What’s Right with Islam Is What’s Right with America

As an editor, I am paid to get inside the heads of authors. And Imam Feisal was generous in letting me get inside his. We spoke at length numerous times on the phone as we clarified the book’s message. What I found inside him bears no resemblance to the hateful images perpetuated by fearful people spreading messages of suspicion about a religion, and a project, they have not bothered to get to know.

What I experienced in working with Imam Feisal was unfailing graciousness. The person I learned to know has a deeply compassionate heart focused on one thing only: fostering more open dialogue and understanding between Muslims and people of the Western world. He is single-minded in this focus. His nonprofit Cordoba Initiative promotes interfaith dialogue.

The central message of his book is that the values that lie at the heart of Islam—equality and social justice—are the same values guiding the history of the United States. For years Imam Feisal has been saying loud and clear,

Our peoples are committed to the same values!

Which is why the anger and hate-baiting over the proposed cultural center are so profoundly disturbing.

And, let’s be clear: What is proposed is in fact a cultural center, not a mosque. Imam Feisal talks about the difference in this news conference:

It will be a cultural center because Imam Feisal is an educator. He believes that cultural exchange can help heal wounds between people tempted to see each other as enemies. It’s a trust in education deeply ingrained by his spiritual tradition of Sufism.

Back in the 1700s, in the face of a declining Ottoman Empire, two alternatives presented themselves to Muslim reformers. One was a legalistic return to the roots. This was the path chosen by al-Wahhab on the Arabian peninsula—purging Islam of anything not found at its beginning. Karen Armstrong in Islam: A Short History says,

Wahhabism is the form of Islam that is still practised today in Saudi Arabia, a puritan religion based on a strictly literal interpretation of scripture and early Islamic tradition. (135)

And because Saudi Arabia controls Islam’s two holiest sites, Mecca and Medina, as well as vast oil fields, the Wahhabi form of Islam holds tremendous sway throughout the Muslim world.

The other path was chosen by a Sufi reformer, Ibn Idris. This was the path of education. Improve society by teaching people to love God better—which in practice meant teaching people how to think for themselves by developing their own spirituality more deeply. Not too surprising that Ibn Idris sharply criticized al-Wahhabi for his legalistic tendencies.

In other words, Sufis are usually on the opposite side of the issues from fundamentalists. Which is why it is crazy to label Imam Feisal an extremist—crazy not just because to all who know him Imam Feisal is a progressive, deeply thoughtful scholar and teacher, but also because in the history of Muslim politics, Imam Feisal’s community has often been harassed, sometimes even banished, by fundamentalists.

How strange it is to see someone I deeply respect become such an object of controversy, even hate, in the American media!

I am proud to have contributed in even a small way to Imam Feisal’s work toward interfaith understanding. And I’m deeply disappointed by the depth of opposition to this center, which shows just how much more of it there is to be done.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON SUFISM:

• The journal Sufism, an Inquiry
• The many works of Sayyed Hossein Nasr, professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University
• Sufi music and my band fave, Ghazal

FOR MORE INFO ON IMAM FEISAL

• This interview in Shambhala Sun
• FAQ from the Cordoba Initiative on the proposed community center

Post from: this lively earth
Copyright 2009 Priscilla Stuckey

What about that mosque at Ground Zero?

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“What about reciprocity?” I asked. At bottom, our ecological crisis boils down to one simple fact: humans are taking more than we’re giving back to the Earth. What if each of us started giving back as much as we take—in all our relationships, with the human and more-than-human worlds? Even a simple gesture like showing gratitude can make a difference. Everyone loves to be thanked! Reducing our use of unsustainable resources is a solid first step in giving back to the Earth.

What follows are 10 close-to-home ways you can give back to the Earth.

