Al-Mizan – A call for environmental action and custodianship

The Eighth Islamic Conference of Environment Ministers (ICEM) in 2019 released a strategy explaining the roles of cultural/religious factors to protect the climate and environment and aiming to achieve sustainable development. According to participants at the time the strategy reflected and was a call to remind people of religious and civil obligations in the face of environmental challenges. This was followed up by Islamic organisations, Muslim scholars and environmental consultants facilitated by UNEP’s Faith for Earth Coalition (the UN Environment Programme) to draft an Islamic vision of nature and future.

This has resulted in the outlook presented this week: Al-Mizan: A Covenant for the Earth. The document revisits and restates the central principles of guarding nature in the current socio-political and environmental context. The document focuses strongly on individual responsibilities in relation to others and in relation to animals and nature in general based upon three guiding principles that are seen as the foundations as established by the Prophet Muhammad: encouraging public good, forbidding wrong action and acting in moderation at all times:

“Let there be a community among you that calls for what is good, urges what is right and forbids what is wrong, they are the ones who have success” (3: 104)

The name Al-Mizan (‘Balance’ in English) is based on Surah Ar-Rahman (The Merciful) in which God describes the creation in its perfect balance:

“The Most Merciful,

Taught the Quran

Created Humankind

Taught him Eloquence

The sun and the moon move in precise calculation

and the stars and the trees prostrate

and the heaven He raised and imposed the balance (Mizan)

That you not transgress within the balance (Mizan)

and establish weight in justice and do not make deficient the balance (Mizan)”

(Quran 55:1-9)

Al Mizan is therefore presented as call to action for Muslims and non-Muslims alike to embrace and act upon their role as guardians/custodians of the Earth and to work towards a more sustainable and equitable future for all beings.
For the whole document in English / Arab, see al-Mizan: A Covenant for the Earth.