Supernatural, Unnatural, Queer: Gratitude and Nature in Islamic Political Theology

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes the problem of gratitude for the gift of nature from the perspective of Islamic political theology, which it reads alongside queer ecology to arrive at an anti-colonial critique of anthropic sovereignty. In classical Islamic theology, (as in the philosophy of Derrida, Nietzsche and Kant), a gift entails a necessary curtailment of the beneficiary’s sovereign freedom and autonomy. Islamic eco-theology, however, frequently valorizes the exercise of anthropic “vice-regal” power over a “subservient” nature, a power that has historically secured the exile of various non/human ontologies from nature and thence from politics. In their shared exile from nature and normativity, Islam, queerness and indigeneity come to form attachments and alliances that interrogate universalizing accounts of nature and humanity. Islamic theology and queer theory also furnish resources that allow irony and jest to emerge as modes by which the Qurʾān stages its playful political critique of anthropic sovereignty.

KEYWORDS:

• Islam
• gratitude
• ecology
• queer
• nature
• secular

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Rousseau, The Social Contract.

2 Hobbes, Leviathan.

3 Northcott, “Perils and Dangers: Climate Change and theological Ethics,” 75–92, at 82. Northcott himself regards such attitudes of despair as contrary to a Christian theology of hope. See also Dalton and Simmons, Ecotheology and the Practice of Hope.

4 Mortimer-Sandilands, “Melancholy Natures, Queer Ecologies,” 331–58; Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia,” 243–58.

5 Sandilands, “Melancholy Natures”, 338.

6 Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology,” 320–21. For, an alternative account of this teleology, see Collingwood, The Idea of Nature.

7 Baskin, “On the End.”

8 Asad, Formations of the Secular, 28.

9 Graham, “‘The Wind to Herald his Mercy’, 18–38. See also Netton, “Nature as Signs,” 3: 528–36; Sanneh, “Gratitude and Ingratitude,” 2:370–3.

10 Sanneh, “Gratitude and Ingratitude.”

11 Izutsu, God and the Man in the Koran, 15.

12 Ibn al-Qayyim, ʿUddah al-ṣābirīn wa zakhīra al-shākirīn, 2:220.

13 For a sample of the literature on gratitude in Islam, see Gobillot, “Patience (Ṣabr) et rétribution des mérits,” 51–78; van den Bergh, “Ghazālī on ‘Gratitude Towards God’ and its Greek Sources,” 77–98; Zilio-Grandi, “The Gratitude of Man and the Gratitude of God,” 45–61. For an expanded bibliography, see Atif Khalil’s detailed footnote in his “The Embodiment of Gratitude (Shukr) in Sufi Ethics,” 159–78, 160.

14 Hallaq, Restating Orientalism.

15 Latour, Politics of Nature

16 For those interested in the debate over the propriety of being grateful to or for nature, see Bardsley, “Mother Nature and the Mother of All Virtues,” 27–40; Hursthouse, “Environmental Virtue Ethics,” 155–71; Chapman, “The Goat-stag and the Sphinx,” 129–44; McAleer, “Propositional Gratitude,” 55–66. Cafaro, “Gluttony, Arrogance, Greed, and Apathy,” 135–58; Boleyn-Fitzgerald, “Gratitude Toward Things,” 112–25; Loder, “,” Journal of Jurisprudence 10 (2011): 383–435; Hill, Jr., “Ideals of Human Excellence and Preserving Natural Environments,” 211–24; Wirzba, “Thanks for the Dirt,” 69–86; van Yperen, Gratitude for the Wild: Christian Ethics in the Wilderness. For a discussion of religious virtues in the context of environmental ethics, see Taliaferro, “Vice and Virtues in Religious Environmental Ethics,” 159–72.

17 Connolly, Neuropolitics, 104; idem., Facing the Planetary.

18 Manela, “Gratitude to Nature,” 623–44; idem, “Gratitude and Appreciation,” 55–66; idem, “Gratitude,”; Berger, “Gratitude,” 298–309; Simmons, Moral Principles and Political Obligations, 171; Weiss, “The Moral and Social Dimensions of Gratitude,” 491–501; Altshuler, “The Value of Nonhuman Nature,” 469–85; Konstan, “The Freedom to Feel Grateful,” 41–53. In Islamic philosophy and theology, the requirement in question is discussed in ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Sharḥ al-uṣūl al-khamsah, 79.

19 Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿArab, 6:92–3; Lane, An Arabic English Lexicon, Bk.1, Pt.4:1584.

20 On existence as the greatest gift, see ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Sharḥ, 83.

21 ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Sharḥ, 77–86. See also Renard (ed.), Islamic Theological Themes, 139.

22 See Khalil, “The Embodiment of Gratitude (Shukr) in Sufi Ethics,” 159–78.

23 Derrida, Given Time, 30; idem, The Gift of Death, 29; idem, Memoires for Paul de Man, 149.

24 Kant, Lectures on Ethics, 422.

25 Kant, Lectures on Ethics, 422–4.

26 Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, 36.

