Behrouz Ghamari-Tabrizi
Professor of Near Eastern Studies and Director of the Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies at Princeton University
Behrouz Ghamari-Tabrizi
Professor of Near Eastern Studies and Director of the Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies at Princeton University
Rezvaneh Erfani Hossein Pour
Rezvaneh Erfani Hossein Pour is a SSHRC Canada Vanier Scholar and a PhD student at the Department of Sociology, University of Alberta, Edmonton. Her doctorate research focuses on environmentalism and environmental movements in the Middle East with a special focus on democracy and political activism. In her specialization examination, she focused on Ecofeminism, Body, and Colonization. Rezvaneh has worked on Postcolonial Critique of Environmental Justice: A Discourse Analysis of United Nations Documents on Post-Invasion Iraq and Afghanistan in her MA in Sociology and Political Science at University of Alberta. She has also completed another MA in Social Communications at University of Tehran, Iran, where she focused on environmental communication in Iran and conducted a study on Rhetorical Analysis of Documentaries on The Lake Urmia Environmental Crisis.
For the Sake of Nature, For the Best of All: Intersections of Islamic Environmental Philosophy with Democratic Ecosocialism
​
In this paper, I examine the question of coexistence of social justice, freedom and spirituality in Muslim societies through an environmental philosophical and ethical perspective. Such specificity reframes the question to: whether and how environmental justice, environmental democracy, and nature-based spiritualities coexist in a Muslim context? In the first part of the paper, I explore water politics and water sovereignty as my case study. In this part, I focus on Islamic traditions, ethics and norms around water in particular and the environment, in general. After reviewing the literature on how Islamic ethics and norms treat the environment, I identify the main characteristics of Islamic environmental philosophy. This section continues with a discussion on whether and how Islamic norms and traditions on the environment help or hinder environmental justice in contemporary contexts. I, then, shift to a more normative approach in the second part of the paper and try to formulate a progressive Muslim intellectual response to Islamic environmental philosophical approaches. In this section, I ask on what areas of an Islamic environmental philosophy should a progressive Muslim intellectual focus and which peculiarities and qualities should be rethought and re-evaluated to add more democratic legitimacy and accountability to it. I suggest that such rethinking cannot be possible without a) highlighting the care/responsibility and stewardship discourses toward nature, instead of fueling the dominant mastery of nature approach, b) retreating representation of environmental exploitation as a right for humans reserved by God, and c) a critical dialogue between an indigenous Muslim discourse of environmental justice and the global discourse of democratic eco-socialism. In this part, I draw on the intersections of both socialism and Islam and democracy and Islam as discussed in Shariati and Neo-Shariati discourses. Enforcing a care/responsibility discourse toward nature means promoting more environmentally responsible citizens who demand environmental justice alongside with other forms of justice and a more environmentally and politically responsive and reflective state.
​
​
​
​
​