Sustainable Development in Islamic Theology: From Occasion-Driven Approaches to a Comprehensive Understanding of Sustainability Using the Example of Water-Related Fatwas in Jordan

Abstract

The Islamic environmental theology (IET) that emerged in the 20th century is analyzed and two main strands are pursued: the efforts to protect the environment derived from the thinking of some Muslim scholars and activists in Europe and North America, and the discourse of Muslim theologians in Arab countries such as Egypt and Jordan that developed in the face of environmental destruction and associated problems in the societies concerned. The topic of water, i.e., the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of clean water and access to sanitation, played a particularly important initial role in the discourse in Arab countries. Jordan, for example, is one of the most water-scarce countries in the world and, since 2010, various fatwas have been seen, such as expert opinions from the General Iftaa’ Department, the state authority for Islamic jurisprudence in Jordan, on the use of water. The discourse of Muslim jurists on the Sustainable Development Goals in general has developed from this. At the same time, it is obvious that the normative theology in Arab countries is more reactive than progressive concerning the challenges of climate change. This article comes to the conclusion that Islamic theology, even if it starts from the same resources of tradition, comes to form different discourses depending on the regional context. This study will show how institutions of Islamic law respond to climate change and what flexibility is inherent in Islamic theology to meet these challenges.

1. Introduction

Islamic environmental theology (IET) addresses the importance of sustainability, environmental protection, and respect for nature for Muslim people. It calls on Muslims to actively work to protect the environment and its resources as a religious duty and to make the world a better place through this action. This argument is based on passages from the Quran, the holy book of Islam, and the Sunnah, a collection of reports about the sayings and deeds of the prophet Mohammad, and it draws on certain concepts of Islamic discourse, as explained below. Furthermore, IET is a collective term for all Islamic environmental discourses—both theoretical and activist. The terms Islamic environmental ethics (ʿilm aḫlāq al-bīʾa), environmental jurisprudence (fiqh al-bīʾa), or Eco-Islam, Green Islam, etc., can be found here (Dziri 2019, pp. 51–53).

Eco-Islam has emerged as a trend and an alternative identity for Muslims in Europe and North America over the last two decades (Abd-Elsalam 2022). It has rapidly evolved from a set of practices, initiatives, and religious ethics into a theology that reinterprets Islam, its norms, and its texts from an environmental perspective.

Conversely, in Arab countries, where Muslims form the majority of society, religious identity has rarely been linked with a discourse on environmental protection. Religious justifications for a commitment to the environment have only just begun to emerge. Nevertheless, some aspects of this can already be found in the 1990 constitution of the Egyptian Green Party (Abd-Elsalam 2019).

The religious Muslim environmental discourses in the West (Europe, Canada, and the United States) and in Arab countries have, therefore, different beginnings and have undergone different developments. For this reason, it is assumed in this study that there exist at least two Islamic environmental discourses today. The points of contact and the differences in motives will be examined below.

In this article, the authors deliberately use the term IET to emphasize the normative character of Islamic environmental discourse. In this sense, Islamic environmental ethics are part of the theological normative discourse.

The study focuses on the development of an institutional environmental discourse in some Arab countries, which has been little researched and published to date. Another topic is the development of Islamic theology in South Asia, where there is an independent discourse on sustainability (Gade 2019). Other scholars distinguish between the development of Islamic environmental ethics in the Global North and South (Koehrsen 2021). Whether the Global South, which includes Arab countries, South Asian countries such as Indonesia, and sub-Saharan Africa, has undergone comparable development cannot be assessed here.

2. The Context

2.1. Environmental Theology in Western Industrialized Countries

In Western industrialized countries, i.e., North America and Europe, the Islamic environmental discourse began in the 1960s as a purely philosophical question about the responsibility of religions for environmental pollution. Iranian-born philosopher and theologian Seyyed Hossein Nasr, who lived and taught in the USA, was one of the first contemporary Muslim thinkers to address environmental issues. In 1968, he published a book entitled The Encounter of Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis in Modern Man. His book was a response to the article ‘The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis’ by Lynn Townsend White Jr., which was published in the same year. In it, White claimed that the Christian–Jewish anthropocentric worldview was responsible for humans’ aggressive treatment of nature and for the resulting destruction of the environment (White 1968).

