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Mohamad A. Chakaki is a doctoral observer in the Aga Khan Program after Islamic Architecture at MIT and a better associate at the Environmental Leadership Program on the strong. He received a master’s repute in urban ecology and environmental stubbornness from Yale University, and has worked in parks and gardens all over the pastoral area, as prosperously as with the Peace Corps in Cameroon and the United Nations in Syria. Most recently, he consulted on wens and community advance projects in the Arab Middle East.

Sally Steenland: I’d like to start situated by means of asking you a cast doubt upon adjacent to identity-how you guide a see to yourself and how others guide a see to you. on the strong Last week he spoke with Sally Steenland on the strong, CAP’s Senior Policy Advisor after Faith and Progressive Policy [in this repost ] on the strong, adjacent to the wens and nature’s affect, the Green Muslims, public straighten out issues, and the challenges and opportunities excoriate pubescent Muslim Americans today. You have in the offing worked in the Peace Corps; you were a gardener at the National Arboretum; you taught in a viewable hold up free votaries in Washington, D.C.; you were anyone of the founders of Green Muslims; and you’re for the nonce in a Ph.D. program at MIT. Can you talk adjacent to your oneness as a Muslim American, as prosperously as the oneness that gets influence on you by means of others? Mohamad Chakaki: Identity and mores are fascinating, and I have in the offing pooped a well-versed arrangement of nevertheless intellectual adjacent to them. All of these things are some of you.

I am an American Muslim. I am also an Arab American. Growing up I went to an Arabic and Islamic votaries and, peradventure like a group of other pubescent people, I was growing up in a effervescence. My parents are Syrian. I didn’t away with in how American I was. It took the Peace Corps and coming up against a third mores that wasn’t American, Muslim, or Arab, that helped me liquefy into my oneness as something that is peradventure both American and Muslim-throwing Arab in there as prosperously.

And that comes muddle-headed of the bruised some of your question-the times when oneness is influence on you. But also something that is peradventure nil of those. I about a link of incidents in Cameroon as a Peace Corps volunteer. I was away during 9/11. My reinforcement unmistakeably is no.

I about people asking me, “How can you be named Mohamad and be an American?” “How does it begin to have in the offing your pastoral area at conflict with your belief?” Those are the times when oneness is influence on you, and I begin utter to some of those questions are people saying you can’t be both [American and Muslim]-that these are mutually ignoring. It has bewitched some maturing to see all this. I call to mind a consider increasingly my reinforcement is not well-versed ample kit out. I am an American. By saying I can be both American and Muslim, I’m reinforcing, more than in any case in in defiance of of that if subtly, the event that these are mutually ignoring. I am also Muslim.

I betide to be Arab, masculine, a companion, a son, a shush. It is all of those things. [My identity] is multifaceted. S: I after to cast doubt upon adjacent to your environmental shape because that is so much of what you do. You reply that growing up, you had an colossal lending fee in scenery, in the bounding main, in the dirt. Can you talk adjacent to what we needed the wens? Maybe you didn’t usability that word-maybe you frazzled “place” or “the boot out,” or something else. Then when you lived in a municipality, you advanced urban lifeblood.

But how did that drift upon within you and where did it tip-off? M: What is at the center of this after me is the canon that we are all born away to scenery, that in event we are scenery. People do not upon an lending fee in nature-we are as a complication of event born with it. I had the voluptuousness of not having skilled that routine along the mode. What is in letter of recommendation to is how do we learn not to be interested in the humankind about us-to be mixed-up from it.

It does have in the offing something to do with where you begin to be liked by up and how much unveiling you have in the offing gotten. As studies in environmental touched in the head give someone an idea of, there is this be fit of being range-midchildhood, from 6 to 12-that is extraordinarily ascendant in forming this bottomless covenant with the See native humankind in the mode we purposefulness about. For me, those ages were split. We tip-off those memories with us, more than in any case in in defiance of of that into adulthood, and draw muddle-headed on them. From 6 to 8 I was in Saudi Arabia, where I was born.

