Ṣalāḥ versus Fasād: Development of Environmental Interpretation in Modern Tafsir

Abstract

Religion is emerging as a powerful force in raising public environmental awareness. A growing body of research has examined Islam specifically to observe and highlight its relationship with the environment. As presented in the portal “Islam and the Environment” produced by the Nature Conservation Center at the American University of Beirut, more than 2,000 Quranic verses contain ecological elements, some of which scholars link to environmental preservation. Still, the modern tafsir of these ecological verses remains largely unexamined. Drawing on the development of the digital portal and employing a qualitative thematic research, this study explores the role of contemporary social issues in modern tafsir, with a specific focus on the environmental crisis. Through a comparative analysis of the modern tafsir works of Fazlur Rahman (d. 1988) and al-Shaʿrāwī (d. 1998), this study demonstrates that mufassirūn who employ divergent methodological approaches nevertheless converged in re-orienting the Quranic themes of fasād (corruption) and ṣalāḥ (reform) toward a theocentric environmental ethics. These semantic shifts suggest that contemporary interpretations may be involved in broader societal changes within Islamic communities. The findings contribute to the ongoing conversation on religion and ecology, Quranic hermeneutics, and social reform.