This gave rise to the work of Seyyed Hossein Nasr, in which he philosophically discussed the religious relationship between human beings and nature; thus, this was part of the new eco-philosophical discourse that was emerging worldwide at the time. In 1996, (Nasr 1996) published another work on the same topic, entitled Religion and the Order of Nature. His approaches and ideas spread throughout the English-speaking world and inspired many Muslims to become involved in environmental protection. Following him, other Muslim scholars also began to take an interest in Islamic environmental ethics. He is, therefore, regarded as the father of the current ethical and theological environmental Islamic discourse.

The fact that he was initially little received in the Arab world may be due not only to the divergent discourse described here but also to his Iranian provenance and his approaches stemming from Sufism, i.e., Islamic mysticism. To this day, mystical theological approaches are met with great skepticism, if not outright rejection, in most Islamic theological faculties in the Middle East.

The basic ideas of Seyyed Hossein Nasr were received, adapted, and rejected in different ways.1

In the USA, the idea of Islamic environmental ethics was taken up and further developed by eco-activists such as Ibrahim Abdul-Matin. Abdul-Matin is the initiator of a movement called Green Deen—green faith—in America (Abdul-Matin 2012).2

Within his book of the same title, Green Deen, Abdul-Matin bridges philosophical theory and the world of young Muslims by providing guidance for action. Thus, the scholarly Islamic environmental ethics debate became ‘Eco-’ or ‘Green’ Islam. It was no longer enough to be a Muslim and an environmentalist. Being a Muslim in itself was linked to a responsibility for protecting the environment and saving the planet. ‘Being green’ became a religious duty. This trend added a completely new facet to the faith of Islam.

The Sri Lankan-born British scholar and environmentalist Fazlun Khaled elaborated on the Islamic environmental theological approaches of Abdul-Matin and others and brought an important turning point to the discourse by putting it into practice. Since the 1980s, Fazlun Khaled has initiated a great dynamic in Muslim eco-activism, first in Europe and then worldwide. Projects and initiatives such as the Green Mosque, the Green Sermon, Green Fasting, and the Green Pilgrimage emerged and became hallmarks of Muslim environmental activism. Eco-Islam became an identity marker for many young Muslims and Muslim communities. New concepts for halal developed in which halal is not only based on traditional ritual rules for slaughtering and avoiding certain foods but is also developed into a modern ecological concept for species-appropriate animal husbandry, organic farming, and fair trade, as indicated by labels for organic halal and fair working conditions (Zbidi 2013; Binay and Feise-Nasr 2023).

Eco-Islam has also developed into a concept of integration and prevention against Islamism and Salafism. At the same time, there are Islamic fundamentalist movements that subscribe to the idea of environmental protection for religious reasons.3 Nevertheless, Salafist movements have not yet been successful in appropriating the Muslim eco-movement, which is committed to a pacifist stance. However, in the face of this threat, the use of the term eco-jihad by Muslim environmental groups has led to the term jihad being given a peaceful and humanistic reinterpretation (Abd-Elsalam 2019, p. 188f). Because of the sometimes-concordant approaches mentioned above, caution is required in the further development of the movement by eco-activists in order to protect the discourse from Islamism in the long term. The green movement, in particular, should avoid simple and essentialist arguments for its own purposes.

2.2. The Discourse and Its Features in Arab Countries

Despite the emergence of some environmental protection movements in Arab countries, such as the founding of the Green Party in Egypt in 1990, the idea of an IET or of environmental ethics remained alien to classical Islamic theology for a long time.

The ‘Islamic Principles of the Conservation of the Natural Environment’, written in Saudi Arabia in 1983, were developed in connection with the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources and should be seen as an initial document for further research (see the foreword on p. 10). Overall, it follows classical works in the treatment of water, air, plants, and animals and sees great responsibility on the part of the state, which must take care of environmental protection and prevent further damage (Ba Kader et al. 1983).

The first Islamic theological treatises focusing on the environment came from Jordan. They provided collections of Quranic verses and hadiths that were organized thematically, e.g., according to the protection of plants, water, or air, and could be used in the Islamic environmental theological discourse. These included an article by Muṣṭafā Abū-Ṣuway entitled ‘Fiqh al-bīʾa fī-l-islām’. This article has appeared in various journals and anthologies from 1997 until today (Abū-Ṣuway 2012). The title of the article epitomizes the traditional Islamic view of environmental ethics or environmental theology, which continues to this day. A ‘philosophical’ or spiritual approach is set against fiqh, the Islamic doctrine of norms, which is primarily concerned with the Muslim orientation towards what is permitted and forbidden. However, Abū-Ṣuway’s treatise builds a bridge to the Islamic environmental discourse in the West, as he refers to the term khilāfa4, which is a central concept in the above-mentioned discourse. In addition, however, Abū-Ṣuway introduces the Quranic term taskhīr, which roughly means that God’s creation was created solely for humans, i.e., for our benefit. Humans are, thus, given primacy over all other creatures. The introduction of this principle is intended to achieve a rapprochement with the traditional discourse on the positioning of humans above all other creatures of God. With this principle, Abū-Ṣuway is clearly located outside the Islamic theological environmental discourse that took place in European and North American countries (Khorchide 2019, p. 36).

