MY GREEN HAJJ
▶ This year, Saffet Abid Catovic, an environmental activist and imam from the United States, set out to perform Hajj in the most environmentally friendly way possible. He shares his experiences with Clare Dight
When dense clouds gathered overhead, the hajis who were waiting to make their way to Mount Arafat the following day hoped that they might bring the blessing of desert rains to their tented camp at Mina.
What they witnessed instead was a rare and powerful sandstorm, part of an extreme weather front that also brought heavy rains to Makkah, five kilometres to the east. It was a freak weather event and one without comparison in nearly 20 years.
For Saffet Abid Catovic, a Muslim environmental campaigner and imam at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, the fierce storm that threatened to blow the kiswa, or cover, off the Kaaba, was yet more evidence of a changing climate and environmental damage.
Performing the Hajj rites with his wife, son and daughter-in-law, Catovic and his family stood out from the mass of pilgrims dressed in traditional white ihram clothing thanks to the reusable water bottles they carried, to avoid adding to the plastic waste piling up around them. Every year, a reported two million or so pilgrims are said to leave behind 100 million plastic water bottles while performing Hajj, and as Catovic’s family made their way to Mount Arafat, or the Mountain of Mercy as it is known in the Islamic tradition, that waste was all too evident.
“Believers gather there, we reflect upon our relationship with God... and as we are gathering and walking to the Mountain of Mercy, we are walking on plastic bottles that have been crushed because of the two million pilgrims,” Catovic says. “And as you go on the mountain itself, you see plastic bottles and Coke cans all over the place.
“Isn’t it ironic that we, who are meant to be walking on the Earth gently as servants of the Merciful, as the Quran says, are walking to the Mountain of Mercy stepping on disposable bottles?”
This powerful connection between the words of Prophet Mohammed and the modern-day reality of our polluted planet lies at the heart of Catovic’s activism, and spurred him to plan a greener Hajj. In an effort to mitigate, or at least minimise, the environmental impact of the family’s trip from Princeton to Makkah, Catovic took care to offset the carbon emissions from their flights. He also decided to eschew the comforts of Makkah’s hotel buffets and the convenience of fast-food outlets in favour of following the Prophet and eating dates, which are grown locally and are highly nutritious.
At home in New Jersey, the imam’s daily religious practices are determined by the words of Prophet Mohammed, albeit through a green lens. When he performs wudu, for example, he uses no more than two cups of water, as the Prophet used to do; when he shops for groceries, he endeavours to buy seasonal, locally sourced food inspired by the Prophet’s exhortation to eat the food that is ripened on the vine and to eat off the plate closest to you. “There is a consciousness even in doing things that are mundane,” Catovic says.
“Making that kind of connection is when the light bulb goes on; that’s the struggle. People say: ‘Yeah, yeah, I read that verse in the Quran.’ But what does that mean to us today?”
Catovic’s environmental consciousness was fostered early on by his Bosnian father, who raised his son with a healthy respect for and love
of the great outdoors, reinforced by the sayings of Prophet Mohammed. Years later, in 2011, after a successful business career and a stint working in the Bosnian foreign ministry during and after the Bosnian War, Catovic enrolled in an 18-month fellowship programme at GreenFaith, a US-based interfaith coalition for environmental leadership. There, he studied the teachings of Islam alongside students from other major religions, to learn more about environmentalism within a faith framework.
“All of the [faith] traditions and the Abrahamic traditions in particular were born within the context of natural settings. It’s Jesus in the wilderness, it’s Moses on the mountain, it’s the Prophet Mohammed in the cave and so on. There’s a lot of environmentally sustainable theology, consciousness and practices there, but they were not called by our modern eco-terms at that time,” he says. “It’s looking at those practices and how they would apply in the context of the modern world that we’ve created for ourselves.”
Catovic also served as a consultant to the drafting committee of the International Islamic Declaration on Global Climate Change, known as the Istanbul Declaration, issued in August 2015 before the UN Paris Agreement. Under former US President Barack Obama’s government, the imam was selected as a faith leader to advise on environmental stewardship and climate change.
Having seen first-hand the enormous logistical effort that is required to green the Hajj, Catovic tells me that he would like to see Saudi Arabian authorities take a lead in enforcing more eco-friendly practices. As the imam says: “There is a saying in our tradition about how truths or religious teachings are to be conveyed: by preaching and education and, where those two are not working, by the force of law.”
Disposable water bottles are yet to be banned in favour of reusable plastic ones, for example, but a start has been made. Mohammed Al Saati, head of sanitation for Makkah Municipality, told the AFP news agency that the government hopes to cut the 42,000 tonnes of waste that the 2.4 million pilgrims generated this year in half by 2030. As evidence of this commitment, there were recycling bins in Mina this year and signs saying “Sadaqah, not litter” posted around to encourage pilgrims to recycle.
Education is ultimately the best call to action, but it will take time for hajis from so many different countries and with such disparate life experiences to share a light bulb moment. Until then, Catovic and his fellow Muslim environmentalists will keep entreating the faithful to recognise the new and urgent environmental context to the hadith: “Indeed the world is green and sweet, and indeed God has left you to remain to see how you behave. So beware of the world, beware of the world.”