1.1 Ecological Götterdämmerung: Defining the Crisis as a Veiling of the Heart

The ecological crisis demands that we reconsider not just the sustainability of political structures but the capacity for human perception and governance themselves. At stake is the ability of political systems to respond to an impending Götterdämmerung—a twilight of the gods, heralding ecological collapse, and whether contemporary governance is equipped to deal with this existential reckoning, or whether an altogether different approach is required. As early as 1974, Robert Heilbroner warned in An Inquiry into the Human Prospect that our species could be the first in history to knowingly choose its own extinction.¹ Likewise, Robert C. Burton observes:

“As far as we are aware, [ours] is the first species that has borne the burden of choosing to become extinct.”²

Yet this crisis—climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, pollution, and resource depletion—is not merely an environmental breakdown but a symptom of a deeper malaise: a fundamental failure in how humanity perceives itself in relation to the natural world. Standard political philosophy misidentifies the problem, presenting it as a question of governance:

• Should the fight against climate change be led by liberal democracies or authoritarian states?
• Do we need top-down state regulation (eco-authoritarianism) or decentralised local governance (eco-anarchism) instead?

From a Sufi perspective, however, this debate is misdirected. The ecological crisis is not merely a failure of policy but a failure of perception—a veiling (hijab) of the heart from its spiritual duty toward creation.³

The Spiritual Extinction That Precedes Ecological Collapse

The consequences of this rupture in perception extend beyond governance and policy; they speak to the very nature of human existence. A Naqshbandi Sufi master of the Golden Chain would remind us that the true catastrophe is not merely ecological collapse, but the spiritual extinction that precedes it—a forgetting of our divine purpose and the sacred interconnectedness of all creation. Humanity is not simply an autonomous actor on the world stage, but a trustee (Amin) of divine stewardship (Khilafah), endowed with the capacity for spiritual perception through the lataif (subtle faculties of the heart). When these faculties remain dormant—veiled by materialism, heedlessness (ghaflah), and unchecked desire—the external world becomes a reflection of that inner corruption.

As Shaykh Bahauddin Naqshband (q) taught:

“The one who knows himself knows his Lord. The one who forgets himself is already lost.”⁴

Thus, the true crisis is not external but internal—rooted in a severance from the Divine Reality (Haqq). The Qur’an warns:

ظَهَرَ الْفَسَادُ فِي الْبَرِّ وَالْبَحْرِ بِمَا كَسَبَتْ أَيْدِي النَّاسِ لِيُذِيقَهُم بَعْضَ الَّذِي عَمِلُوا لَعَلَّهُمْ يَرْجِعُونَ

Ẓahara al-fasādu fī al-barri wa al-baḥri bimā kasabat aydī an-nāsi liyudhīqahum baʿḍa alladhī ʿamilū laʿallahum yarjiʿūn.

“Corruption has appeared on land and sea because of what the hands of people have earned, so that He may make them taste some of what they have done, that perhaps they might return.” (Qur’an 30:41)⁵

The ecological devastation we witness is not merely a scientific inevitability but a karmic consequence—a manifestation of heedlessness (ghaflah) on a planetary scale.

The Naqshbandi Solution: Awakening the Heart to Amanah

The Naqshbandi masters emphasize that true transformation begins not with policy shifts, but with inner purification (tazkiyah)—the awakening of the heart (qalb) to its inherent responsibility. It is not that humanity chooses extinction, as Burton suggests, but rather that it drifts toward it unconsciously, veiled by egoic perception (nafsani nazar) that no longer recognizes the world as a divine trust (Amanah).⁶

This perspective reframes the debate:

• The failure of governance is secondary to the failure of the self to perceive its purpose.
• Without a revival of spiritual perception, no political system—democratic, authoritarian, or anarchic—can truly address the crisis.

As Ibn Khaldun’s theory of Asabiyyah (social cohesion) suggests, civilisations collapse when their inner unity disintegrates.⁷ From a Naqshbandi perspective, this unity (tawhid) must first be restored within the self before it can be reflected in the world.