However, the Royal Ahl al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought in Amman, Jordan, has brought about a shift in discourse in the Arab and Islamic world over the last two decades by promoting ecological issues through a series of international conferences to which Muslim scholars and experts from around the world have been invited. One of these conferences was the 15th General Conference of the al-Bayt Institute, which took place from 27 to 29 September 2010 in Amman and to which Fazlun Khalid was invited. Two concepts of IET met here, which opened the doors for the establishment of Islamic environmental ethics as a field of Islamic theology worldwide.

Subsequently, there have been further conferences organized by other institutions and religious authorities in other Arab and Islamic countries. These include recent conferences in Egypt, such as those held in December 2021 at Al-Azhar University and in October 2022 at Dār al-Iftāʾ (The Authority of Islamic Law or Fatwa Authority), to discuss the impact of climate change and the role of religious authorities in raising awareness of the need to protect the environment. Both conferences also debated the role of global politics in creating an appropriate policy to raise awareness of environmental and climate issues.

The statement by the Egyptian Grand Mufti’s advisor on the eve of his institution’s environmental conference explained why Dār al-Iftāʾ must speak out on the environmental issue:

‘Given that man is the subject matter of fatwa, which plays an active and pivotal role in all issues related to him and his development, and given the urgency of our global situation, it comes as no surprise that Egypt’s Dār al-Iftāʾ and the General Secretariat for Fatwa Authorities Worldwide dedicates this year’s conference to the topic ‘Fatwa and Sustainable Development Goals’. Since its inception, the General Secretariat for Fatwa Authorities Worldwide has committed itself to exploring issues of relevance to the worldwide community of Muslims and to the world at large, as well as to address the complexities presented by every era and age and the development of unprecedented issues and challenges to which previous generations have not been exposed. At present, the dynamic landscape of our human activities and their impact on our world can no longer remain ignored.

The conference aims to achieve a wide range of goals, foremost of which is to give a wholistic definition for sustainable development. It was also important to root the concept in the Holy Quran and Prophetic Sunnah, provide examples of sustainable development enshrined in these primary texts of Islam, cultivate and cement the values of sustainable development in the modern Muslim world, and produce robust scholarly outcomes capable of making valuable contributions to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

It is likewise the aim of the conference to highlight the role of fatwa in achieving certain societal goals such as peace, security, and justice at the global level and cooperation and integration at the human level; building strong institutions; achieving the economic goals of sustainable development, particularly in supporting national economies, encouraging industry and innovation, eradicating poverty, hunger, and unemployment, and achieving prosperity for all the people.’ (Negm 2022a).

In addition, initiatives and numerous publications on the role of fatwas in pursuing rational environmental policies and spreading environmental awareness have emerged. In most cases, such initiatives have been centered on the local impacts of climate change, such as the problem of water poverty that many countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regions suffer from and the role of individual Muslims in overcoming it. However, saving electricity and avoiding waste are also challenges that have led to action days and projects. The Jordanian Fatwa Authority has been a pioneer in this field, publishing fatwas and sermons in cooperation with the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) since 2015 and promoting development programs related to water recycling, the rationalization of water use in mosques, and the use of solar energy to light mosques.

A book produced in the context of international development and cooperation should also be mentioned here. It was written in English by Odeh Rashed Al-Jayyousi, a Jordanian who wanted to show foreign institutions for development and cooperation not only that religious arguments in Islam are compatible with environmental protection but also that a ‘correctly’ understood Islam should lead directly to a clean environment. In his book, Al-Jayyousi endeavors to define the Islamic framework for sustainable development (Al-Jayyousi [2012] 2016). To this end, he introduces further terms from the Islamic tradition, e.g., ‘adl’ (justice) and ‘ihsān’ (benevolence), and draws on Abdul-Matin and Fazlun Khalid. However, his book, which was translated into Arabic by the German Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Amman in 2013, was not well received in the Arabic religious discourse, which may also have been due to the fact that Al-Jayyousi is not perceived as a qualified religious scholar by other theologians. The English original was published by Gower Publishing Limited in 2012, a publishing house mainly specializing in business and management books.

