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From Muslimness
Feb 17, 2010
Excerpts:
Earlier this year I interviewed sister Asiila Rasool an Eco-Muslim from SE San Diego, about the community garden she and her locals successfully grew from scratch. Check out why Asiila was inspired to grow organic, how she roped her community in, and why home-grown produce is worth all that effort.
Whose idea was it to start a community garden?
Our community garden idea began as a jam'ah (congregational) effort of mostly mine and my two nieces during a homeschool project meeting.
With so many organic markets available and grocery stores providing fresh produce why did you want to grow your own?
We live in SE San Diego; with the lack of major grocery stores the people have limited options in buying from from small food marts. Ergo, the push to bring Farmer Markets and start community gardens throughout this area. We began the garden mostly because we read the writing on the wall: "inflation, shoddy produce, recession, less produce". With all the benefits of locally grown food we thought what could be more environmentally friendly than our own garden?
How many of you are involved in the community garden project?
The crew includes Musa, Jamila, Muhammad, Basheer, Najla, Karemah, also Faheem and moi. We home school our children so what better way for them to get closer to the earth and become more self-sufficient?
Finally sister Asiila, what do you think the future holds for like minded eco-aware Muslims?
The future? It's coming, and we best get prepared for it. A key issue for us will be finding enough water in this area (and in the rest of the world so I hear). Catching rain is an option, as well as using new techniques like double digging and square foot gardening, which we did with this garden. I believe Muslims will reclaim their knowledge and love of agricultural work;working with the land and with their hands. In fact, all the immigrants I know keep at least a herb garden on the tiniest strip of land, if that's all they have. They also grow vegetables.
We muslims still have a way to go on learning to give up the plastics and bottled water/sodas and watching what we eat vis a vis our snacks and drinks, but I believe the future will pretty much force Muslims to get back to the old ways. Working in the earth, growing your own food, dealing with Allah's handiwork hands on is so incredibly grounding and spiritual. I believe Muslims will very much become part of the 'green revolution' if we're not already.
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