KARACHI: In an era where sustainability is a global buzzword, Bosnian scholar Dr Larisa Jasarevic said that in the Holy Prophet’s (PBUH) era, sustainable living was emphasised, as particularly highlighted by members of his household, especially Sayeda Fatima Zehra, his beloved daughter.

She was speaking at Habib University’s inaugural lecture, titled ‘Thinking on the Tattered Planet: Ecostress, Religion, and the Gender Quarrel’, to launch the Lady Fatima Endowed Chair in Women and Divinity on Thursday. According to the varsity, this is the first such chair in the world.

Dr Jasarevic, an accomplished scholar who has taught at the University of Chicago and in Germany, is an anthropologist and beekeeper, and her apicultural activities were frequently mentioned during the talk.

The scholar started her talk by discussing the searing heatwave that had scorched large parts of the earth earlier this summer. She said life on the warming earth was becoming harder by the day, and the invitation to speak at Habib University came during the heatwave. Water levels in her village in Bosnia were running low, while the wells were drying up. Piped water had also stopped and the academic had to fetch water from wells further afield.

“We are all ecostressed”, she observed, adding that we needed to seek help from the Holy Prophet and the Ahlul Bayt, or members of his family, in order to deal with the emerging ecological challenges.

She observed that all things are contingent on weather, and that it is beyond numerical values to grasp the situation where the ravages of climate change are concerned. Heat­waves are getting more extre­me and ecostress is growing all across.

“What are we to do? How do we respond? What can Islam offer at a time when the planet is being rapidly undone? What is to be done?” she asked rhetorically.

Dr Jasarevic said that if religion is what gives meaning to life, than nothing is outside its scope. “Khalq-i-jadeed or constant renewal cannot think of fossilizing knowledge.”

Sustainable lifestyle was not theorized but lived by the early figures of Islam, she said. Some may argue that life was simple in the 6th century, “but much about the Holy Prophet’s practice suggests otherwise. They [the Holy Prophet and his family] could have lived otherwise when gifts started pouring in. But the inventory of his dwellings stayed pretty much the same,” she observed, terming it self-imposed poverty, and that the Noble Messenger would spend surplus money.

She also mentioned the famous hadith where believers are guided to use water for ablution sparingly, even if you have a river flowing in front of you.

Coming to the life of Sayeda Fatima, after whom the new chair has been named, Dr Jasarevic said that Bibi Zehra resembled the Holy Prophet more than anyone else.

“This was her blessing, her nature perfectly resembled his. She was his pride and joy,” she stated, adding: “I think they [the Holy Prophet and his family] are teaching us a fresh and urgent lesson, that in today’s jargon can be called sustainable living.”

She reiterated the fact that the Noble Messenger counselled sustainable living to his closest ones. “Islam is the middle way, the middle way is also sustainability,” she observed.

“Sustainability as defined by Islam, refers to sustaining something that is vital to the world, ecology that is inseparable from cosmology,” she said.

The academic also discussed the “massive difference in funding” between hard sciences and humanities. “There is a naive assumption that all it takes [to address the climate crisis] is having very good data, social change will flow from that. That is not happening.”

Earlier, Dr Noman Naqvi discussed hyper-masculinity in all world religions.

“Even spirituality is being hyper-masculinised. Religion itself is being transformed”, he said, adding that there is a globally recognised need to study women and the relationship between divinity and spirituality.

HU president Wasif Rizvi while introducing Dr Jasarevic said her work sought to reclaim engagement with divine wisdom, freeing it from Western epistemic fascism.

Published in Dawn, September 6th, 2024