Smoke, Fire and Rain in Muslim Southeast Asia: Environmental Ethics in the Time of Burning
This presentation describes responses to the peat forest fires in Indonesia in 2015, as well as the smoke that covered much of that nation, the Malaysian peninsula, and other parts of Southeast Asia. As a study in environmental ethics, the paper shows how human and biological, physical and atmospheric, and moral systems connect to environmental degradation and climate impacts of the burning. Recognizing these all to be dimensions of creation (makhluq) from a perspective of Muslim adab, the paper explains how rain stops smoke and fire within both real and imagined worlds.
Biography
Anna M. Gade (Ph.D., History of Religions, University of Chicago Divinity School) is a scholar of Islam whose most recent teaching and research addresses global environmental questions from a humanistic perspective. She is a Southeast Asianist, who has been conducting fieldwork in the region (Indonesia, Malaysia, and Cambodia) for two decades. She has held positions in departments of Religious Studies, Asian Studies, and Near Eastern Studies in the USA and abroad. She is author of two books on the Qur'an (2004 and 2010), and is currently completing a book titled, Islam and the Environment (forthcoming: Oneworld Publications).