Religious Self and Sustainability Ideation: Islamic Perspective and Indonesian Context

Abstract

This chapter describes the role of the religious self in relation to sustainability ideation. The religious self that can foster sustainability ideation is the genuine religious self. The process is to realize the duty of humans as a caliphate and learn the science of God’s creation as part of human obedience to God. The traditional perspective of religiosity that separates the science of religion from the general science, and considers the general science has nothing to do with religiosity, needs to be retheorized. Retheorization is necessary. Thinking about religiosity provides the opportunity to a Muslim who studies the natural sciences and other sciences to carry out the human duties as caliph, namely guarding the earth.

1. Introduction

The environment is often excluded from the religiosity discourses which tend to focus on the ritual behavior of “worshiping” or “praising” God, and controlling its follower’s behavior through the establishment of rules claimed to be “religious law”. The popular theory of religiosity confirms these limitations. Glock and Stark [1] explained that one’s religious system can be differentiated into dimensions of ideology, ritual, experience, intellectual, and consequences. Other theories define religiosity based on its components, namely, religious practice, daily spiritual experiences, and religious/spiritual coping [2], and some focus on aspects of closeness to God, religious orientation and motivation, religious support, and religious struggle [3]. Downgrading religion to the domain of law, which contains guidance of conduct and rules to obey, and that those rules include only (1) the divine domain that governs the way a person perceives God and communicates with or prays to God; and (2) the social domain that governs the way person interacts with fellow human beings, causing humans to lose their opportunity to concern toward nature.

In terms of the risk, human give to nature, the absence of guidelines for behaving toward nature, potentially make humans ignorant of what is needed by nature to maintain its sustainability. The lowest risk exists when a person assumes that nature is none of human’s business. This kind of individual cannot be relied on to take care of nature, but at least do not damage nature. At a level in which the risk to nature is greater, the absence of behavioral guidelines toward nature can potentially lead ones to think that human has the freedom to take the most benefit of natural resources among other beings. Those are humans that potential to destroy nature at a higher scale of damage. At the greatest level of risk to nature are those who master the knowledge of natural resources and how to utilize them, then use that knowledge to utilize nature based on economic motives for the sake of their profits. The way the latter two groups of people behave is considered to be rooted in the anthropocentric worldview of monotheistic religions [4]. Those people are among the most to worry about, due to their extensive knowledge, great ability, and their authority, that is potential to influence nature on a macro/large scale.

Climatologist Paul Crutzen in 2000 introduced formally into the contemporary scientific and environmental discussion the notion that human beings have become the primary emergent geological force affecting the future of the Earth System. He declares a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, to displace the Holocene epoch of the last 10,000–12,000 years [5, 6]. The Anthropocene represents what has been called an “anthropogenic rift” in the history of the planet. Although often traced to the Industrial Revolution in the late eighteenth century, the Anthropocene is probably best seen as arising in the late 1940s and early 1950s [7]. Recent scientific evidence suggests that the period from around 1950 exhibits a major spike, marking a Great Acceleration in human impacts on the environment, with the most dramatic stratigraphic trace of the anthropogenic rift to be found in fallout radionuclides from nuclear weapons testing [8]. Confirmations that humans are the main cause of environmental damage at the earth scale in turn leads to the development of the psychology of sustainability [9, 10], and then of the Anthropocene psychology. The Anthropocene psychology is a breakthrough, by critically expanding the horizon of psychological knowledge, by seeking to investigate the relationship between the human and more than human worlds, a process that is interrelated with multi-species, multi-cultural, and multi-disciplinary approaches, and with a priority in specific situations [11].

It is a very important development when ecology has a subfield of “deep ecology” science that involves self-aspects as part of nature or the ecological environment. The concept initiated by the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess [12] believes that only by changing one’s view of their own self, that human is part of nature and not a unit separate from nature, will allow individuals to behave toward nature as if they behave for their own. Rothenberg argues that the idea of involving the concept of self in explaining the human-nature relationship, has already been valued in the tradition of Mahayana Buddhists [13]. In Christianity, the discussion is contained in the concept of eco-theology [14], while in Hinduism known as the concept of Tri-Hita Karana [15].

