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Cleansing the Soul, Healing the Earth

Reviving Our Environmental Conscience This Ramadhan

On the onset of Ramadhan, one of my colleagues, Mr. Shabir Ahmad from Srinagar, gently suggested that I write something about the holy month. I hesitated as my writing, more often than not, remains focused in environmental concerns, Wular Lake, pollution, degradation, social development and our collective failure to protect what sustains us. Ramadhan, I thought, from every pulpit and page. I politely declined. But the suggestion stayed with me till the late night.

As the day passed, a thought began to take shape: Why should Ramadhan be separated from responsibility? Why should fasting be detached from the ethical obligations that faith demands in everyday life, towards people, towards society, and towards the Earth itself? And so, I decided to pick up the pen, not to write a conventional Ramadhan piece, but to reflect on environmental responsibility through an Islamic lens, especially in an age suffocating under polythene plastic.

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The polythene bag has quietly become the most dangerous symbol of modern convenience. Used for minutes, discarded without thought, it survives for centuries, poisoning soil, choking water bodies, killing animals, and eventually returning to us through contaminated food and water. What appears to be a small, careless act has turned into a collective moral failure.

Environmental degradation today is not merely a scientific or administrative issue; it is a crisis of conscience.

Across our towns and villages, plastic clogs drains, floods streets, suffocates lakes, and renders fertile land unproductive. Cattle die after ingesting plastic waste. Birds and aquatic life disappear silently. These are not abstract environmental........

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