1. Eat closer to home. The average American foodstuff travels 1500 miles to reach the table. That’s an astronomical amount of fossil fuel used just in transporting the food, to say nothing of growing and packaging it. Until our fuel sources are more sustainable, perhaps those bananas or Australian wines (to pick two of my faves) should be a special treat, not a staple. For more info, see the energy stats at Sustainable Table.

2. Thank your food. Look, really look, at the plants and animals on your table. Notice each one. Think about the rice or oat or wheat grasses waving under the sun, the carrots developing underground, the strawberries ripening on the vine. Most of all, if you eat meat, think about every animal. Picture the cow grazing (if you eat cows, eat grass-fed, not corn-fed ones), the chicken scratching, the fish swimming, the life labor that the hen put forth in making an egg, the goat her milk. Thank each animal, every time, for the gifts of their lives and their bodies. Christians call it saying grace. Buddhists call it eating mindfully. All of us can thank the plants and animals. Our lives depend on them. Literally.

3. Pick your teeth the old-fashioned way. Wooden toothpicks are biodegradable, unlike the little plastic gadgets most dentists’ offices try to pass out to their patients. Those tiny plastic picks and brushes only end up in landfills—not a good way to give back to the Earth! Many of them escape down rivers, becoming part of the enormous swirling toilet bowls of plastic in our oceans and endangering the lives of seabirds. When your dentist offers you little plastic tools for dental hygiene, say no thanks.

4. Teach your children reciprocity. Even small children understand fairness. No one wants to get the short end of the stick. Teach your children to give back when they receive something. Practice it yourself. If each of us truly gave as much as we took, the world would change.

5. Thank a tree. As you walk down your street, notice one tree or plant every day. Thank it for making oxygen. Your life depends on it.

6. Work to reduce pesticide use in your area. We all know about pesticide use in agriculture, but pesticides are used at an equivalent rate on suburban lawns. What about the playing fields at your local school? (Fungicides and herbicides are pesticides too.) Children absorb more pesticides per pound of body weight than do adults, according to the National Academy of Sciences. Next on my to-do list: a letter to my local HOA about the annual pesticide application on our pristine common lawn. I’d really rather have a common area that my dog—and all the children on the street—can run and play in safely. For more info, see the “Lawn Care” page at Beyond Pesticides.

7. Refuse overpackaging. Say no thanks to foods or supplements prepackaged in tiny portions. Every piece of plastic ends up in a landfill—if we’re lucky and it doesn’t end up on beaches or in the ocean. Though I love a certain brand of rice cheese, I’m giving it up because it is packaged in individual slices wrapped in plastic.

8. Host a zero-waste party. It’s easier than you think. Paper plates and cups can be composted in municipal composting processes, and cornstarch-based compostable flatware is becoming easy to find. To use even fewer resources (except for water), visit your local thrift store and buy a few dozen older plates and forks and wash them afterward. If you don’t have room to store them, donate them back after the party’s over. Same with napkins and glasses. I spent $25 at a thrift store for my last party and then got credit afterward for the same amount in donation. That thrift store benefits a nonprofit group, so when they sell their merchandise twice they raise even more money.

9. Volunteer for a cleanup or restoration project in your area. People have no idea how much fun these projects are. You get the pleasure of meeting like-minded neighbors in addition to the joy of giving back to the Earth in a very direct way. The sense of camaraderie and a deep-seated satisfaction after a day or a half day of work keep restoration volunteers coming back time after time. They look forward to having more fun. For a list of organizations working in ecological restoration around the country, see Global Restoration Network.

10. Work for the circle of life in your industry. I was astonished to learn recently that nearly half of GM plants are now “nil to the landfill.” If an industry like auto making can stop sending materials to landfills, certainly other industries can follow suit! How did the Earth survive for billions of years, perfecting the ability to sustain life? By a system of exchange in which every part of the whole gives off something others need. One species’s waste is another species’s fuel. What the organisms of Earth have been doing for billions of years, we will have to learn to do in every industry. Waste to fuel, around the circle. That means finding ways to break down plastics, mop up oil spills, and treat sewage by contributing something that someone else in the ecosystem needs. Interdependence is the name of the survival game. What if you are not an engineer or inventor? Then start with recycling. Even your office could be zero waste.

