In this lecture, Professor Mohammed Rustom examined the Islamic understanding of nature with specific reference to Islamic metaphysics and the contemporary environmental crisis. The lecture consisted of a poem and its commentary.
Entitled "Islam and the Density of Man," the poem outlined the Islamic metaphysical view of nature and of humanity as it concerns the human condition today. Through the poem and commentary, several key points were addressed, namely the nature of cosmogenesis, the sacredness of nature, the earth as a place of prayer and prostration, the human role as God's vicegerent on earth, and humanity's breaking its covenant with the Divine and its consequent mistreatment of nature.
Professor Rustom's central argument was that the Islamic metaphysical understanding of the world and of humanity is the result of the dissolution of the subject-object dichotomy. God's true vicegerent thus transcends all forms and so can see beyond them, seeing all things as reflections of the Face of God in the mirror of the cosmos. The cosmos, consisting of a display of the symbols of God, is thereby seen as the mirror of Divine beauty, enabling the vicegerent to see God within all things. This then results in a sacralized perspective on nature, as well as an attendant respect for the natural environment and all that it holds.
Professor Mohammed Rustom is Associate Professor of Islamic Studies in the College of the Humanities at Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada). This lecture was delivered as part of the Junior Fellowship series, "Religion and Nature," at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University.
—By Munjed M. Murad