The Globalization of Muslim Environmentalism

In Sufism

Muslim mystics, known as Sufis, have tended to interpret Qur’anic references to the oneness of God (tawhīd ) as indicating an underlying unity to all reality. The Andalusian mystic Muhyi al-din ibn ‘Arabi (1165-1240) described Creation in terms of “unity of being” (wahdat al-wujūd ), an idea which won wide popularity among Sufis especially in South Asia where his work remains highly influential. Many mainstream Muslims have found this belief to verge dangerously close to pantheism, however; the seventeenth-century Indian Sufi teacher Shah Waliullah preferred the term “unity of witness” (wahdat al-shuhūd ) as more clearly maintaining the distinction between Creator and Creation.

The Sufi notion of the “Complete Man” (al-insān al-kāmil ), also elaborated by Ibn ‘Arabi, expands the conception of the human being as microcosm of the universe. For Sufis, cultivation of the individual is analogous to cultivation of the cosmos as a whole; thus, one’s personal spiritual development can affect the entire world.

To Sufis such as Jalal al-din Rumi (1207-1273), not just animals and plants but the entire universe of Creation is alive.[^5] “Earth and water and fire are His slaves,” he writes in theMasnavī-yi ma‘navī ; “With you and me they are dead, but with God they are alive” (1.838). Nature also speaks, though only the mystics realize this: “The speech of water, the speech of the earth, and the speech of mud are apprehended by the sense of them that have hearts” (1.3279). The conversations of nature are indicative of affective relationships: “You yourself know what words the sun, in the sign of Aries, speaks to the plants and the date palms/You yourself, too, know what the limpid water is saying to the sweet herbs and the sapling” (6.1068-69). Moreover, the Sufis often employ the symbolism of love (‘ishq ) to describe the relationship of mutual attraction between the Creator and his Creation. Yunus Emre, a thirteenth-century Turkish poet, composed the famous line, “We love all creation for the sake of its Creator.”

Many Sufi tales, such as those found in the works of Rumi, Attar, and others, include animal characters, though these are almost always stand-ins for human characteristics associated with particular species. Non-human animals are seen as occupying a level below humans and the “animal soul” of the philosophers is equated by the Sufis with the “lower self” (nafs ), or one’s own baser instincts which along the path of spiritual development one strives to overcome.