Thus, the ecological crisis is not simply about choosing extinction or survival; it is about choosing:

• Heedlessness (ghaflah) or remembrance (dhikr)
• Separation (hijab) or unity (tawhid)
• The ego (nafs) or the awakened soul (ruh)

The path forward is not just policy reform but a spiritual reawakening—a return to the reality that all of creation is infused with divine presence. As Ibn Arabi writes in the Futuhat al-Makkiyah:

“The world is an illusion, and true knowledge is to see it as it is—with the light of divine presence.”⁸

This is the sacred trust (Amanah) that humanity was chosen to bear.

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Footnotes 

¹. Robert L. Heilbroner, An Inquiry into the Human Prospect (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1974).
². Robert C. Burton, Philosophy and the Environmental Crisis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 110.
³. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1976).
⁴. Shaykh Bahauddin Naqshband, Maqamat Bahauddin (Istanbul: İsmail Ağa Publications, 2003).
⁵. Qur’an 30:41 – Translation from The Noble Qur’an.
⁶. Imam Rabbani Ahmad Sirhindi, Maktubat, trans. Muhammad Masum (Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1977).
⁷. Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, trans. Franz Rosenthal (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958).
⁸. Ibn Arabi, Futuhat al-Makkiyah, trans. Michel Chodkiewicz (New York: Pir Press, 2002).

 

1.2 The Green Umbrella: Political Divisions and the Crisis of Perception

Under the broad “green umbrella”, an array of political ideologies and environmental philosophies converge on a fundamental truth: There is no free lunch in nature.⁹ Yet, in spite of this shared acknowledgment, green political thought remains deeply divided, split between two competing visions of governance:

1. Eco-anarchism, which advocates for localised, non-hierarchical ecological governance, emphasizing grassroots decision-making and communal self-regulation.
2. Eco-authoritarianism, which insists that strong, centralized state control is necessary to enforce environmental sustainability at a global scale.

These two approaches do not merely differ in method—they reflect entirely distinct philosophies of human nature and governance. Eco-anarchists, inspired by Murray Bookchin and James C. Scott, argue that state control inherently alienates people from nature, creating top-down bureaucracies that prioritise economic growth over ecological balance.¹⁰ Elinor Ostrom’s work on common-pool resource management further supports this, demonstrating that community-driven governance models can be more effective than centralised environmental policies.¹¹ Eco-authoritarians, however, maintain that democratic governance is too slow and fractured to tackle an imminent planetary crisis. Drawing on William Ophuls’ argument in Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity, they claim that only centralised ecological mandates—imposed through strict state regulation—can prevent catastrophic collapse.¹² Yet, both perspectives share the same fundamental flaw—they reduce the ecological crisis to a political engineering problem, overlooking its spiritual and ontological roots. This is where the Sufi critique emerges as a third path, reframing the crisis not as a failure of governance but as a failure of perception.

The Sufi Critique: The Crisis of Perception

From a Sufi perspective, the true rupture is not between state and anarchic governance, but between humanity and divine reality (Haqq). The Qur’an itself warns that corruption in the natural world is merely a manifestation of corruption within human perception:

ظَهَرَ الْفَسَادُ فِي الْبَرِّ وَالْبَحْرِ بِمَا كَسَبَتْ أَيْدِي النَّاسِ لِيُذِيقَهُم بَعْضَ الَّذِي عَمِلُوا لَعَلَّهُمْ يَرْجِعُونَ

Ẓahara al-fasādu fī al-barri wa al-baḥri bimā kasabat aydī an-nāsi liyudhīqahum baʿḍa alladhī ʿamilū laʿallahum yarjiʿūn.

“Corruption has appeared on land and sea because of what the hands of people have earned, so that He may make them taste some of what they have done, that perhaps they might return.” (Qur’an 30:41)¹³

This verse embodies the essence of the Sufi critique: environmental destruction is not a policy failure, but a spiritual consequence—a karmic mirror reflecting humanity’s disconnection from divine trust (Amanah). In Islamic cosmology, humanity is not merely an economic or political actor—it is the trustee (Amin) of divine stewardship (Khilafah). Yet this trust is not guaranteed—it must be realised through spiritual purification (tazkiyah) and divine remembrance (dhikr). The Naqshbandi Sufi tradition teaches that true humanity is not biological, but metaphysical—a state attained through discipline, not inherited by birth. As Imam Rabbani Ahmad Sirhindi writes in the Maktubat:

“The body alone is not the human; the human is that which knows its Lord.”¹⁴

When the lataif (subtle faculties of the heart) remain dormant, veiled by heedlessness (ghaflah) and unchecked desire, humanity descends into a lower existential state, where it forgets both its divine purpose and its responsibility toward creation. Shaykh Bahauddin Naqshband (q), the renewer of the Naqshbandi Golden Chain, warned:

“The one who knows himself knows his Lord. The one who forgets himself is already lost.”¹⁵

Friedrich Nietzsche also recognized this alienation from nature, arguing that modern civilization had torn humanity away from its primal instincts, leaving it spiritually and existentially adrift.¹⁶ Yet, while Nietzsche saw this as a secular existential crisis, the Sufi perspective goes further: Nietzsche’s solution was a return to the primal, whereas Sufism calls for a return to the Divine. From the Naqshbandi lens, alienation (hijab) is not merely psychological, but ontological—a severance from tawhid, the unity that binds humanity, nature, and the divine into a single, living reality.¹⁷ As Seyyed Hossein Nasr explains in Man and Nature, modern civilization’s alienation from the sacred is not merely a loss of ecological balance, but a rupture in the metaphysical order itself.¹⁸

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Footnotes 

⁹. Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy (Oakland: AK Press, 2005).
¹⁰. James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).
¹¹. Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
¹². William Ophuls, Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1977).
¹³. Qur’an 30:41 – Translation from The Noble Qur’an.
¹⁴. Imam Rabbani Ahmad Sirhindi, Maktubat, trans. Muhammad Masum (Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1977).
¹⁵. Shaykh Bahauddin Naqshband, Maqamat Bahauddin (Istanbul: İsmail Ağa Publications, 2003).
¹⁶. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin Books, 1961).
¹⁷. Ibn Arabi, Futuhat al-Makkiyah, trans. Michel Chodkiewicz (New York: Pir Press, 2002).
¹⁸. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1976).

 

1.3 The State of Nature: Hobbes, Locke, and the Ecological Crisis

Which brings us to a basic philosophical tension within Western political thought: the Lockean view of governance as derived from individual rights and free markets vs. the Hobbesian view of governance as state-imposed order. This split has deep consequences for political systems’ responses to the ecological crisis. Focus on rights of individuals, property, limited government intervention — John Locke, classical liberal democrat ¹¹ Yet, in an age of climate catastrophe, Locke’s framework finds itself unprepared to confront the tragedy of the commons and citizens who destroy common environmental resources to the ruin of all. ¹² In stark contrast, Thomas Hobbes perceived the state of nature as chaotic and violence-ridden, needing a powerful sovereign (Leviathan) to forcibly impose order on society. ¹³ Some eco-authoritarians claim that environmental collapse requires a Hobbesian approach, wherein the individual must sacrifice freedoms in deference to strict ecological laws enforced at the multi-national level to survive. ¹⁴ From a Sufi viewpoint, though, both Locke and Hobbes miss the central problem. The Qur’an states:

إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ لَا يُغَيِّرُ مَا بِقَوْمٍ حَتَّىٰ يُغَيِّرُوا۟ مَا بِأَنفُسِهِمْ

Inna llāha lā yughayyiru mā bi-qawmin ḥattā yughayyirū mā bi-anfusihim.

“Indeed, Allah does not change a people’s condition until they change what is within themselves.” (Qur’an 13:11) ¹⁵

Internal (the uncontrolled ego (nafs al-ammara) drives both consumerism and ecological devastation and drives fragmentation of all governance. ¹⁶ The Qur’anic concept of nafs al-ammara (the commanding ego) finds its modern expression in the limitless consumerism of industrial capitalism. Heidegger’s critique of ‘technological nihilism’ echoes this insight, as modernity’s obsession with efficiency and control over nature is itself an extension of an unchecked, materialistic ego that seeks dominion rather than harmony.* William Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-ʿArabi’s Metaphysics of Imagination (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989).17

 

