Integrating Environmental Fiqh into Islamic Religious Education: A Conceptual Framework for Developing Students’ Ecological Awareness

Abstract

The contemporary global environmental crisis can no longer be viewed merely as a standalone technical-ecological issue, but rather as a concrete manifestation of humanity’s moral and spiritual crisis resulting from the dominance of an exploitative and destructive anthropocentric paradigm. Within the Islamic academic tradition, theological and legal discourses on environmental conservation are often still fragmentary, textual, and confined to the normative level in seminar settings, thus failing to be transformed into operational practices within Islamic education. This study aims to offer a theoretical reconstruction as well as a comprehensive practical and applied model through the integration of the concepts of Islamic eco-theology and environmental fiqh into the framework of ecopedagogy, in order to foster a holistic ecological consciousness amongst learners in educational institutions. Using a qualitative approach based on library research, this study adopts the concept of Maqasid al-Shari’ah— specifically through the expansion of the element of hifz al-bi’ah (preserving the environment) based on the usul principle “mâ lâ yatimmu al-wajib illâ bihî fa huwa wajib”—as its primary theoretical framework. An in-depth analysis is conducted of the cosmological relationship within the ‘triangle arrangement’ (God, humanity and nature), which is then synthesised within the realm of education. The main findings of this article indicate that environmental fiqh is capable of providing legal certainty (tasyri’i) and clear ecological norms in prohibiting the destruction of nature, whilst eco-Sufism successfully bridges students’ spirituality so that they view nature as an âyah (sign of divine greatness). The main contribution of this research lies in proposing an integrative eco-pedagogy model that reconstructs four key components of Islamic Religious Education (IRE)—namely, learning objectives, curriculum content, project-based eco pedagogy, and authentic assessment. The pedagogical implications of this model are a significant epistemological transition, namely shifting PAI learning from passive, formalistic rituals of worship towards transformative, concrete actions for environmental conservation. The limitations of this study lie in its purely conceptual and theoretical nature; therefore, future research is recommended to empirically test the effectiveness of this model through field studies in formal educational institutions