Islam

Question 1

Discuss four elements from Tatiana Jerbouh’s lecture that struck you as noteworthy (2-3 lines each).

Answer 1

• Nature is a communication to us humans (Ayah): That everything around us are signs or symbols. Nature, mountains, animals, humans is all created by God (Tahweed: there is no God, only He, the Creator of all things)
• Being a khalifah: it means being steward of the earth, I think this one is an important one because it was also mentionened in Laudato si and in judaism as well. This is often misunderstood for being the ones who rule it (superiority on the rest of the Creation).
• The unislamic view on vegetarianism: This concept is very contradictory especially since in the
  Islam the Eid al-Adha [=Offerfeest] a prominent place has in the religion. It is
  therefore brave to take this point of view. Prophets ate meat so some people argue that this is why you should eat meat. But it isnt written anywhere that its obligatory to eat. Some people even claimed that she goes against what God wanted. And that the halal meat industry is actually not that much different from the regular meat industry
• Islam is not an anthropocentric religion: I think that this is a very important statement because to us in the western world we would think the opposite. If we think about the “offerfeest” where sheep are slaugthered. Or the fact that they dont eat pork because pigs are unclean animals. Which in a way is a good thing that they don’t eat pork, but to me personally it feels more as degrading that animal. But this is just a honest opinion. On the other side, i think that it is less antropocentric than christianity, to give an example is the fact that if animals are slaughtered, it has to be with as little suffering as possible. The knifes need to be sharp in it needs to be killed in 1 go.

-The earth is a Mosque. Praying in the wild in the green deen. Meaning you can be
religious everywhere in the world without being in a religious place. Because how
can you love God if you do not love his creations.

• The main motivations for vegetarianism are health, animal welfare and environment. And the intention in almost all cases was to be good, to care for one another, including nature and animals. Usually this was backed up by theological arguments which means that they were well informed. And they didnt just follow the koran but also applied it on modern problems

Question 2

What is ‘Green Deen’?

Answer 2

Green refers to nature and Deen either means religion-lifestyle or linking muslim lifestyle to envirtonmental responsibilities. This is important because it religion has a lot of followers and thus the right mindset of the religion itself will be handed over to these followers. It is basically like an organistion that is trying to spread the message about nature and religion. It’s also a book about what islam teaches us about protecting the planet

Question 3

What can we learn from Tatiana Jerbouh’s lecture about how vegetarian Muslims in Flanders integrate their vegetarianism and their religion?

Answer 3

Because muslims are seen as big meat eaters, and prophets ate meat. For this reason a lot of meat eaters think that it is obligatory for them to eat meat. This means that she gets a lot of questions and that she has to explain it a lot. As well as judgement from other people. So i think that we can learn to read between the lines and that we should care more about the planet, animals, humans and nature in general instead of doing something because prophets did it.