Humans-environment interaction demands humans as an actor who performs actions to the environment. People could choose to plant trees and limiting the use of plastic, or otherwise damage the environment such as throwing garbage out of place or not limiting water use. Whatever the behaviors, it is self-determined and has nothing to do with religion. Quran is a manuscript contains messages, prohibitions, appeals, and models for all Muslims around the world. However, those who are exposed to the exactly similar Quran have different attitudes and behaviors. Some people believe that Quran is true and fully obedient to the values of the Quran, others obey some of the rules and apply some of its values, and there are also groups who do not value Quran as the truth. Therefore it is not Quran’s words that determines human behavior, but human does. Based on this logic, the discourse of environmental conservation in Islam needs to consider the self as a modality that is connected to the environment. This chapter will discuss a Muslim’s self and their relationship to the environment or nature.

2. Muslim religious self

The discourse regarding self in psychology came up with the various concept about self, namely relational self [16], true self [17], and religious self [18]. The main value of the relational self is its connectedness with others, and for true self is the meaning of the self’s own individuality. Religious self values awareness of connectedness with God. In the Islamic religious perspective, being Muslim means recognizing that human was created by God to be a servant of God (Qur’an 51:56) to which the caliph values are attached (Qur’an 2:30). Thus, the religious self of a Muslim is the self that recognizes human subordination toward God and believes in his duty to become caliph.

Literally, caliph is a term for someone who takes care of various affairs or a leader. The narration of the verse (Qur’an 2:30) tells of the dialog between God and angels, which hints that before human is created, God mentions a plan of creating a caliph. It means that humans would be the creature of God who is tasked to take care of the earth on which human would live on. Responding to the word of God, in God’s dialog the angel expressed his doubts about human’s ability to become caliph, even explicitly regarding the existence of humans on earth as a destroyer. The dialog in the narrative ends with the statement that God knows human’s capacity (to take care of the earth). Based on the raw material of the human body, questioning human’s capacity to taking care of the earth is understandable. The reason comes to the similarities between raw materials of human body with the earth’s material, which causing humans to always be eagerly collecting sources on earth for their own needs. However, human has elements other than the body, namely the soul or non-material element on which God presents his (virtual) self on. The presence of God in the soul of the human being is an antecedent factor for the human to work with the qualities of God, namely nurturing (God has an all-nurturing nature) and loving love (Allah has the nature of rahman rahim) to nature (man belongs to the part of nature). A Muslim is said to have a genuine religious self when presenting a consistent self-awareness as a servant of Allah (consciousness based on Qur’an verse 51:56) with the main task of prospering the earth (consciousness based on Quran verse 11:61). Once the Muslim religious-self is activated, the orientation of their life will be as caliph, which is to take care of the earth until prosperity is maintained.

Being aware of having the responsibility to manage the earth will drive individuals to do self-preparation such as learning natural sciences, so that comes to their competence of handling nature in the best way in terms of sustainability. From the point of view of the traditional perspective of Islam, studying natural science is not considered as a part of religiosity, due to the fact that it is not directly related to God and is also not commanded by God. It is not true. Quran verse 96:1 narrates the command of God to humans to study God’s creation, through the phrase “learn, in the name of your God Who Created”. The statement mentioned that studying is commanded to be done in the name of God as a creator. That is, creation is the object of God’s command to study. Thus, the science that is commanded to be studied is the science of God’s creation, that is, the whole universe, including humans and their ecological environment. Through this understanding, one who studying physics, chemistry, biology, geology, oceanology, and humans, which is intended to be able to manage, utilize, and maintain nature, means has a religious self, because of carries out Qur’an verses 11:61 and 96:1. A person’s readiness to become a caliph is an antecedent factor of having the idea of sustainability.

Generate idea involves cognitive behavior. Thus, developing ideas requires a cognitive aspect that is trained to think logically and rationally. Sustainability ideation is related to the ownership of thoughts that connect behavior with nature, i.e. behave environmentally friendly. A textbook reference confirms the existence of sustainability ideation get benefits from concepts of conservation psychology, environmental psychology, and pro-environmental behavior [9].