Post from: this lively earth
Copyright 2009 Priscilla Stuckey

10 ways to give back to the Earth

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In other words, taking and giving in equal measure is the only sustainable practice in human relationships, whether interpersonal or international.

But then I’ve been thinking about how reciprocity is key in our relationship with the Earth too. At bottom, our ecological crisis boils down to one simple fact: humans are taking more than we’re giving back to the Earth.

For instance, we take oil out of the rock, and instead of making something of it that nourishes other life forms or enriches the soil, we make things out of it—plastic, CO2-releasing fuels, fertilizers, pesticides—that over their lifespan take more out of the soil or water or air than they contribute.

How did the Earth survive for billions of years and prepare an atmosphere conducive to life? By every species giving as good as it gets. By a system of exchange in which every part of the whole contributes as much as it uses. One species’s waste is another species’s fuel.

Who gets it?

• Plants: They take in carbon dioxide and produce oxygen.
• Animals: Just the opposite. They take in oxygen and produce CO2.
• Ecologists: They always think in terms of the whole ecosystem—how each part contributes and uses resources in balance with all the others.
• Indigenous peoples: They’ve been teaching their children for millennia that reciprocity with the earth is the bottom line for survival.
• Real estate agents: They know that a good deal is one in which the buyer and seller both go away happy. And that the only fair trade is an equal trade.
• Religious folks: They developed the Golden Rule in all its forms. Receiving as much as we give—it’s how everyone wants to be treated.
• Adam Smith: Yes, the father of capitalism himself talked about responsibilities as well as rights—something his economic progeny forgot in the nineteenth century when they permanently severed economics from ethics.

Who doesn’t get it?

• Plastics manufacturers and users: That’s us—every one of us. We’re putting into circulation a product whose end-of-life does not fuel some other life form but instead endangers the soil, the oceans, and all kinds of animals.
• Banks that shell out astronomical bonuses: They’re unsustainable because not based on reciprocity—unless you want to argue that bank execs are contributing a value in either goods or services equal to their bonus. And I can’t think of anyone who does. In fact, in a time of recession when labor is plentiful, wages (according to the law of labor supply and demand) should go down. Something’s definitely fishy here.
• Those who deal in natural resource extraction: Because the value of a healthy, functioning ecosystem is beyond measuring, any treaty or trade that places a number value on natural resources is by definition not reciprocal and therefore not in the long run sustainable. Think clear-cut logging, mining, and just about every trade agreement between industrialized and developing nations.
• Coal-mining companies that blast the tops off mountains AND the people who rely on the energy they produce: Again, all of us. Destroying ecosystems is the definition of unsustainable, rooted in a lack of reciprocity both with the people who live near those mountains and more generally between humans and the earth.
• Buyers of nonorganic food: Guilty here. Fossil-fuel-intensive agriculture is the epitome of nonreciprocal relations with the earth—and is therefore unsustainable.

It looks to me like humans are the only species capable of such radically nonreciprocal relations. We’re the only ones who can forget so spectacularly that we have to give in equal measure with getting.

Which is why our systems of education, religion, ethics, business—you name it—in this time of ecological and economic crisis must turn toward helping humans remember reciprocity.

Reciprocity—it’s the only sustainable practice. In ecology, in trade, in friendship. Reciprocity is the meeting place between economics and spirituality.

Reciprocity is, quite simply, the only way to hand down to our children a world conducive to life.

Reciprocity is the bottom line for survival.

Post from: this lively earth
Copyright 2009 Priscilla Stuckey

Reciprocity

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The most striking finding is that GE [genetically engineered] crops have been
responsible for an increase of 383 million pounds of herbicide use in the U.S. over the first 13 years of commercial use of GE crops.

