{I’m in the process of updating this page to show more of my publications; thank you for your patience}
Following not being satisfied with what I could find on Islam and environment, in 2009 I self-published: ‘199 ways to please God, how to (re-)align your daily life with your duty of care for Creation’ – not because I’m particularly trained in the area, but because I couldn’t find anything similar and thus had to think, ‘well OK, I’ll have a go then’. It was available via the publisher and any other book shop by mentioning the ISBN: 978-1844266296. Where I am now working on a new version, I am publishing the ‘old’ version bit by bit online on Medium.
The book is arranged in four sections: beliefs (aqaaid), worship (ibadah), transactions (muamalat) and moral character (akhlaq). Within each section there are several chapters, e.g. under beliefs there are chapters about unity (tawheed) of Creation (which is wider than unity as in one God) and our duty of guardianship (khilafa). The section on worship includes chapters about prayer and fasting. The section on transactions includes chapters on shopping and investment (including info on what banks do with our money & reflect on whether that is something we might want to have on our record as it’s our money). The section on moral character includes chapters about supplication (dua) and etiquette of eating (impact on environment of pesticides, quantity of food we eat).
Each chapter gives a background of the matter from ‘secular’/ factual perspective (e.g. water shortages and unfair trade on malnutrion), shares from life of the Prophet PBUH (e.g. how little water he used for making wudu), his companions and others over time (from Ibn Rushd, Al-Ghazali to President of Pakistan Ecology Council), then examples of actions (e.g. make supplication for species at risk of distinction, use only the amount water the Prophet PBUH used) based on my ideas, but also on the many good examples already out there (‘Green Muslims in the District’, Washington DC, USA, and London Islamic Network for the Environment). I also include several anecdotes from my own experience (e.g. my time in Argentina, my experience with an allotment, organising organic iftars).
The 4 sections are preceded by an introduction about Creation, with bad and good news (e.g. climate change and natural resource exploitation, but also opportunities of renewable energy and permaculture).
The book has a total of 362 pages, but due to structure, is accessible to just flick through and/ or pick a relevant chapter as and when needed.
I’m looking at options of republishing an updated version, and a version in Dutch. If you have any ideas/ suggestions, do let me know.
Other publications (sample):
Hima as a Protected Area – Opportunities and Challenges in the 21st Century (2022), chapter in ‘Religion and Climate Change: Global Case Studies‘ (Taylor & Francis Group)
De Linker Wang bijdrage – maart 2020
Islamic view on climate change, Academia.edu, December 2015;
Looking to the Qur’an in an Age of Climate Disaster, Tikkun Magazine (quarterly interfaith Jewish left-progressive magazine, published in the United States), Spring 2015;
contributed to Middle-East part of UN OCHA ‘Impact of counter-terrorism measures on principled humanitarian action‘ (2013);
Writer on Open University’s T877: ‘Development: policy & context’, a postgraduate module (2013)
Faith & Sustainability; series of three 1,500 word articles (‘Sustainability: what’s faith got to do with it?; ‘Faith, climate change and global poverty’; ‘Climate change, faith and the global common good’) for OU/ British Council project ‘Belief in Dialogue‘ (Sept. 2011) [internal]
The Global Food Swap 2011; drawing heavily on the ’Great Food Swap’ [2002] by MP Caroline Lucas [then MEP] and economist Colin Hines, updated report highlighting the real costs of global trade in food (2011)
Celebrating the Co-operative Movement; Greening the North, discussion paper celebrating the Co-operative Movement’s contribution to social, economic and environmental well-being (2010)
Islamic Relief, Charitable Giving in Islam (2009)
Humanitarian situation in Iraq, Iraq’s displacement crisis
Burma/ Myanmar’s Muslims: The Oppressed of the Oppressed, Islamic Human Rights Commission (ISBN: 978-1903718353) (October 2005)
Presentations (sample):
European Parliament on Green New Deal (2020);
IUCN at 70th anniversary (2018)
New Horizons in London (2017)
Reviews (sample):
Review of the IPCC Second Order Draft of the WGII contribution to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (2021)
IPCC reviewer (2019)
IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land (SRCCL) (2017 & 2018)
Journal on Natural Resources and Development (JNRD) reviewer
Non-published works:
3 masters theses (for LLM [1999], MA [2003 ] and MSc [2014] degrees);
PhD first year report (topic: Development and Surveillance: humanitarians caught out or in? Monitoring and Managing Globalization: Critically Investigating the Relationship between Surveillance and International Development; aborted due to leaving the UK due to Brexit)
Quoted/ Contributed to:
Trouw (March 2021) [in Dutch], Religieuze organisaties roepen op: Stem voor het klimaat!
Sisters Magazine (“vibrant, spectacular green muslims“)
Arif Rifqi (April 2014), Globalized Eco-Islam; A survey of global islamic environmentalism
Professor Yasir Suleiman, Narratives of Conversion to Islam in Britain: Female Perspectives, Cambridge University (2013)
Worldbank, Adaptation to a changing climate in the Arab countries a case for adaptation governance and leadership in building climate resilience (2012)
Emel (June 2009), EcoJihad
Birmingham Friends of the Earth (2007)
Green Creation 