27 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 107, 154.

28 al-Rāzī, al-Maṭālib al-ʿāliyah min al-ʿilm al-ilāhī, 3:291–2.

29 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 107. For a sympathetic reading of Nietzsche’s account of gratitude, see Jonas and Yacek, Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Education.

30 Kant, Lectures on Ethics, 422–3.

31 See, for instance, Gobillot, “Patience (Ṣabr) et rétribution des mérites,” 51–78; al-Ghazālī, On Patience and Thankfulness,; Ibn al-Qayyim, ʿUddah al-ṣābirīn wa dhakhīra al-shākirīn.

32 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Ranks of the Divine Seekers, 2:486.

33 Al-Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, 1400–81; al-Ghazālī, On Patience and Thankfulness; Ibn al-Qayyim, ʿUddah al-ṣābirīn.

34 For more on the distinction between the cognitive, affective, communicative and conative elements of gratitude, see Manela, “Gratitude,” available at https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2019/entries/gratitude/. For a discussion of this idea in Arabic and Islamic sources, see Ibn Manẓūr; Lane; ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Sharḥ, 81–2.

35 Ibn al-Qayyim, Miftāḥ dār al-saʿādah, 2:1066; Ibn Taymiyyah, al-ʿubūdiyyah. See also Ibn Taymiyyah, al-Ṣafadiyyah, 2:242; Mustafa, “Ibn Taymiyyah’s Theological Ethics,” 576–81.

36 Ibn al-Qayyim, Miftāḥ, 2:995–6, 1066

37 Marcus Tullius Cicero, The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Tr. C.D. Younge, 4 vols. (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1913–21), as cited in Konstan, “The Freedom to Feel Grateful, 41–53, at 47.

38 For more on this, see Hallaq, Restating Orientalism; Bilgrami, “Gandhi, Newton and the Enlightenment,” 1–18.

39 For an extended discussion on the colonial legal doctrine of terra nullius and the Christian theological doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, see Bauman, “Creatio ex Nihilo, Terra Nullius, and the Erasure of Presence,” 353–72.

40 See, LaPier, Inivisble Reality; Estes, Our History is the Future.

41 See, for instance, Gade, Muslim Environmentalism.

42 On the religious dimensions of ecological resistance movements, see Baker et al., “Mainstreaming Morality,” 23–55.

43 Nasr, “Islam, the Contemporary Islamic World and the Environmental Crisis,” 85–105 at 87. For a defense of Nasr’s views, see Quadir, Traditional Islamic Environmentalism.

44 Afrasiabi, “Toward an Islamic Ecotheology,” 281–96, at 281–2.

45 See, for instance, Said and Funk, “Peace in Islam,” 155–83 at 177.

46 See, for instance, Ammar, “Ecological Justice and Human Rights for Women in Islam.” 377–89; Milani, “Trees as Ancestors, 527–34.

47 Yildirim, “Between Anti-Westernism and Development,” 215–32.

48 See, for instance, Ammar, “Islam and Deep Ecology,” 193–212; Özdemir, “Toward an Understanding of Environmental Ethics from a Qur’anic Perspective,” 3–37 at 27; Chishti, “Fitra: An Islamic Model for Humans and the Environment,” 67–82, at 75; Nasr, “Islam,”85–105 at 97; Nomanul Haq, “Islam and Ecology,” 121–54, at 126; Foltz, “Islamic Environmentalism,” 249–79 at 253; Mansoor, “Environment and Values, 150–9, at 157. For more on the history of Islamic reflections on the ecological crisis, see Foltz et al., Islam and Ecology, xxv; xxxviii; Sievers, “A Study in Qurʾanic Theology,” 43–58, 56.

49 Saniotis, “Muslims and Ecology,” 155–71, at 157.

50 Nasr, Man and Nature, 96. See also Ibn ʿArabī, Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, 1:50–5.

51 See for instance, Radwan, “The Environment from a Muslim Perspective,” 272–83, at 274.

52 Nomanul Haq, “Islam and Ecology,” 121–54, at 130; Mansoor, “Environment and Values,” 156–7. For more on the notion of trusteeship, in particular engagement with the ideas of Abdurrahman Taha, see Hashas and al-Khatib, Islamic Ethics and the Trusteeship Paradigm. Taha Abderrahmane’s views on the subject of trusteeship are also touched upon in Hallaq, Reforming Modernity.

53 Mansoor, “Environment and Values: the Islamic Perspective,” 157.

54 March, The Caliphate of Man.

55 March, “Genealogies of Sovereignty in Islamic Political Theology,” 293–320, at 308.

56 Qutb, Fī Ẓilāl al-Qurʾān, 1:56.

57 Abū al-Aʿlā Mawdūdī, Tafhīm ul-Qurān, 1:62. The association between a khalīfah and a deputy is repeated in Mawdūdī’s seminal work on khilāfah, Khilāfat-o-mulūkiyyat, 34. A similar distinction between master and viceregent can be found in Özdemir, “Toward an Understanding of Environmental Ethics from a Qur’anic Perspective,” 3–37 at 26.