In the earliest years of GMOs, pesticide use did go down. (Pesticides means all chemicals used to control insects, weeds, and fungi.)

But then something happened. Plants wised up—specifically, the plants farmers didn’t want in their fields, otherwise known as weeds. Weedy plants developed resistance to herbicides.

We might have guessed it would happen. With the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, we watched evolution take place among bacteria. With herbicide-resistant weeds, we are watching plants adapt to their environments—and emerge stronger than before.

The herbicide to which plants have developed resistance is glyphosate, known more famously as Roundup. Today glyphosate-resistant (GR) weeds are threatening whole swaths of cotton, soybeans, and corn throughout the Midwest and South.

GR [glyphosate-resistant] weeds were practically unknown before the introduction of RR [Roundup-Ready] crops in 1996. Today, nine or more GR weeds collectively infest millions of acres of U.S. cropland.

The principal strategy farmers are using in the face of this new threat is—guess what—more herbicide. Which is why herbicide use is rising:

But in some places the weeds are so invasive that farmers have resorted to hoeing them by hand. Here is a photo of workers tackling Palmer amaranth in a GMO-planted cotton field:

Photo by Brad Luttrell (www. bradluttrell.com)

If there is a bright spot in this report, it is that more farmers are looking for “conventional,” non-GMO, seeds to plant in the face of this alarming development. But not a lot of farmers. The number of acres planted to herbicide-tolerant soybeans dropped by only 1 percent last year and is expected to drop only a couple of percentage points in 2010. One problem is that the supply of conventional seeds has shrunk so drastically that for the coming few years farmers will have no choice but to plant genetically engineered ones.

And one or two percentage points is indeed very small, given that 90 percent of the soybeans and most of the cotton grown in this country are herbicide-tolerant crops, as the following graph from the report shows.

What can you do?

• Buy organic! The organic label means no GMOs allowed. The most direct way to register your vote for healthy soil, healthy animals, and healthy people is to buy organic foods.
• Educate yourself on GMO-related issues. The Organic & Non-GMO Report website is a good place to start.
• Read food labels. If 90 percent of soybeans are herbicide resistant, that means your “healthy” soy-based foods, such as tofu and soymilk, are now almost all GMO based. But all kinds of other foods also contain GMO-based soy, especially in the form of soy lecithin, an emulsifier. Soy lecithin appears in, for example, my favorite Celestial Seasonings herb teas.
• Become a soil advocate. GMO (herbicide-resistant) crops are changing soil biology, according to a microbiologist with the USDA. I will be happy to post a guest blog from anyone (especially a student) who writes a decent report on GMOs, pesticides, and soil health.

For more information:

• The report: “The Impacts of GE Crops on Pesticide Use” (PDF)
• The Organic Center blog post about the report
• The Organic & Non-GMO Report website
• “Scientist finding many negative impacts of Roundup Ready GM crops”

Post from: this lively earth
Copyright 2009 Priscilla Stuckey

Do GMOs reduce pesticide use?

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A ground-breaking study in the International Journal of Biological Studies links three common varieties of Monsanto’s genetically modified (GM) corn to liver and kidney toxicity and clearly illustrates the need for independent research on GMOs’ health effects. As noted by Scientific American and a host of other observers, agricultural biotechnology firms consistently suppress or render impossible independent scientific studies by hiding behind patent law. This study — conducted by French university scientists — is a meta-analysis of studies conducted by Monsanto and another biotech firm, which comes to a different conclusion and calls into question the adequacy of Monsanto’s research methodology. Specifically, this study looks at sex-differentiated effects and non-linear dose response curves whereas Monsanto did not. Monsanto has issued a response to the study, to which one of the lead authors, Gilles-Eric Séralini in turn responded, “Our study contradicts Monsanto conclusions because Monsanto systematically neglects significant health effects in mammals that are different in males and females eating GMOs, or not proportional to the dose.” Originally, published in mid-December, the study has recently garnered coverage in Huffington Post, Grist and Twilight Earth, among other outlets.

