The Islamic case for degrowth?

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Al-Mizan, a ‘covenant for the earth‘ that has been recently published by Islamic scholars. It aims to present a Muslim response to climate change, and call people to action around relevant principles of faith.

I live in a town with a significant Muslim presence and work regularly with Muslim colleagues on climate change projects, so I’ve found it useful to reflect on some of the theology in the document. There is a lot of overlap with my own Christian faith and its view of the environment, and principles that one might find in many other belief systems. There’s also something I haven’t come across before: an Islamic case for degrowth.

“Our predicament is a direct consequence of the priority we are giving to economic growth over caring for the Earth and its communities of life,” say the writers of Al-Mizan. “In our hurry to prosper, we have blindly followed a false paradigm that equates economic growth, and human development of the natural world, as a linear process of continuous, never-ending progress and improvement. But our presumption that we can defy the divinely decreed patterns of the natural world is proving to be our undoing.”

There’s a nuanced view here on consumerism. It’s perfectly normal to want nice things and to enjoy them for what they are. But there’s a limit, and denying that there is one is where growth capitalism parts company with both the natural world and with wisdom. “What are the limits to the good life and the prosperity we yearn for? The Qur’an tells us, ‘…do not forbid the good things God has permitted you [but] do not waste by excess’ (5:87). How can we, all 8.1 billion of us, set about having reasonably satisfactory lifestyles and at the same time reduce our impact on the natural world?”

The writers go so far as to say that “the contemporary economic order, based on continual economic growth stoked by usury/interest (ribā), is by nature insatiably consumptive, unsustainable, and antithetical to the principles of Islam.” Insead, they recommend enjoying good things in moderation, remembering what matters most, and using more human centred measures of progress. “The object of development is surely not to consume as much as possible, but to enable people to lead healthy, fulfilling, and ennobling lives.”

Where countries have overshot this principle of enough, they will need to scale back: “the richer nations will need to reduce their consumption patterns significantly to conserve the diversity of life.”

Of course, some of the world’s richest countries are Muslim and some of those countries have consistently stood in the way of climate action. The writers of Al-Mizan are speaking truth to power and pointing out the failure to live out religious principles, just as nations that consider themselves Christian also fail to live out those principles.

There are wealthy Muslim countries that need to change, and there are also impoverished Muslim nations that could choose a different development path. “We urge Muslim jurists, economists, and ecologists to work with their countries’ administrations and local communities to prescribe measures to stabilise and reduce our consumption of the sources of life while enhancing the real quality of life.”

Al-Mizan doesn’t use the word ‘degrowth’, and I don’t know how much the word would resonate with the authors. It’s why I’ve put a question mark in the title. It’s a question I’m asking, rather than something I’m seeking to explain. But I do find it fascinating that this document, compiled through such wide consultation, is so blunt about the fact that consumerist growth is “antithetical to the principles of Islam.”

• PS – see the Joy In Enough campaign for the Christian case for degrowth