58 Mawdūdī, Tafhīm ul-Qurān, 1:63.

59 For an interesting account of this conflict in relation to the events of the Arab Spring, see al-Azami, Islam and the Arab Revolutions.

60 Riḍā, Tafsīr al-qurʾān al-ḥakīm (al-Manār), 1:259–60.

61 Brown, “The Power of God and Islam’s Regime of Power on Earth,” 1–18, at 16.

62 Hogan, “Undoing Nature,” 232, 236.

63 Amin, Disturbing Attachments, 4.

64 Vályi, “The Spirit of Asia and Asiatic History,” 6–27, 25.

65 Haritaworn, “Decolonizing the Non/Human,” 210–3, 212. On orientalism and queerness, see Massad, Desiring Arabs.

66 Smith, “Nature Deserves to Be Side by Side with the Angels,” 151–69.

67 Gosine, “Non-white Reproduction and Same-sex Eroticism,” 149–72. On Muslim tropes in pro-gay activism, see Ahmed, “Problematic Proximities,” 119–32.

68 Dana and Chen, “Has the Queer Ever Been Human?” iv-207, 186–8.

69 See for instance, Judy, Sentient Flesh; Jackson, “Outer Worlds,” 215–8.

70 Steffen et al., “The Anthropocene: Conceptual and Historical Perspectives,” 842–67; Malm and Hornborg, “The Geology of Mankind?,” 62–9; Bauman, “Climate Weirding and Queering Nature,” 742–54; Vergès, “Racial Capitalocene: Is the Anthropocene Racial?; Lynch, “Climate Apocalypticism.”

71 Haritaworn “Decolonizing the Non/Human,” 210–3.

72 See Sandilands and Erickson (eds.), Queer Ecologies. On queerness and nature, and the effects of religion thereon, see Gaard, “Toward a Queer Ecofeminism,” 114–37. On religious accounts of human dominionism, see Lynn J. White.

73 Coates, “Collateral Damage,” 131–5, 131.

74 Moten, “blackpalestinian breath.”

75 Bauman, Religion and Ecology.

76 Seymour, “Queer Ecologies and Queer Environmentalisms,” 108–21.

77 Mustafa, “Ibn Taymiyyah and Wittgenstein on Language,” 465–91.

78 Tlili, “The Meaning of the Qurʾanic Word ‘dābba’,” 167–87; idem, Animals in the Qur’an.

79 Goodman and McGregor (eds.), The Case of the Animals versus Man Before the King of the Jinn. For an account of a variety of discussions on animals in medieval and classical Islamic philosophy, see Adamson, “Human and Animal Nature in the Philosophy of the Islamic World,” 90–113.

80 Idris, “Is Man the Vicegerent of God?” 99–110. See also Sievers, “Der Mensch als Statthalter auf Erden?,” 136–45.

81 Ibn Taymiyyah, Majmūʿ al-fatāwā, 35:29.

82 Ibid., 35:28. For Ibn Taymiyyah’s cyclical understanding of the sociology of religion, see the opening section of Ibn Taymiyyah, al-Jawāb al-ṣaḥīḥ li man baddal dīn al-masīḥ.

83 Heidegger, “The Question,” 332.

84 Forbes, “The God Species by Mark Lynas – Review.”

85 Chittick, The Unveiling of the Mysteries and the Provision of the Pious, ix. On Maybudī, see Keeler, Sufi Hermeneutics; Chittick, Divine Love.

86 Chittick, The Unveiling, 17.

87 Ibid., 12.

88 See, for instance, Siraj, “Alternative realities: queer Muslims and the Qur’an,” 89–101; Hoel and Henderson-Espinoza, “Approaching Islam Queerly,” 1–8.

89 Seymour, Bad Environmentalism: Irony and Irreverence in the Ecological Age; idem., “The Queerness of Environmental Affect,” 235–56.

90 Seymour, Bad Environmentalism, 6.

91 Hogan, “Undoing Nature,” 232.

92 Nomanul Haq, “Islam and Ecology,” 121–54, at 129–30. See also Tlili, Animals in the Qur’an. For a contrasting perspective, see Sievers, “A Study in Qurʾanic Theology,” 43–58.

93 Sievers, “A Study in Qurʾanic Theology,” 43–58, 56

94 See Anjum, Politics, Law, and Community in Islamic Thought.

95 Nasr, “Islam, the Contemporary Islamic World and the Environmental Crisis,” 85–105 at 96.

96 On the Qurʾān’s use of literary and rhetorical devices such as parody and irony, see Abuisaac et al., “Rhetorics of Ironic Discourse of the Qurʾān,” 1–18; Mir, “Irony in the Qurʾān, 173–87.

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Abdul Rahman Mustafa

Abdul Rahman Mustafa, Ph.D. Arabic and Islamic Studies. Georgetown University; M.St. History, Oxford University; LLB London School of Economics.