Islam's First Fatwa to Protect Endangered Animals

Indonesia's senior Muslim clergy have issued the world's first fatwa protecting endangered animals, after Britain's World Wildlife Fund and other groups helped organize field trips on the equatorial island archipelago to highlight the problem.

The Washington-based National Geographic Society reported the fatwa on March 4 and provided an English-language translation on its website.

The Council of Indonesian Ulama, also known as Majelis Ulama Indonesia (MUI) titled its fatwa: "On Protection of Endangered Species to Maintain the Balanced Ecosystems."

The fatwa said "all living organisms, including endangered species such as tigers, rhinos, elephants and orangutans as well as various types of mammals, aves [birds] and reptiles, are created by Allah in order to maintain the balanced ecosystem."

The MUI "needs to enact a fatwa/legal opinion on the conservation of endangered species, to maintain the balance of the ecosystem to be used as guiding principles," the fatwa said.

It quoted verses from the Islamic holy book, the Quran, and other Muslim texts.

"As for animals, which possess souls, one is obliged to protect them from attempts to annihilate them, so long as there is no worry that (the efforts) will harm them," the fatwa said, quoting Imam al-Sharbini in the book Mughni al-Muhtaj.

"Therefore, if one sees an animal owner attempting to kill the animal under a forbidden circumstance, then that person (who sees the attempt) is obliged to protect (the animal)," the fatwa quoted the Imam as saying.

Founded by the government in 1975, the MUI is Indonesia's top Muslim clerical organization.

The MUI advises the country's 250 million Muslims on various issues and occasionally issues fatwas, which are not legally binding but can guide Muslims' behavior.

Two large, influential Muslim groups, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah, are among its council members.

The fatwa resulted partly from field trips in 2013, financed by the World Wildlife Fund-United Kingdom (WWF-UK) and organized by Indonesia's Universitas Nasional, WWF-Indonesia, and the England-based Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC).

ARC is a secular organization founded in 1995 by Britain's Prince Philip to help religions develop environmental programs.

"They arranged for Muslim leaders to visit field sites in Sumatra where there was encroachment by wildlife, particularly by elephants," ARC reported on March 5.

"During a community dialogue with village representatives, some of the villagers asked, 'What is the status of the animals like elephants and tigers to the Ulama, and in Islam?'," ARC said.

The fatwa was signed in Jakarta, Indonesia, on January 22, but "was only made public late on March 4," Agence France-Presse reported.

Richard S. Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based journalist from San Francisco, California, reporting news from Asia since 1978.

His websites are
http://asia-correspondent.tumblr.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/animists/sets
https://gumroad.com/l/RHwa

© Scoop Media