Post from: this lively earth
Copyright 2009 Priscilla Stuckey

GMO corn causes organ damage in mammals

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The Best F**king News Team helps Tiger Woods find forgiveness by recommending the best religion for redemption:

Post from: this lively earth
Copyright 2009 Priscilla Stuckey

Which religion should a news team recommend?

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Panic sets in, a sense of despair. We have to maintain this lifestyle in order to be happy, don’t we?

Apparently not, according to the New Economics Foundation (NEF), an independent think tank out of Great Britain. NEF wondered if a large ecological footprint, such as developed countries have, translates into correspondingly happier people. They ask one pointed question:

Does living a good life have to cost the Earth?

They answer the question by researching happiness indexes of countries around the world and comparing the results to how big of an environmental footprint that country leaves. They call it the Happy Planet Index. Basically, it shows how many happy years a people have as compared to their footprint. (In technical terms, it’s how efficiently, economically speaking, a country translates natural resources into well-being.)

To score high, a country has to report:

1. High life satisfaction
2. High life expectancy
3. Low ecological footprint

The results of the research may surprise you.

• Out of 143 countries, the United States ranks number 114. It’s not just that Americans report less happiness than do those in many other countries; our life expectancy is also lower than dozens of others, including Japan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Canada, all European countries, Greece, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates. And then of course there’s our footprint, one of the highest in the world.
• Costa Rica comes in at number 1. Costa Ricans edge out Americans in life expectancy; they report being quite a bit more satisfied with their lives than do Americans; and the footprint of their country is less than a quarter that of this country.

Apparently we don’t need to overtax the planet in order to lead happy lives. From the report:

The results turn our idea of progress on its head. . . . A good life is possible without costing the Earth.

I learned about the Happy Planet Index from Annie Leonard, who did The Story of Stuff video. Here is her speech this fall at the Bioneers conference:

For more information:

• Measure your own well-being.
• Learn the five evidence-based ways to well-being.
• National Accounts of Well-Being: Bringing Real Wealth onto the Balance Sheet (pdf report)
• The Happy Planet Index 2.0: Why Good Lives Don’t Have to Cost the Earth (pdf report published in July 2009)

Post from: this lively earth
Copyright 2009 Priscilla Stuckey

Toward an Earthwise economy, part 2: Happy Planet Index

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But twenty-five years of getting my awareness raised about ecological crises is drumming into me the truth of the Buddhist axiom. When it comes to an ecosystem—like this planet—there is indeed no separate self. Every action of every individual affects all others. No one an island, as Donne said. Acting in isolation is impossible.

These days it is not poets and religious folks who are preaching the message loudest. It is scientists and environmental journalists. From the IPCC 2007 Report on Climate Change, which shows beyond a reasonable doubt that the actions of industrialized societies are endangering the Earth for all, to data on water pollution downstream from power plants, to the study that just came out last week that pollution in alpine lakes far from direct human contact is measurably worse than previously thought, we have hard evidence of the connections that for most of the 2500 years of Buddhist history had to be taken on faith.

Each of us is intimately connected to every fish and bird and blade of grass and human being and every inch of soil on the rest of the planet. And not in some airy-fairy kind of way. We’re connected physically—breathing the same air, sharing the same water, tied by strands of biology and chemistry and physics, and tied most of all by our shared need to eat, to every other organism on this single planet Earth.

Or, better, we ARE a single organism called Earth.

A few days ago, when I posted on the pollution in Rocky Mountain lakes, a reader expressed his overwhelm, which I share. What can we do? he asked—a question thousands of us are asking.

I think one thing to do is use the ecological crisis as a blunt communiqué of connection—an in-your-face reminder that we depend on the trout and the algae and the warblers and the wheat grains for our very survival. That if we wreck the living conditions on the Earth for them, we are wrecking it for ourselves.