3. SDG on Clean Water and Water Fatwas

In contrast to developments in Europe and the USA, the dynamics of sustainable development issues in Arab countries began in the face of concrete and severe challenges caused by climate change and/or environmental pollution.

Most Arab countries are located in the driest regions of the Earth. Since ancient times, their populations have developed measures to collect, store, and use water sparingly. This is evidenced by numerous buildings, some of which date back to antiquity and include cisterns or other sophisticated irrigation systems for agriculture. Let us take a closer look at the example of Jordan. Jordan is one of the driest countries in the world. As mentioned, this is nothing new and has been addressed in the past with appropriate measures. However, the country’s natural water resources can no longer cope with its population growth, which is taking place at a particularly rapid pace due to the various political crises in the region. However, it is not only growing population figures that are significantly increasing water consumption. Rising living standards, which are characterized by an increase in the number of water-consuming household appliances, among other things, are also putting pressure on the available water resources. In Jordan, the drying up of the Azraq Oasis, whose water was pumped directly into the capital, Amman, for decades, and the dramatically falling level of the Dead Sea, which no longer receives any inflows, illustrate the worsening drought. To date, most of Jordan’s drinking water comes from the Disi aquifer, an underground water reservoir located on the border with Saudi Arabia. The water loss of around 50% on the transport route is above average and is caused by damage to the water pipeline and water theft. There is still no solution for obtaining drinking water for the period after the aquifer has been pumped out (Yoon et al. 2021).

Only 5% of Jordan’s land can be used for agriculture. Rain-fed agriculture is hardly possible, as rainfall only occurs in the winter months. Jordanian agriculture is, therefore, dependent on irrigation systems. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of clean water (and sanitation) poses major challenges for the reasons outlined above and is essential to ensure the survival of people in such regions. However, this study does not examine the technical measures taken by the state and the economy to counteract the water shortage but examines the contributions of Islamic theology to achieving this goal. A total of 90% of Jordan’s population belongs to the Sunni branch of Islam. In many other Arab countries too, the majority of the population is Sunnite. Sunni Islam is, therefore, the field of reference in this study.

A fatwa is a religious legal statement issued by qualified Muslim legal scholars.5 Therefore, it belongs to the field of normative theology. Today, fatwas have the character of guidelines or recommendations. However, as the example of Jordan shows, in some cases, the publications of the Fatwa Authority support state programs in order to create greater effectiveness and acceptance among the population (Binay and Al-Zoubi 2019).

Fatwas are a vital genre of contemporary texts of theology or religious law (fiqh) in Islam. From the earliest days to the present day, they have maintained a strong continuity in Islamic tradition and are still popular with the faithful today.

Fatwas on water in Islam usually deal with the various aspects and requirements associated with the use and protection of this precious resource. Water is a gift from God that embodies life, fertility, and vegetation. The Quran 21:30–316 states:

‘Have not those who disbelieve seen that the heavens and the earth were one? So We separated them and created all living things from the water. Do they not believe?’

The Quranic quote ‘wa-jaʿalnā min al-māʾ kulla shayʾin ḥayy’ (‘we made (created) all living things from the water’) is the most famous passage on the subject of water, as it emphasizes the fundamental importance of water for all existence. The fatwas base their arguments on relevant passages from the Quran in addition to a sample of various hadiths, i.e., traditions about the life of the Prophet, his deeds, and his sayings, which are also cited time and again.

In the early years of the Jordanian Fatwa Authority’s thematization of water conservation, there was a call for thriftiness and a ban on wasting water, which even applied to religiously prescribed ablutions. An example of a hadith used there is the following:

‘It was narrated from ‘Abdullah bin ‘Amr that: The Messenger of Allah passed by Sa’d when he was performing ablution, and he said: ‘What is this extravagance?’ He said: ‘Can there be any extravagance in ablution?’ He said: ‘Yes, even if you are on the bank of a flowing river.’’

(General Iftaa Department 2013, No. 2775; Ibn Majah n.d., No. 425)

‘Extravagance’ (isrāf in Arabic) is a well-known term from the Quran that currently also appears in fatwas, which, for example, call for moderate behavior during the fasting month of Ramadan in the sense that one should not compensate for the renunciation during the day with excessive consumption during the hours of the day when the fast is broken (General Iftaa Department 2023, No. 5633).

