When the Earth Bears Witness
How Environmental Destruction Mirrors Our Moral Decline
“Corruption has appeared on land and sea because of what the hands of people have earned.” (30:41)
Last week, as yet another Earth Day passed us by, I visited the aquarium for the first time since childhood. As I admired the vibrant sea creatures behind glass, though, I was reconnected to a feeling I’d often met in spaces like this – a sense of discomfort, teetering on the edge of guilt. These beings belonged to the vast, living ocean we glimpsed at through the aquarium’s towering windows, not to these sterile enclosures as spectacles. I’ve always found zoos and aquariums quietly unjust places — but as I journeyed deeper into the exhibits, reading board after board about the ocean’s pollution and dangerous collapse, I was awakened to my ignorance of climate change’s magnitude on our waters. To know that we have destroyed the home of these creatures to the point where they were lucky to be in these encasements filled me with sorrow, but more so with a sense of disgust towards humanity. I couldn’t help but acknowledge the irony; here was this glorious creation (that we haven’t even been able to fully explore and appreciate), and we’ve destroyed it with our own hands, now seeking to save its broken and battered self at the eleventh hour with those very same hands. The aquarium in that moment stood as a strange, painful monument to humanity’s crossroads, a raging war between spiritual delinquency and a desperate salvation attempt. The ocean and the earth as a whole have become an unlucky battleground, bloodied with the stain of our sins.
We have seeped ourselves so deeply in the crime of destroying our planet through the unfathomable cost of the modern war industry, bombs plummeting through air and soil to massacre children and trees, through the continued reign of capitalism and its greed worshipping selfishness, that we have lost sight of the holiness of the Earth itself. The modern era has done a phenomenal job in inflicting upon most of humanity an inexplicably cruel reality: that is the separation of our soul from its natural sources of tranquility. I think of this often when I sit in the park near my house, watching the blue of the Potomac dance quietly before me, the gentle hum of the forest’s many sweet creatures a faint song behind me. In these rare moments, when I am allowed to bask in the serene wonders of the natural world, transcendental-reminiscent, is when I feel my mind, body, and spirit are in true alignment, in a way I’m otherwise deprived of. The vividness of the colors, polluted as they may be, the music of the birds, the stillness of the air around me grant me a liberation only the Divine could afford. The spider who sits before me is no fearsome enemy meant to be targeted, but a fellow traveler on this shared plain; we are peaceful cohabitants of this sanctuary too often taken for granted. In these moments, I think too of the tales of ancient Egypt and the flowing Nile, the sun-kissed canyons of North America, the high peaks of the Himalayas, and the grandeur of the Antarctic glaciers. I sit in awe of this pale blue dot, graced with God’s finest art, knowing every inch of it is soaked in the glory of the divine. That appreciation, however, quickly turns into heartbreak, and soon enough, contrition.
I think of the contrast between my childhood spent in Pakistan and my time spent there now. I can still recall the feeling in my throat from breathing in the dark of Lahore’s record-breaking smog. Echoing in my ears and heart are the pleas of shopkeepers in Islamabad to pray that rain finally descends. The news reminds me of the millions still displaced by catastrophic floods, of the record-breaking heat to come, and of the greatest shame we could ever carry – how Gaza has become a graveyard, bombs obliterating every last semblance of life, turning any inch of green to grey. In the age of hypocrisy, we bear witness to the trillions of dollars devoted to the military-industrial complex, devoted to protecting the authority of those in power while stripping funds from the land they so desperately love to rule over. Earth is God’s glorious pen on full display: in its sustenance and its safety. Yet we now live in a world that is increasingly ignorant of this fact. Glaciers are melting and forests are ablaze, species are going extinct and becoming no more than pieces of history, while the love (bordering on idol worship) of technology and materialism makes its home on the throne of our global conscience. Millions of people will transition into climate refugees before our very eyes as the war and fossil fuel industries continue to take heed, ensuring billionaires can spend their time vacationing on the very islands their greed will then destroy, until they abandon this world for their artificial heavens. Politicians make empty promises of a better tomorrow while signing the death certificates of their landscapes, their people, and the very grounds that nurtured them.
I often imagine an alternate reality where all the money currently designated for the war machine is invested instead into the preservation of our natural wonders and wildlife. I think of how that is worship, how in this alternate world, poems would be free of the risk of becoming eulogies. But we don’t live in that reality, we live in this one. One where we know our governors have committed themselves to being and remaining defenders of the indefensible – they are four-star generals in the army of all that is inhuman, and shall die as such. The morally defunct tyrants of today prioritize weaponry over water, death over life. They have commodified creation and criminalized compassion in all regards. When one truly registers the absurdity of people being punished for daring to defend life from corporate destruction, it feels as if we are living under the antichrist already. But our sin bears a heavy weight too: we have not done enough to stop this. Our collective loss of ethics and, thus, soul has become the centerpiece of this tragedy.
