The planned**“Park51”** Islamic community center in downtown Manhattan...

The planned**“Park51”** Islamic community center in downtown Manhattan, New York, for example, is slated to meet LEED green building standards.52 Also fundamental to an effective solution are responses from writers in both academia and the general public. Religious thinkers can help provide the impetus behind hands-on environmental stewardship by informing and educating people on the environmental aspects of their respective religions.

In the Muslim world, writers such as Seyyed Hossein Nasr, writing since the 1960’s, have set foundations for others to explore and continuously develop a proper Muslim response to the environmental crisis. Writers of the past decade such as Mawil Izzi Dien and Ibrahim Abdul-Matin, author of Green Deen: What Islam Teaches About Protecting the Planet,53 have come to the fore to shed further light on the Islamic outlook and approach to nature.

Moreover, activists within the Muslim response to the environmental crisis are voicing themselves in new and more accessible ways. Their message is atavistic in meaning, yet innovative in delivery. The Internet has served as a platform in which Muslims from around the world have come to voice their opinions, especially within the blogosphere.

A prime example of this is “A World of Green Muslims,” a blog that posts “Green Messages from across the Muslim blogosphere.”54 There are also blog-like news outlets such as the “Green Prophet,” which, though focused on Middle-Eastern environmental issues and not on the subject of Islam and the environment, reports on Muslim environmental activities.55 The wave of online Muslim responses to the environmental crisis is increasing, as apparent with the emergence of new hands-on groups and online entities such as the “Minnesota Ecological and Environmental Muslims ( MEEM )” of Minneapolis, Minnesota.56 Muslims are responding to the environmental crisis, but much more has to be done, especially in addressing the paradoxes within this aspect of the Muslim world.

Muslim countries like Iran have great reverence for Islamic gardens, but simultaneously exude critically high levels of air pollution in their capital cities. This paradoxical sight represents much of the Muslim world, and the only way to truly solve it is in a return to the essence of Islam. The Muslim world must revise its values-including its environmental values-and the consequences of its actions in the light of Qur’anic and prophetic teachings.