4. The Theological Arguments

4.1. Fatwas on Water

For Muslims, the importance of access to pure water to fulfill the ritual commandments is of the highest order, because the purity commandments affect daily life. Ritually suitable water is needed to produce the purity required for the individual prayers that are performed several times a day. Traditional Islamic doctrine generally distinguishes between three categories of water. The first is the ṭahūr category, which is only to be attributed to absolutely pure rainwater and spring water. This is the clean, pure water that is suitable for ritual ablution. The second category is ṭāhir. This is water whose color, taste, or smell has been changed by a third party and is, therefore, generally no longer suitable for ritual ablution—for example, tea. The third category of water is najis, which describes impure water that is not suitable for ritual ablution at all. The four Sunni schools of law agree on this distinction (Al-Ṣāliḥīn 2017, p. 25; Al-Zuḥaylī 1997, p. 270).

However, they disagree on the sub-categories of types of water, the uses, and the details of ablution. These subtle differences in opinion among traditional legal scholars and the ambiguous culture that they have created give contemporary Muslim thinkers, even within a very traditional framework, room to develop more theological approaches to conscious sustainable behavior. For example, ʿAbd-al-Mājīd al-Ṣāliḥīn, a professor of Islamic law (fiqh) at the University of Jordan, discusses different opinions on how often believers should wet their body parts to achieve the prescribed purity before prayer in a very conservative and traditional way. Here, too, depending on the tradition, there is more than one way of treating the parts of the body for which ablution is prescribed with running water or only moistening them; even tayammum, washing with pure sand, is possible under difficult waterless living conditions (Al-Ṣāliḥīn 2017, p. 25ff).

A fatwa issued by the Jordanian General Iftaa Department (2017b) describes the pollution and destruction of water bodies by industries as criminal, citing the region’s water shortage as the reason:

‘In conclusion, polluting water, in all forms, is prohibited and contradicts the teachings of Sharia since water in our region is so scarce. In addition, the prohibition degree becomes more dense if this act would lead to the destruction of the environment; for example throwing industrial wastes and pesticides into springs and rivers, throwing solid wastes, releasing waste water into groundwater, or deliberate poisoning of water to kill harmful animals which will lead to high pollution levels, causing damage to the soil, crops, all forms of life, certain health risks and total loss of water resources’.

Among other hadiths, this fatwa cites the statement of the Prophet Mohammed, who spoke out against urinating in standing water, as justification.

The collection and use of rainwater also became the subject of the Fatwa Authority (General Iftaa Department 2016b).

The extreme water scarcity in Jordan is a catalyst for the use of industrial water in agriculture. The fact that several fatwas have been issued on this topic implicitly tells of the reluctance to use industrial water.7 As mentioned, Islam has produced a normative system of a purity culture that is deeply embedded in the consciousness of Muslim people. Since the purity of the water to be used (ṭahāra) must be tested for each religious ablution, which is prescribed before the five daily prayers, everyone is familiar with the categories from an early age. Decision (Qarār) No. 217 of 2015 on the use of wastewater for agriculture was issued at the request of the Jordanian State Water Authority (Sultat al-Miyāh) and was signed by the entire Fatwa Council of the Kingdom. Here, we see a governmental authority appealing and receiving an answer approved by the whole Fatwa Council. The Water Authority would not do this if the support by a religious (and governmental) institution was pointless.

Fatwa no. 4654, issued by the Egyptian Fatwa Authority (Dār al-Iftā’) in 2018, states that when recycled water reaches the state of ṭahūr, it can be used again for purification before prayer and even for drinking (Egypt’s Dar Al-Ifta 2018).

All of these examples illustrate the role of a religious authority in dealing with an acute water shortage. So far, there are two main concerns of theological arguments in the fatwas presented here: first, saving water through effective use (ban of extravagance and exaggeration) and, second, the topic of purity for ablution as well as for eating agricultural products raised with wastewater.

Another problem, already mentioned in the description of the situation in Jordan, that is dealt with in the water fatwas is water theft (General Iftaa Department 2016a). Forms of water theft in Jordan include farms illegally tapping into public pipes or not paying water bills at the already subsidized prices. Here, the arguments focus on the community. The conservation of water is a shared responsibility and a religious (sharʾī) obligation for every Muslim. Stealing water is a serious offense against private property and against the community because the hadith states that ‘Muslims have common share in three (things): grass, water, and fire.’ (Ibid.)