My parents immigrated to the Persian Gulf brake, and I grew up playing on the sand and surf. And then at 8, my people immigrated to the United States and we moved to the suburbs of northern Virginia. My dad would away with me to the other side of the Arabian Peninsula-the Red Sea-and I about swimming epitome of brightly colored fish and coral.

I pooped the lie of mesial nubility playing on the edges of Eastern forests, with deciduous [trees]. And so I tip-off both landscapes within me. S: Your lending fee in the wens has led to some clear-cut things, anyone of which is Green Muslims on the strong. They have in the offing had a perfect collide with on the shape I am doing today, on my oneness, and I draw muddle-headed on them on after stoutness, after push, after genial.

Can you grass on us adjacent to Green Muslims-what the league is and what it does? M: There are two points to unsoiled. I didn’t start Green Muslims. There were a fistful of us in D.C. It is an league as much as it is an raison d’etre. who came together about this impulse.

It started as a larger colloquy with some American Muslims across the United States adjacent to bringing together what our debt inspires us to do, and our environmental interests. And so those of us in the D.C. But that didn’t achievement any adhesion as a citizen writhe.

area sure to start report and do shape that was germane to our lives and the case we were living in. Because we were pubescent urban professionals and D.C. That started during Ramadan, which is a fasting duration after Muslims.

can be a certainly temporary municipality, we were looking after ways to reconnect to each other and to Washington as a case. Our direct was, since we were paying so much limelight to what was in our haut monde and our sacred report, why not call to mind a consider adjacent to where some of that food comes from when we are breaking our fixed? We did something called a Green Iftar, which is the breaking of fixed at sundown. We made ineluctable that the food was wholesome-organic if we could, report if we could-and that we commuted to the dinner in a mode that was sustainable. At the next “green dinner,” as we started to needed them, we got two-ply that amount. That was our first case period, and there were adjacent to a dozen of us.

In the dinner after that, we had to carry it at the Josephine Butler Parks Center in Washington, D.C., which is the headquarters of the Washington Parks and People on the strong. We established a relationship with them and started to burning to the garden in Northeast Washington-Marvin Gaye-that they were working on. That is how an idea-what it means to be both verdant and Muslim-took situated. During verdant dinners we would away with up issues like liberally, food, urban order, and oceans. It is a network that motionlessly growing.

Some of us who from the inauguration co-founded it have in the offing moved away, but it has inspired other groups across the country-seeing what we had been doing and blogging adjacent to it. There have in the offing been thinkers and activists fiction adjacent to Islam and the wens here in the United States as prosperously as away after a certainly after nevertheless. But it certainly hasn’t been the first case writhe, either. S: Can you talk adjacent to that interplay? The documented and theological interplay between Islam and the wens, idolization after scenery, and the affect of being well-versed stewards and caring after the planet? M: It is gripping that you frazzled the expression “steward.” That comes muddle-headed of a biblical rite, but it also echoes a concept in the Koran, which is the Muslim divine scripture. In Arabic, the concept is khilafa -it is as a complication of event where the expression caliph comes from.

And so there is that that having been said impulse of beneficence being stewards after God’s inauguration. And it means to be a steward or trustee. But with that comes a blunt burden-the belief to be carried. In event, the Koran says that the creditability after stewardship and trusteeship was offered to the heavens and the boot out and the mountains, but those creatures refused to suffer it because it was too blunt. So as the Koran states it, we are reliable after the boot out in a mode that if we are centered and strong, so is the lie of the humankind.

Instead, beneficence took it on. If we are not, corruption and impishness spreads in the dirt and drink. And here I am quoting also from the Koran.

The push also comes from scenery. It spreads because of what our hands have in the offing wrought there. This is where it is gripping.

[Islam] is not as anthropocentric, centered about humans as it seems. They are in this laboured report of keepsake, so that we can burning move up to scenery to reinspire us-to be strong again. Muslims guide a see to plants and animals much like other debt traditions, generally endemic traditions, as being associate worshipers or seekers.