1.4 Eco-Authoritarianism: A Necessary Evil?

Although eco-authoritarianism is a practical response to the crisis, it carries ethical risks. Is it okay to sacrifice democracy for environmental survival? But are authoritarian regimes to be trusted with ecological sustainability, or will they exploit environmental concerns to entrench political rule? ¹8 There is a history of authoritarian regimes using Environmental policies to increase the reach of state control. 19 This centralised control is claimed by critics to breed corruption, inefficiencies and repression of dissent. [This] eco-authoritarianism is also likely to alienate populations and, in so doing, breed resistance rather than cooperation. But advocates insist that under conditions of existential threat, only totalitarian control is a realistic option. They argue that democracies are broken, slow, disunited and shortsighted — and therefore incapable of enacting the radical change needed to avoid some kind of environmental apocalypse. In this perspective, eco-authoritarianism is a necessary evil — a distasteful but inescapable fact of life in a civilisation self-destructing. 20 But this response from the Sufi perspective is that spiritual governance is prior to political governance. If the human perceptual realm is shrouded in darkness, no political arrangement — democratic or authoritarian — can ever hope to solve the crisis. Iqbal’s Khudi is not an individualistic egoism but a call for spiritual self-actualisation that aligns personal will with divine order. Applied to the ecological crisis, this means cultivating an inner transformation where sustainability is not imposed through coercion but emerges naturally from a heightened state of ethical consciousness.

1.5 Conclusion: The Ecological Crisis as a Spiritual Reckoning

The ecological crisis is commonly framed as a policy failure, but it is, at its core, a crisis of perception. The mystical tradition of Sufism teaches that humanity is not a master over nature but an integral part of it. Governance without spiritual transformation is empty rhetoric; sustainability is impossible without an awakened heart. The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ (‘alayhi ṣ-ṣalātu wa-s-salām) said:

«إِنَّ الدُّنْيَا حُلْوَةٌ خَضِرَةٌ، وَإِنَّ اللَّهَ مُسْتَخْلِفُكُمْ فِيهَا، فَيَنْظُرُ كَيْفَ تَعْمَلُونَ»

Inna ad-dunyā ḥulwatun khaḍirratun, wa inna llāha mustakhlifukum fīhā, fa-yanẓuru kayfa ta‘malūn.

“The Earth is green and beautiful, and Allah has appointed you His stewards over it.”²1

Thus, the greatest political challenge is not merely to legislate sustainability but to awaken a veiled humanity to the truth of its sacred trust. Thus, the solution is not merely political reform but a restoration of perception. Just as the Prophet ﷺ Sayyid al-Kawnayn (Master of Both Worlds), described the Earth as ‘green and beautiful’ (ḥulwatun khaḍirratun), this beauty must be internalised within human perception before it can be reflected in governance. A shift from ego-driven policies to a model of ihsan (spiritual excellence) is the only path toward true sustainability.22

notes

1. Robert L. Heilbroner, An Inquiry into the Human Prospect (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1974).
2. Robert C. Burton, Philosophy and the Environmental Crisis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 110.
3. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1976).
4. Qur’an 33:72 – Translation from The Noble Qur’an.
5. Richard Foltz, Animals in Islamic Tradition and Muslim Cultures (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2006).
6. Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy (Oakland: AK Press, 2005).
7. Garrett Hardin, The Tragedy of the Commons, Science 162, no. 3859 (1968): 1243-1248.
8. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (London: Andrew Crooke, 1651).
9. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin Books, 1961).
10. William Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-ʿArabi’s Metaphysics of Imagination (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989).
11. John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (London: Awnsham Churchill, 1689).
12. Richard A. Matthew, Controlling the State: The Politics of Environmental Regulation (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001).
13. Qur’an 13:11 – Translation from The Noble Qur’an.
14. Al-Ghazali, The Alchemy of Happiness, trans. Claud Field (London: Murrays, 1909).
15. Timothy Morton, Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016).
16. William Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-ʿArabi’s Metaphysics of Imagination (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989).
17. Ibn ‘Arabi, The Meccan Revelations, trans. Michel Chodkiewicz (New York: Pir Press, 2002).
18. Mark Beeson, Environmental Populism: The Politics of Survival in the Anthropocene (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).
19. E.F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered (London: Blond & Briggs, 1973).
20. William Ophuls, Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1977).
21. Hadith – Sunan at-Tirmidhi 2340; classified as Sahih (authentic).
22. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1976).