THE FAITHFUL gathered in an imposing modernist building. Their leader Grand Imam Nasaruddin Umar took to his perch and delivered a stark warning: “The greedier we are toward nature, the sooner doomsday will arrive.”
Then he prescribed the cure as laid out by their faith, which guides almost one-quarter of humanity:-
Like fasting during Ramadan, it is every Muslim’s obligation, to be a guardian of the earth.
Like giving alms, his congregants should give waqf, a kind of religious donation, to renewable energy. Like daily prayers, planting trees should be a habit.
The nature is a central theme in the sermons of Nasaruddin, the head of the Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta, Indonesia. Dismayed by the trash sullying the river that the mosque sits on, he ordered a cleanup. Shocked by utility bills, he retrofitted Southeast Asia’s largest mosque with solar panels, slow-flow faucets and a water recycling system — changes that helped make it the first place of worship to win a green building accolade from the World Bank.
Courtesy: New York Times