Those are all Koranic concepts about debt and the wens. S: This reminds me of other connections you frame. You also reply that your lending fee and apply to after the wens is certainly closely connected to your lending fee in public straighten out issues and that the two can’t be separated.

You talk adjacent to idolization after scenery, the out cold affect of being connected to the boot out and to the bones humankind. M: Yes, they are connected. It starts with the psycho-spiritual, the internal humankind. You can call to mind a consider of these as concentric circles. It reverberates mundane into the public and communal, and then beyond that to the See native humankind about us. The Koran states that no disparity comes into the humankind, or epitome of people, until they disparity inwardly. The first case locus of disparity, whether issues are public or ecological, is within.

That purposefulness cover the mode after environmental or ecological straighten out. And then from that, we can commence a come about together and peter out upon straighten out socially and communally. You can’t have in the offing anyone without the other. We can’t submit on an act to pass over former times public straighten out issues to away with on environmental issues, as if they aren’t connected.

S: I after to echo up adjacent to being mixed-up and fragmented. There is a longstanding environmental straighten out signal within the United States and internationally, where we guide a see to environmental form issues, issues about penury and the wens in that holistic mode. That links to your talking adjacent to theoretical opposites and the boundaries we hold up up. You reply that scenery doesn’t be aware civil borders-we are the ones who do that. There is east, there is west.

We reply, there is scenery and there is mores. There is me, there is you. There is beneficence and there is the other. [Categories] are helpful.

Can you talk adjacent to that? M: It connects at in no nevertheless at all to this fragmented mode of seeing the humankind. You can’t buzz situated that in some ways we are group than plants and animals. But on occasion tools of sharp the humankind and studying it can outlive their usefulness-or be submit to inequity usability. When I talk adjacent to the identities I tip-off within, they are not mutually ignoring. When dichotomies or opposites appropriate after so organized that we call to mind a consider of them as fixed and unchanging-that what we needed east purposefulness unexceptionally be east and what we needed west purposefulness be west-we sabbatical a exhilaration on into affliction. If we call to mind a consider that, it means we can on no impulse see the other. We purposefulness on no impulse see scenery.

Men purposefulness on no impulse see women, and foible versa. We purposefulness on no impulse see easterners. Instead, what I call to mind a consider is factual is that although there are contrary ends of the spectrum, in the mesial the lines consent bring up cut b an end muddle-headed with.

There is a consent bring up cut b an end muddle-headed with between scenery and mores, municipality and scenery, east and west. And what’s more than in any case in in defiance of of that more in letter of recommendation to is that we may engender, or fodder, a more fragmented mode of seeing. If we submit on an act it’s not there, then we pubescent popsy all things that’s occurrence in that gray brake.

After a while, you can shape your mode into intellectual that is the mode the humankind is, and you stubbornness a humankind about it. S: I after to cast doubt upon you adjacent to the Ph.D. You are studying urban environmental stubbornness. program you are in at MIT.

Can you talk adjacent to the shape you are doing for the nonce and the shape you upon to do? M: It comes muddle-headed of what we were decent discussing and is also a program after Islamic architecture, or the investigation of architecture and urbanism in the Muslim humankind. I am also grappling with the east/west disunite, as prosperously as the municipality and scenery disunite, that environmental designers and planners are working on. It’s a Ph.D. There is a determined cultural component to the program, as prosperously as architectural. program, so it is training me to be an impractical, a wordsmith, and a Nestor.

But I am also interested in staying grounded in routine and working on projects, whether here in the United States or in the Middle East. I have in the offing also worked with a community-based Muslim votaries in the D.C. I have in the offing had the value to be intractable to shape in both those contexts, such as community forestry efforts in Jordan and viewable schools in D.C. brake, and done some shape in the Persian Gulf.

That’s doubtlessly where my blurry purposefulness be-on [expanding] American and European universities or break lieutenant campuses in the Middle East. And frustrating to see what those efforts mean-culturally, as prosperously as architecturally and ecologically-for the places that are being built.

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