There is no simpler way to express the lack of separation: if they go, we go.

(Though the reverse is not true; the more-than-human world existed just fine for millennia before we appeared.)

And here’s where the spiritual practice comes in. Most of us forget just how unseparate everybody here is. We need to practice reminding ourselves, at the feeling level, of our connection to and dependence on every other being on Earth.

Spirituality is often defined as finding our connection to something greater than ourselves. The “something greater” we have most lost touch with is the web of connections linking all of us here on the only livable planet we will ever know.

I suggest that we contemplate our dependence on fungi; that we meditate on the miracle of photosynthesis, of green plants taking carbon dioxide and turning it into oxygen; that we connect with a tree—or with any other neighbor, human or otherwise; and most of all that we strive to understand how our own actions and our everyday choices are contributing to balance or imbalance in a cycle of life that is much more delicate than we used to think.

Buddhists may contemplate the web of interdependence linking us all. Christians can ponder Jesus’s words that how we treat “the least of these”—the sick, the poor, the thirsty—is how we are treating him. And anybody can sit with a friend, whether flower or feline or human, and appreciate the intricacy of that friend’s face.

And once we have sat and observed and contemplated, we can take our insights to the farmers’ markets and the grocery stores, to our dinner table and our utility company. We can tell our elected leaders that we can no longer afford pesticides in breast milk and nitrogen in alpine lakes; that we will commit ourselves to decreasing fossil fuel use; and that lowering CO2 in the atmosphere, if it is a matter of life and death for farmers in India and Africa, is a matter of life and death for the rest of us as well.

Twenty-five years ago, the idea that there is no separate self could seem counterfactual, an illusion. Today we have the data that proves, to our amazement and often to our sorrow, just how urgently true it is.

Today the idea of separateness is the illusion—one that we, the Earth, can no longer afford.

Post from: this lively earth
Copyright 2009 Priscilla Stuckey

We, the Earth: ecological crisis as spiritual practice

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Green Lake 5, RMNP. Photo by James Elser.

This isn’t a case of urban or agricultural runoff polluting nearby waters, which we’ve known about for decades. These are high-altitude lakes—places far from urban centers as well as from fertilizer-fed fields, places in, for instance, Rocky Mountain National Park. The very air that the lakes breathe has 20 times the normal levels of nitrogen, and the algae in the lakes, containing too much nitrogen and not enough phosphorus, supplies the wrong nutrients for fish.

The study was conducted by James Elser of Arizona State University along with scientists from Sweden and Norway and ASU.

We’re all related—the faraway lakes, the cities, the power plants, the mountains and rivers. Now that we know how intimately wrapped up together we are—the acts of some always affecting the whole—what will it take to turn our collective will toward changing our habits, and our politics, so that we can leave a livable planet to the generations we hope will follow?

Post from: this lively earth
Copyright 2009 Priscilla Stuckey

Farms and cars polluting Rocky Mountain lakes

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Today, October 24, is Climate Action Day, and people around the world are gathering to show their support for reducing global warming. Check the 350.org site for lots of great international photos.

The problem is that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 387 parts per million, high enough to melt the Arctic. Climate scientists have said that a sustainable level is more like 350 ppm.

I wasn’t able to attend our biggest local event—a bike ride out to the coal-fired power plant east of Boulder, then a ride back to city center for a rally—but I did one small thing toward reducing the fossil fuel use that is spewing carbon dioxide into the air: I bought organic produce at the local farmers’ market.

Buying organic at farmers’ markets reduces fossil fuel use in at least two important ways:

1. No fossil fuels are refined or manufactured into fertilizers to spread on organic fields.
2. Less fossil fuel is used in transporting the food to market because it is grown nearby.

Post from: this lively earth
Copyright 2009 Priscilla Stuckey

Climate Action Day 2009

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