Analyzing the Philosophical-Theological Rules of the Right to Environment: A Comparative Study of Contemporary Law and the Law of Islam

Abstract

The right of access to a healthy environment is one of the most important rights in the current discourses on human rights and citizenship. Pursuant to this right, everyone has the right to live in a healthy, clean and unpolluted environment. The emergence and importance of this right in the area of public law was the result of the evolution of human being’s collective life style, the change of human-state relations with nature, and forgetting the ecological semi-systems around the self in the rapid process of development after the Industrial Revolution. Therefore, the fundamental question which arises is that on the basis of which foundations such a right is formed for humanity and how it is justified in terms of philosophical-theological views reflected in Islamic sources as well as in modern texts? In this paper, it has been tried to address some aspects of this issue. Accordingly, first, in addition to conceptual analysis, we deal with the philosophical-theological foundations of the right to the environment (1). Then, the general philosophical-theological rules of this right from the perspective of Islamic law would be discussed (2). The basic presumption based on which this paper is grounded is that the right to environment cannot achieve its goal which is ensuring the healthy environment without thaking into account its philosophical dimensions as well as it metaphysical status.

Keywords

• environmental theology
• right to environment
• metaphysic
• environmetal law