Some Islamic schools have begun teaching students that safeguarding the environment is "the most profound act of worship", an expert on Islam, Saleem H. Ali, told Adnkronos International (AKI). Ali said Islamic fatalism, which has often led many Muslims to see environmental issues as trivial, is no longer pervasive among Indonesian Muslims, and some Indonesian Islamic schools have started teaching their students about the importance of preserving nature as a way of worshipping God.“The schools are realising that the most profound act of worship is to conserve natural resources on which all life depends,” he said. “Just as suicide is forbidden in Islam because of a deep respect for the sanctity of life, so too is the deliberate desecration of the life support systems that make our planet so unique,” Ali added. He is associate dean for graduate education at the University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School of Environment.
IndonesiaÂ’s pesantren, or Islamic boarding schools, have come under intense scrutiny in recent years, following the Bali bombings in 2002 and 2005 where former petansten students blew themselves up in the name of Jihad, or holy war.
Ali stated it is wrong to equate pesantren with breeding grounds for terrorism. Most of IndonesiaÂ’s religious schools are in the process of changing their curriculum and care for the environment is one of the new subjects, he said.
He specifically mentioned the small Lingkungan Giri Imu pesantren, in the village of Bantul, Central Java. “The school is graduating environmentalists whose commitment to the earth is not based on Western conservation texts, but rather is predicated on values derived from Islam,” he said. “The head of the school frequently uses the refrain ‘one earth, for all,’ just as much as he does the usual Islamic invocation of Allah-u Akbar, or God is great,” he added.
Indonesia, one of the countries with the greatest biodiversity on earth, has heeded the call by some ecologists for theologians to unite on environmental causes, Ali said.