalism

Well its a reprise of an old one that was just too clunky. 

Envornamentalism is about the superficiality with which we may have thought of the world in the past. Maybe we still see planting a few trees as doing our bit, or conservation as the critical value for politics and ethics of the environment.

It is an abdication of painful truth that humanity, bani al insan, needs to start seeing and being in the world differently so as to accord everyone and everything their right. For example, in line with the People's Aggreement of Cochabamba  we might give all species the rights of genetic integrity.

There is another technocratic form that bureaucracies are guilty of, and that is the ticking of boxes for awards, organisational leverage or simply legislative compliance. This is second generation envornamentalism.

This second generation has caused climate change to be split in two insulated chunks, Mitigation and Adaptation.  Insulated that is unless you want to pay sombody off...

Awwal Akhir Hai Allah

First and last
not just the point of slaughter to plate

Our goal is not an exhibition of humanity according to an animal welfare ethic devoid of God, its Lordly and set in a Qur'anic sacred ecology

We are talking about life from the farm through to slaughter, distribution, handling, sharing, eating, gratitude and disposal.

There is a recent study of halal certification that includes transcripts of interview with both the HMC and the HFA.

I see why they both exist and what they represent. There is no problem with more standards to convey the important of different values.

So how about Ihsan?

Remember the Garden, for the sake of Allah

Is the title of a talk delivered by the late Haji Ayman Ahwal last year,



Sadly (for us) he passed on from this world last week and was buried in Birmingham, where he spent the last 7-8 years amongst a community he loved a lot and which clearly loved him greatly.

His upriverproject blog contains a rich presentation of the struggle to protect forest and life in Aceh.





Closer to home, but with exactly the same ethic, the Clean Madina project (below) was an amazing intervention, Jihad on Litter in Brumistan!

local environmentality, recycling and missing the point

Local Authority Environmentality has transformed the recycling value into something which has harmed the visual environment of residential neighbourhoods, which are now littered with bins. This is especially annoying where space is scarce.

How about:
bin camoflage?
communal facilities?

Setting aside the tinkering for a moment, local authorities are strict on this because land fill taxation is driving their bin deployments.  But what about the over consumption that lies at the front of the problem?

Imagining a Ministry of Mother Earth

The bolivians must now institutionalise, translate and hone a new environmentality.

Imagine a river, objecting to being dammed, in a court, with fish and otters and the like bearing witness to the injustice of the matter. Luckily the river will not be represented as idealised point particle, a 'resource' or curvilinear flows in a computer model.

I hope Islamic movements and shaykments have their pencils sharpened and avoid Thamudian ingratitude and perversity.

Mother Earth Rights in the Plurinational State of Bolivia

Alhamdullillah its now official. The cooliest environmental law of our times.
A different way of looking and being. Tool up lawyers.

[New Word] Decommodifier

All is not well in the world as we are coming to know it in a warped way.
The craponomists have taken over the asylum and have commodified people, trees and even the air we breath. We have been duped into cost-benefit, market-think as the only way in and out of situations.
 
The search is on for ways of reversing this trend in order that our judgments and dealings be properly appreciated for what they are. These ways are called decommodifiers.

For instance, the Universal Declaration of Mother Earth Rights, a prayer by a tree and freedom of movement.

British Security Service infiltration of environmental movement

I am unsure as to why there has been a spike in coverage of spooks and officers doing dastardly things whilst 'serving the public' but I hope the news will turn good people away from odious livelihoods.

That the environmental movement (and ministerial protection)  has evidently been so heavily infiltrated by people with little self control makes me wonder how deeply entrenched they are amongst the Islamically moved, and what it is that they might be doing to undermine concepts, people, relationships and organisations with the ultimate cover of acting in the UK public's safety and best interests.

Climate and environment protesters are a harmless, creative and noble bunch. I hope this experience makes them,

Is it from the meat we eat?

Chicken Cottage, please continue,
To imbue, how far I am from true.

That which is lawful and good

That's what we are ordered to eat, and earn. Quranically, repeatedly.

Like in many areas of diasporic ritual practice, we seem to have ourselves convinced of the fiqui side of things, but abandoned the ethics of it. I really want some good meat. Vegetarianism alone is insufficient, I feel it virtuous but liberal abdication. This halal market lock in system needs systematic transformation.

This book on animal welfare by Al Hafiz Al Masri, one time imam of the Woking Mosque is a gem I must get hold of fully. Originally written in 1987, the Islamic Foundation republished it in 2007.

So what of halal (c), is it sufficient?

Its not just about the method of ritual slaughter (which is where a great deal of the whiteous indignation targets it wrath), but the entire end-to-end process including: rearing, husbandry, welfare, slaughter, packing, distribution, retail, disposal and consumption. Modernisation, commodification, urbanisation, migration and economisation seems to have squeezed the spirit our of how we eat.

The Serious Sausage Company  and  Willowbrook Farm are there already. I think the Canadians got there ages ago.

Bi ism Illah, (with)in the names of Allah. Such a beautiful sanctification. Living in the bi.

Wandering around central with some lovers recently I felt angsty at having just attended an intracommunity dialogue with Tariq Ramadan and Shayk Haddad discussing what islah could be, and the ensuing social negotiation of what dinner could be. It was a disembodying experience. MachoMeatPax.

The ummahood feels disembodied and disembowelled. We have been De-ganjed and thrown into megacities where industrial farming and mechanised farming are norms avoidable only with steel and resources. We must resist this detawherance because its causing hypocrisy. Tawherence being integrity between belief and practice.

The literal truth and the the logic of our embodied practice link (un)ethical consumption to perpetuation of (in)justice to ensuing human behaviour.

[New Word] Envirornamentalism

Not so corporate as greenwash, more to do with appropriating honourific airs

Tarawih with the Trees

It was a chilly night, but a great night in Mile End Park. We gathered between Burdett Road and Canal Road, north of the the path crossing the park and the canal, a little south of the grassy bridge over Mile End Road. Behind that eatery formerly known as Halalianos.

Londonistan was pre-occupied: with being familial, fundraising for a visionary new mosque for Cambridge, flood victims, Iftaring in other Parks, Tarawihing in the Built Environment and commemorating the death of Imam Ali (ra).

Yet a Jamat gathered for this 'Tarawih with the Trees'.
Allahumma accept our devotions and annihilate our pretentions.

The trees framed our space, a mihrab fit for Revelation. Horse chestnuts decorated the floor. It was as if we were wrapped in a semi-permeable membrane of His creativity, ruptured by the sounds and dancing lights from the roads and drunken Muslim youth of East London.

Our Imam's drew from The Cow, The Inevitable and the Last Chapter. And we gave thanks for His blessings, prayed for his forgiveness and called on His names on a night of possible Power, without amplification or fuss.

We think we were able to find some Taqwa amongst these Trees and hoped to meet again to continue our journey, most probably on Friday.

Tarawih with the Trees is one collective worship act in a series, around the theme of Fasting not Feasting.