The General Iftaa Department (2017c) takes a similar direction. The call to inform the authorities about water leaks or damage to the water infrastructure explicitly refers to the principles of ḥisba, as deduced from the Quran 3:104: ‘Let there be a group among you who call others to goodness, encourage what is good (wa-yaʾmurūna bi-l-maʿrūf), and forbid what is evil (wa-yanhawna ʿan-i-l-munkar)—it is they who will be successful.’ (General Iftaa Department 2017c). In the Islamic legal literature (fiqh), the term ḥisba indicates the duty of every Muslim to command right and to forbid wrong (Abdelsalam 2005). What is meant is the religiously prescribed right and the religiously marked wrong. The understanding of ḥisba in the tradition of Islam spans from an individual duty (masʾūliyyah fardiyah) to an office of the community (Cook 2004). According to the mentioned fatwa (General Iftaa Department 2017c), the individual, the ‘faithful believer’, is in relation to another ‘like the bricks of a wall, enforcing each other’. The Fatwa Committee relates two terms: the religious collective duty of the tradition (farḍ kifāʾī) is related to a contemporary understanding of the society (wājib mujtamaʿī), which means social responsibility. In other words, every Muslim is responsible for ensuring that water is not wasted.

4.2. Fatwas and Sustainable Development

Published texts from the aforementioned conference on fatwas and sustainable development in Cairo in 2022 show the importance, function, and, thus, self-image of the Fatwa Authorities. The Jordanian Grand Mufti, the head of the General Iftaa’ Department, Abdulkareem Al-Khasawneh, said

‘Fatwa is one of the most important pillars for the development of society’.

(Al-Khasawneh 2022, p. 2)

He characterizes fatwas as an opportunity to anticipate future phenomena or to make recommendations in this regard. He also recommends that fatwas should be revised regularly—naturally, only by the relevant experts—as they reflect the state of the times (Ibid. p. 4). The latter is a very important statement in the theological discourse, which already in the works of earlier centuries deals with the character of fatwas and, more precisely, with the question of whether they are valid in their time only or always.

For Ibrahim Negm from the Egyptian Fatwa Authority, ‘man now stands at the crossroads of survival or of destruction’ (Negm 2022a), and the prerequisite for responsible action is to accept the human contribution to the destruction of the environment. Sustainable development is, for him, even ‘one of the objectives of Islamic Law!’ (Ibid.). In his contribution to the aforementioned conference ‘The Role of Fatwa for achieving Sustainable development goals’ (Negm 2022b), he goes through all the SDGs and their sub-areas and briefly explains the contribution that Dār al-Iftā’ has made to them. In the final section on the environmental goals, he also lists the agency’s contributions to the ‘Clean Water’ SDG (Ibid. p. 46). The importance of the SDGs, which can only serve sustainable development in their entirety, is anticipated by religious institutions in the MENA region.

Assessing the impact of the fatwas on a social level is something else. The authors did not come across published studies on the impact of the preachings and the environmental education of theologians in Jordan or other countries of the region. We can only give evidence on some mosques in Jordan that we visited in 2016, which were equipped with water-saving devices, rainwater harvesting tanks, and drip irrigation in the mosques’ gardens because of the activism of the local imams driven by religious arguments and the water scarcity in their communities. In addition, we joined training programs organized by the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Awqāf in Jordan for women preachers (wāʿiẓāt), where water-saving measurements for households of families were discussed and planned.8

5. Conclusions

Over the past three decades, Muslims around the world have developed Islamic environmental discourses, sometimes independently of each other, sometimes in exchange with each other. The focus of this study was on an institutionally shaped environmental discourse that has only emerged as a result of the obvious changes brought about by climate change.

The examination of the water fatwas and the papers published at the SDGs conference reveals a discourse of self-affirmation among scholars and raises the question of the extent to which fatwas issued by state-recognized institutions play any role at all in the everyday lives of Muslims. There are no published empirical studies on the question of the influence of the theological environmental discourse on the behavior of Muslims. The authors interpret the results of their investigation of the publications by religious authorities, especially the Fatwa Authorities, in the way that the understanding of the environmental discourse as a specifically theological discourse is only just beginning to take shape in comparison to the development of the IET in North America or Europe.

As a matter of principle, Islamic theology lags behind social development processes and the discourse on a global level. It responds to them and contributes to the social debate. The example of Jordan shows most clearly that state demands in conjunction with development and cooperation agencies are what first stimulate theological discourse. The aim here is to tackle very specific developmental and environmental problems, such as water shortages. However, the claim to be at the forefront of the movement, as also formulated by Al-Khasawneh, has so far been completely missed by the fatwa system, and there is a lack of studies that prove whether it can actually set trends in the lifestyle of Muslim people.