Reviving the Islamic Narratives about the Sacredness of Nature: A Case for Nasr’s Ecosophy as Political Ecology after the COVID-19 Pandemic

Religion and Social Communication 20, no. 2 (2022)

Abstract

This paper analyses the COVID-19 pandemic as a form of metaphysical crisis in addition to its well-known status as a global health crisis. I argue that the general absence of a comprehensive metaphysical outlook of nature has further alienated humankind from a Divine-based cosmology of nature. COVID-19 is certainly part of nature and man too. However, our outlook at ‘tackling’ the disease is filled with overconfidence that man could overcome nature, thus ‘defeating’ the disease. This should not be the mental and spiritual state of human beings at present natural crisis. Drawing from Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis as Modern Man, I argue that a certain arrogance had developed in modern mentality that COVID-19 was just another viral disease – until it engulfed the entire planet. Realizing that man’s modern knowledge had been sorely inadequate to contain the disease as they expected, due to general disconnect with the sacred side of nature, they turned to fear, even despair. Present Islamic perspectives should revive the inclusivity between man and nature to reconnect humankind to the sacred aspects of nature. A narrative borne of Islam must serve as communique for those who seek re-connection with nature considering the evolving ecosophy by accounting Michel Serre’s Natural Contract to develop a new political ecology.