Witnessing the environmental collapse must awaken us to the truth that this is symptomatic of a deeper inner collapse – a disconnection from our original role as caretakers of the Earth, a continuing act of disobedience. What’s not clear is how long we will allow this to continue, sitting in a state of defiance against all that is natural and harmonious. Humanity’s ingratitude for the divine mercy of Earth and its provision is a spiritual betrayal we will have no excuse for come the day of judgement. Ultimately, the climate crisis is indistinguishable from a faith crisis. The intrinsic holiness of the land and the task of caring for it have been swept away from mainstream sermons and services. The most abundant sign of our sacred, the one that predated us all and was meant to live long after us, has been abandoned and abused by the profane. I don’t then believe it’s a radical notion to argue that it is, in fact, a duty upon people of conscience to acknowledge this ethical failure and act. So, where are the scholars coming together and treating our ecological responsibility as the holy task that it is? The Qur’an and Islam provide us with the most beautiful foundation for approaching this responsibility, which makes how little we have prioritized this all the more disappointing, when in essence, it is we who should be spearheading the movement.
Human beings are God’s vicegerents on Earth, khilafah, meant to protect land and life from corruption, mischief, and injustice. The prophetic example serves as a timeless reminder of what it means to be conscious and considerate in all matters, from resource utilization to the extension of empathy. Islam reminds us that mercy and preserving the mizan mean we must always strive to leave things better than we found them. This begs the question, though, of whether we have actually committed to this ideal. Do we talk about it enough in our mosques, in our conventions, in our sermons? We are already caretakers of the Earth – that is the distinction God has placed upon us from the moment we enter this world. But how well we excel in this role is another reality. Let us reflect upon the sanctity of nature mirrored in God’s word, surahs named “The Cattle,” “The Bee,” “The Thunder,” etc. Let us not forget the many hadiths from the greatest of creation, Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, that refer to the crucial responsibility of caring for farms, treating animals properly, and planting trees. Every culture and creed sings a song of respect for creation, yes, and ours especially so. Why have we then silenced the symphonies of rahma, of shukr, of adab? The degradation of the Earth is not just a physical catastrophe, but a moral one that should be terrifying us all and catapulting us into movement. Instead, an increasing number of Muslims now spend their days writing articles on how best to utilize AI, or why we should move to Dubai, of all places. We have become machine worshippers, severed from our source, and in doing so have altered the natural balance of the Earth. Our disconnect from this reality has done more harm to our individual and collective spirit than we perhaps realize. As we dwindle further and further away from taqwa, fear of God, our efforts to cultivate goodness also slowly dissipate, and so too does our internal peace. What a shameful reflection of how far humanity has fallen from its natural, God-given place as stewards of creation. Now we bear witness to the consequences of our own making: profound ethical decay in a world where defending nature is criminalized, where activists are branded as extremists, where governments prioritize violence over preservation, and where we sit idly by. This is not just a technical or political failure — it is a fundamentally spiritual one, calling on us to revive ourselves just as much, if not more, than the earth.
Imam Sadiq عَلَيْهِ السَّلَامُ once remarked, “There is no joy in life unless three things are available: clean fresh air, abundant pure water, and fertile land.” In robbing our future of these essential components of life, we rob it of the joy God has made a favor upon us. For our ancestors before us, for the countless unheard voices who have already lost these things, and for the future generations who will undoubtedly suffer lest we take action now, these words will ring loudly of truth. With global warming, deforestation, rising sea levels, pollution, drought, and natural disasters, the list only grows, as does our ambivalence. God only knows what desecration remains to shock us into change. We can only work with what we have now, armed with hope and bravery, step by step. Let us start with conversations and transition into collective action. We can pray that our future generations, as the children of this Earth, will no longer worship the forces of greed and corruption that have dishonored our home but glorify instead the land that has held them, the water that has strengthened them, and the sunlight that has guided them. But our prayer must be accompanied by action. If we are to be spiritually awakened, we must be stewards of the earth again – remember and heed God’s call to tend to this home with the delicate touch it is owed.
Our conduct with creation is our character. When the hour arrives, the Earth shall be our witness. Let us beware the testimony of our unavoidable abode.
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