Koger and Scott [10] stated that the idea of connecting environmental issues to human behavior is based on a paradigm related to the empirical fact that the main cause of natural damage is the maladaptive behavior of humans toward nature. A person with a religious self and a caliphate consciousness would potentially be willing to put himself to act against ecological destruction, including directly involve with community actions to drive pro-environmental behaviors, or thinking about macro solutions involving stakeholders and policymakers. Both practical perpetrators of pro-environmental actions, as well as strategic initiators of environmental policy, all fall into the category of the caliph.

In the psychological perspective of Islamic religiosity, it is the work of the religious self on a Muslim that performs “maintaining the earth” behavior at any level, which is referred to as carrying out the role of the caliph. The Caliph is the ideal status of a Muslim’s religious self. The religious self with the qualities of the caliph is the one who orients his behavior to maintain the sustainability of the ecological environment, as a form of obedience to Allah, or as a servant of God. Unfortunately, not every individual affiliated with the Islamic religion has such a qualified religious self. It could be that the religious self is artificial or pseudo-religious.

3. Pseudo-religious self

In Indonesia, the pseudo-religious self seems to occur on a fairly massive scale, as a result of systemic processes to focus religion on aspects of sharia (religious law and rules). When religious issues are focused on the legal aspects, then what the individual learns as a religious lesson is the obligation and prohibition, which is done to expect rewards and avoid punishment. Studying religion at this level, psychologically means:

1. Cognitively increase the volume of knowledge in terms of religious knowledge. It consists of the list of behaviors that must be done and not to do. For example, the list of daily obligations such as morning prayers, dzuhur, ashar, maghrib, and isya. The list of daily sunnah behaviors for example is rawatib prayer after maghrib prayer, or Dhuha prayer in the morning.

2. Affectively presented with punishment for violations of obligations or prohibitions, so much so that one would be afraid to abandon his religious obligations for fear of the punishment. The process of “scaremongering” is often carried out in various learning activities that are claimed to be religious lessons. When a person performs his duty for fear of being punished by God, then it is in that situation that his worship behavior is being done for his own benefit or safety. The behavior is not a genuine obedience as a servant of God.

3. The motives are faced with pressure or insistence to carry out the necessary actions. In a country with relatively interdependent self-construal such as Indonesia, adherence to groups is expected behavior. In groups that claim to be religious, the activity of encouraging each other to perform obligations is already considered an obligation. If then there are members of the group who perform their worship obligations because they do not want to be ostracized by the group, then in that situation the behavior of worship is to meet his needs so as not to be ostracized by his group.

Psychologically, a person whose religion focuses on the three psychic domains will display worship behavior with a psychic condition oriented to his own needs, namely having the knowledge person needs in order to survive as part of his religious group, and perform worship so that he survives God’s punishment, or so as not to be ostracized by his religious group. The second thing is, unfortunately, in Indonesia, in general, religious knowledge that must be learned by school students is dominated by knowledge about performing ritual worship, namely, among others, mandatory prayers five times per day (daily rituals), berzakat (periodic rituals of giving according to the income generation system), and fasting (annual rituals for Ramadan and weekly rituals for Fasting Mondays and Thursdays). Through religion at this level, actions against the environment and nature are not “recognized” as part of religious knowledge.

In Indonesia, what is considered as religious education that produces religious science is among others, learning how to pray, how to fast, and how to read the Qur’an. The science of nature is not categorized as a religious issue. Systemically the separation of the two types of knowledge in Indonesia is expressed in the dualism of schools, namely, religious schools and public schools. Religious schools are regulated by the ministry of religion and study “religious knowledge”, while public schools have curricula regulated by the ministry of education and studying natural sciences, social sciences, pure sciences (science), and others. Through the separation of religious schools and public schools, religious schools produce graduates who have knowledge of ritual science and are skilled at performing rituals, as well as basing their behavior in general on knowledge of rituals that must be performed and behaviors that are prohibited to be performed. In contrast, public school graduates have general knowledge, with scientific specifications, including physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, and all derivatives such as the science of technology, agriculture, animal husbandry, and health.

