As the month of Ramadan draws nearer, so does my proposed Green Iftar, which will be organised under the auspices of the Young Association of Muslim Professionals (Young AMP) in Singapore on the 5th of Sept. Its quite exciting as this would kickstart a drive of further environmental awareness amongst Muslims in Singapore.

I was pleased to have been sent an article from The Council of Islamic Organizatons of Greater Chicago website (via the DC Green Muslims mailing list) as it only serves to strengthen my resolve of further advocating environmental awareness amongst Muslims. 

In the article, Dr Zaher Sahloul highlights the opportunities of advocating greater reflection and concrete action amongst Muslims on their relationship with the environment. He also provides examples of simple practices that Muslims can adopt for an environmentally friendly lifestyle. The best part of it all,  these practices are simple and complement what has already been advocated in other environmental circles.  Below are a few lines from the article that brought a smile to my face 🙂

“Every person will leave an ecological and a spiritual footprint. Your ecological footprint is the total amount of carbon dioxide that you produce in life by using energy, especially fossil fuel, through transportation, use of electricity, consumption of certain food that require transportation and industrial fertilizers, waste and pollution. As Americans, our average ecological footprint is five to ten times that of a person living in other areas in the developing world. We use fasting in Ramadan to cap our eating, our drinking and our impulses, so why do we not use it to shrink our ecological footprint?

Why don’t we advance the concept of the Muslim footprint and educate our community to work collectively to shrink it?

Ramadan can be transformed to be a truly green month, and Muslims, with all people of faith, can live up to their responsibility to be the true stewards on earth and use Ramadan to help us reach that goal.

Ramadan is a once a year opportunity to tackle global issues like overconsumption, materialism, poverty, hunger, wars and yes, global warming.“

To view the full article, please click on this link

Its just great to know that more like-minded people worldwide are wanting to make a difference in the Umma. Kudos and more strength to you all.

Ahlan ya Ramadan! Bring it on!