The main shortcoming of Nasr’s contribution has been that he...

The main shortcoming of Nasr’s contribution has been that he has always written predominantly for a Western audience of non-Muslims, serving first and foremost as an apologist for Islam. Those Muslims who have read him, have almost always read him in English, as his works have been little translated into Arabic or even his own native Persian.

His case exemplifies the paradox that, even among Muslims seeking to derive an environmentalism from within their own tradition, the initial impetus and context is often the West. The first specifically Islamic treatise on environmental protection, composed by a team of Islamic scholars in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in 1983, was commissioned by a Swiss-based environmental organization, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN).[^12] The resulting tract,…