The existence of external factors that systemically separate religious science from general science, and hegemony from religionists who claim religious knowledge as a science that is more “religious” than general science, makes members of the Muslim community who want to become religious then influenced to prioritize the study of religion over general science. Parents who want their children to grow up religiously choose to send their children to religion-related schools rather than in public schools. Based on data from the Ministry of Religious Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia, there are currently approximately 26,975 pesantren (boarding schools to study Islamic religion) with students totaling approximately 4,009,692 people in 2019 [19]. The education produces individuals with a religious self who focus their religiosity on the ritual aspect (ritualistic religious self) without questioning the involvement of reason or thought in their behavior.

To the extent that when the execution of a person’s ritual behavior is carried out for the reason of avoiding God’s punishment or expecting retribution from God, then the purpose of his behavior is for his own benefit. Is it wrong? Of course not. However, such behavior is not entirely the act of a servant’s devotion to God or God-oriented, or for God to be happy, but rather to benefit himself. Such a ritualistic religious self is characterized by a tendency to increase the frequency of its behavior based on the calculations of merit or gifts from God. Even more extreme is when the worship is carried out only as a ritual, as a result of habituation in the past, so as to cause guilt, feeling something less or uncomfortable, when not performing the usual rituals performed, but not feel guilty when the ritual behavior done with a self-oriented motive.

The ritualistic religious self whose ritual behavior is carried out only as a habit psychologically does not involve cognitive aspects to present meaning in his behavior, either the meaning that the worship is essentially obedience to God or a way to connect to God. The worship behavior is only a mechanical activity of his body, which is accustomed to display such behavior when the time comes. With such a psychological state, when judged based on the understanding of the religious self as a self-connected to God or a self-dominated by the awareness of God, the nature of religiosity of him will become pseudo-religious.

In communities that are systemically dominated by these views, so usually, especially in collectivistic cultured societies, most individual members of the community will have the same views. It is at this stage that internal factors, namely, psychic conditions, will prevent a person from reaching a religious self. The mechanism of occurrence of internal factors begins from the exposure of a person massively and consistently to the view that separates religious science from general science.

The narrowness and inconsistency of exposure is a process of hegemony, which aimed at the dominant group and can instill its ideas in minority groups [20]. Through the process of hegemony, one can have a new ideology that is socialized by the dominant group. The massive penetration of messages in the external environment can obscure the presence of other messages in the environment, so the individual has the potential to see the massive message as the only message or the only truth. In the event that the massive message is the dualism of the sciences, then the individual will become aware that the ideal way or even the only way to be religious is to learn religion in religious schools and students who have studied religious science will consider that carry out religious rules is the most important behavior in life.

In fact, because the ritual is in the domain of behavior, then behaving with the intention of carrying out the ritual will have a different impact compared to behaving with intentions that are based on deep thinking regarding the impact of the behavior. The perpetrator of ritual behavior perceives completing the task when the ritual has been carried out, while the perpetrator of the planned behavior will think about the impact of the behavior that has been done and thinks of ways to improve the behavior so that the impact of his behavior is increased. How does this relate to sustainability ideation?

The behavior of the perpetrator with the religious self is ritualistic, positioning the behavior as a form of adherence to religious rules. With this perception, individual members of the community with ritualistic religious self psychologically will tend to (1) put forward the memory part of the cognitive (remembering knowledge of laws and rules) rather than utilizing rational logic; and (2) regard the behavior of religious rituals as his top priority and duty as a human being. With this psychological tendency, the ritualistic religious self-owner will only perform actions other than ritual worship, including pro-environmental behavior, if there is a law that requires or encourages humans to do so. They are not reliable to develop strategic ideas such as sustainability ideation for two reasons: (1) less of thinking rationally; and (2) tend to exclude environmental behavior from religious behavior due to not mentioned in the Qur’an as a law or rules.

4. Eco-theology and religious self

The dominant human institutions in the Anthropocene epoch, as argued by Pickering [21], are currently trapped in a position of alienation and separation from the Earth system, constantly ‘to repress’ information on ecological conditions at various scales, and prioritizing economics with narrow and short interests. Sustainability ideation co-evolves with ecological reflexivity, which consists of three behavioral components, namely (a) recognizing the results and impacts of its appearance on the socio-ecological system, and listening carefully to feedback from the system; (b) rethinking critically on the basic values associated with the feedback; and (c) responds adequately by transforming their gait and appearance. The Anthropocene is also an invitation to become aware of the ways in which life continues, and the living space of human generations in a more than human world [11].

