An indigenous natural perspective on fasting and dua (blessing):
In the name of the one who created and designed all that we know in this majestic world:
Ramadan is for the spiritual calibration of actionable positive reality in a large swath of humanity—the worlds Muslims. It is time for Islam to voice by a billion strong populous a common message to humanity toward the knowledge and conscience revolution that is now budding in the shadows of our modern materialist culture failure.
May this month be embraced with meditative focus and a vivid hearing of the whispers that reverberate from Allah through the ecology of the planet. May the plumb line be laid upon our souls this summer for a righting of cultures and individuals with rational reality and reverence for the common ecology created to sustain, invigorate, and inspire us and all life and creatures in a common home.
Pope Francis has finally initiated the de- secularization of the pressing issues of our day. ON THE CARE OF OUR COMMON HOME begins with a message that is vibrantly universal to commonality of faith:
- “Laudato si’, mi’ Signore” – “Praise be to you, my Lord”. In the words of this beautiful canticle, Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us. “Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs”.1
- This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she “groans in travail” (Rom 8:22). We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth (cf. Gen 2:7); our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her waters.
1 Canticle of the Creatures, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vol. 1, New York-London-Manila, 1999, 113-114.
(The beginning of 184 pages published today by Pope Francis and available in PDF online or from Amazon in book form.)
Islam unlike Catholicism has no supreme authority aside from Allah–the creator. Sadly in our time many muftis are put forward and their often silly or ridiculous Fatwas imbued an air of authority. Big Middle Eastern money pushes agendas and opinions with power, zeal, and world reach. Most of the prominent voices of Islam in 2015, like ISIS, are goons of the system that a world of Muslims, to their credit, quietly ignore along with all of the ridiculous rulings, knowing that they have no more authority than words on a matchbox. The Quran and Hadith or the realities and truths of the faith that both are to communicate are understood through the connection of people and cultures with the created world, ecology, and ‘mother nature’, not by studious eggheads with impressive recitation within 4 walls. In fact the most important Muslim book is not the Quran; it is the book of nature; the creation of Allah, the language of which is spoken by few. People are one small part of nature that play an important role either in finding our place (what is halal) or in creating chaos and destruction to the rhythms and flows by perverting them (what is haram). The in-between is relevant only in the time of equilibrium with nature. Islam is submission to the way things are designed, the ultimate rationality, and the world is created with an elegant and majestic balance, while the human potential is to nurture vibrancy in balance or to upset the balance. In today’s world of ecological collapse, rampant materialism, and wealth consolidation on a massive ecologically devastating scale, it is the halal relationship to the world that we need to re-establish our bearings to interpret anything beyond the strictly rational in religion. The Islamic scholars relevant to today must be versed in nature as their primary language above and beyond all other languages. Those scholars are all of us who are willing to discover again the grounding and roots of our human reality on this planet.
Muslims in every nook and cranny of the globe out there sweeping, farming or blogging are the faith—the Ummah—and it is they, one by one, who must stand and re-write the rationality and progressive voice of Islam today. Ignore the Fatwas; ignore the noise; ignore even the threats; it is time to get down to basics and re-establish the foundations of civilization that is rooted on the reverence and submission to nature—Islam.
May this month of introspection, meditation, and recalibration of self; right us to the natural systems of “our common home”.
May Muslims all over the earth, one billion strong, emerge as leaders in the revolution of agroecology, stewardship of land, and the movement to localize and become deeply indigenous to whatever place we call home.
May Muslims with technical savvy champion the definitions of appropriate technologies bases on reverence to nature and ecology and precaution toward the same.
May Muslims across the globe reconnect deeply with nature and the living ecology that is here to sustain us all and the billions of creatures from massive to microscopic in the elegant living picture of symmetry and symbiosis which can and is our world.
Alhamdulillah, and may the human side of this praise be expressed from us most directly in our reverence toward nature!
Ramadan (Ramadhan, Ramadaan or Ramzan) Mubaraak!
Warmly,
Brady ~ agroecology for a symbioticfuture
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occupyconscience 