Beyond Ecological Essentialism: Critical and Constructive Muslim Environmentalisms

The Religious Studies Project

Religious studies approaches to the environment have long privileged Western ecological frameworks. Anna Gade’s work, Muslim Environmentalisms reframes this area, both critiquing and building upon the tools of religious studies (RS) and environmental humanities (EH). Religious studies, for its part, has privileged Jewish and Christian understandings of key ideas such as nature and wilderness. This bias has left the field less capable of responding to the rising need for studies about efforts globally by many religious groups to address climate crises. EH has also suffered from this overreliance, and Gade’s work identifying the different approaches toward the environment of her Indonesian Muslim interlocutors is a critical step forward. Interviewed by Lauren Osborne and David McConeghy, this episode discusses the challenges this interdisciplinary work faces and shares some of the reasons why the inclusion of Muslim perspectives into the broader conversation about religion and the environment is so desperately needed today.