The term Eco-theology began to spread when it was realized that the anthropocentric worldview of monotheistic religions was one of the factors that led to the ecological crisis. Their religious references are believed to command humans to dominate nature. This resulted in the emergence of an approach to nature that is instrumental rather than respectful. These beliefs then become fertile fields for the development of science and technology that is destructive to the environment [4].

Quddus continued that criticisms of monotheistic teachings also led to a movement to end the domination of non-ecological ideology, human control, and control over the earth, arguing that human who is part of the earth and the earth does not belong to human. Although there is a rejection mainly from the religious community, there is also a significant role of eco-theological ideas in efforts to formulate and reinterpret the theological and ethical concepts of monotheism to be more environmentally friendly.

The basis of understanding eco-theology is the realization that the environmental crisis is not only a secular problem but also an acute religious problem because it begins with a false religious understanding of life [22]. In the reference, it is also explained that Islamic eco-theology sourced from eco-theology and sacred cosmology can contribute positively as guiding principles of natural management. This contribution is evident in several principles of Islamic eco-theology, namely: the principle of tauhīd (unity of all creation), the principle of amānah-khalīfah (trustworthiness-moral leadership), and ākhirah (responsibility) [22]. The caliphs in Islamic eco-theology are principles that intersect with the religious self. While the final principle related to accountability in the life after death, for the behavior carried out when in the world, intersects with the pseudo-religious self. In an ecological perspective, the focus of attention is the willingness to take pro-environmental actions. It does not matter whether the perpetrator commits his pro-environment actions because of his religious self or because of pseudo-religious self. Although the two look the same in terms of their output, namely pro-environmental behavior, but antecedent and its consequences are different.

Either pro-environmental behavior or environmentally-friendly behavior, when its antecedent factor is pseudo-religious self, then psychologically means that the consideration of the behavior is getting rewards or avoiding punishment. Such thinking requires a prerequisite that is, that pro-environmental behavior is a behavior that has rewards. Unfortunately, in the study of religious science in religious schools in Indonesia, pro-environmental behavior is generally not discussed as behavior regulated by sharia, and is not addressed as behavior that falls into the category of behavior with rewards or punishments. Because pro-environmental behavior is considered not included in the behavior that will be rewarded or punished, then Muslim individuals who adopt Islamic values do not feel the need to learn, plan, or display the behavior.

The principle of the caliph contains two words, trust and caliph. Trust means a message that is entrusted and must be fulfilled because it is related to the fulfillment of the rights of other parties, while the caliph means the leader or party who takes care of something. Thus, linguistically the mandate-caliph means that man has a responsibility that must be carried out as a leader because the obligation relates to other parties who have the right to receive it. Refer to the Qur’an verse (2:30) that man is the caliph, then based on the meaning of caliph, every human being is leader. At the end of the verse, it is convinced that man has the capacity or feasibility to become caliph. The next verses (2:31–33) narrated that the eligibility of human to become caliph or taking care of the earth is refer to the high order thinking that human has, put them as the only able being to master knowledge of the workings of the entire system on earth. In terms of religious self, especially about the dualism of religious sciences - general sciences, then eco-theology referring to the Qur’an verses 2:30-33 confirms the importance of building self-religiosity through learning and mastery of knowledge about the universe, or which followers of dualism of science categorize as a general science.

5. Discussion

Religiosity, whose definition focuses only on behavior as a ritual practice without the basis of spirituality, namely self-awareness as a creation assigned to the caliphate, will tend to apply behavioral practices that are not environmentally friendly and not sustainability-oriented. It does not mean that the behavior is bad, but the ecologically oriented behavior becomes not prioritized because it is considered not to contribute to the religiousness of the self. This kind of religiosity is usually adopted by one who believes in the dualism of religious science - general science.

Based on the fact that the Qur’an as the main reference of Muslims does not distinguish religious science from general science, and that the dualism of science is not constructive towards the sustainability of nature, it is important to redefine religiosity and the values of the caliphate. In terms of religious self, redefining religiosity means directing individual to develop genuine religious self instead of pseudo religious self. Referring to eco-theology, attention should be focused on the individual’s awareness of his position as part of nature and that there is an interdependent relationship between them. The meaning of the interdependence is that the behavior of a person directed at the environment or nature can intervene in natural processes, so that the working system of nature can change in such a way that it will eventually change the living space of the individual.

In terms of the application of religiosity theory in Indonesia, the main challenge is the number of community groups affiliated with islam and different from each other. Not to mention the challenges that come from Muslim individuals with non-religious self. Indonesia is a country where person grows up in a multifaceted environment, including religion, culture, ethnicity, race, and education. In a multifaceted environment, individuals have a great opportunity to have a self whose the nature of the construal is multiple. Figure 1 visualizes the self of Indonesians.

Figure 1.

Multi-construal model of Indonesian self

Indonesians grow in a multi-faceted context, thus forming a multiconstrual self [18]. Such a self model allows the owner to function based on a certain self at one time, and at another time using another self. The dominant self can also vary from one person to another. The arrow in the center of the circle in Figure 1 indicates that one self can be dominant and narrow the function of the other self, even negating it. In addition, the construal is also not only built from the four phases but can be influenced by more phases.

In the self with multiple construals as visualized in Figure 1, then intervention to religiosity can play a role in determining the quality of his self only if the religious self is indeed the dominant self in him. Conversely, when a person lives with his cultural self, then the religious self may be irrelevant to him. Especially because in Indonesia religious identity is mandatory for every citizen, so people can have a religious identity without having a religious self. In this group of people, the need to activate sustainability ideation needs to be done through self other than religious self.

6. Conclusion

Islamic religiosity, through the concept of religious self, can be used to develop sustainability ideation in Muslims. Developing the idea of sustainability requires a paradigm shift in religious standards. The original paradigm was that those who were considered religious were those who obeyed religious law (sharia), with indicators of religiosity is the implementation of ritual worship. The paradigm needs to be changed, that is, a person is said to be religious when able to activate self-awareness that man is the caliph. Those who realize that man is a caliph will have the will to use intelligence to master the knowledge of God’s creation and use that knowledge to utilize nature taking into account its sustainability.

For implementation in Indonesia, this possibility can be realized through deconstructing the dualism of science between religious science and general science, which has the potential to exclude knowledge about God’s creation such as biology, chemistry, physics, agriculture, forestry, geology, oceanology, and others, from sciences that are considered important according to a religious perspective.

The process is certainly long-term as it leads to fundamental changes in the dualism of science and religion. Another way that can be taken is to establish alternative schools that are not in the dualism. The initiator of this alternative school called it a field school, which is to make the forest and nature as a school. The basic idea is based on the weakness of formal schools that teach a lot of knowledge but lack coherence with the needs of children living around forests, beaches, and mountains to live in such places. Formal schools have a curriculum that prepares a student to become a worker, practitioner, or professional, but cannot be used to live in nature. Then, field school is the solution, which is to keep the village child remains a village person who has knowledge about nature and the village where he grew up and the knowledge of how to live in that place. Children in forest villages learn about forests and how to live by utilizing and maintaining forests. Children in coastal villages learn about the sea and how to live by utilizing the sea and guarding the ocean. Some of the field schools in Indonesia include Lawallu Village, Soppeng Riaja District, Barru Regency, South Sulawesi initiated by the Yayasan Hutan Biru (Blue Forest Foundation) [23], dan Field School held in Marena Indigenous Community, Pekalobean Village, Anggeraja District, Enrekang Regency, South Sulawesi, initiated by the Law and Community Association (HuMa) in collaboration with the Alliance of Indigenous Peoples of the Archipelago (AMAN) South Sulawesi [24].

Acknowledgments

Thanks and appreciation are given to our students in the course of community psychology, and environmental psychology (2020, 2021, and 2022), Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Padjadjaran. In the end of 2019, Retno Hanggarani Ninin, as the head of department of social psychology invited Noer Fauzi Rachman, psychologist and environmentalist to joint to be lecturer, after decades of working as a community and environmental practitioner, and introduced the science of community psychology, conservation psychology, environmental psychology, psychology for sustainability and Anthropocene psychology.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.