Member of UAE’s Royal Family Attends Loyola’s Interreligious Environmental Dialogue

The Hank Center for Catholic Intellectual Heritage, in collaboration with Muslim Chaplain Omer Mozaffar, hosted a panel discussion, Interreligious Dialogues: On Laudato si’, Islamic and Catholic Approaches, Oct. 1 in Cuneo Hall. 

The discussion, moderated by Mozaffar, featured Hank Center director Michael Murphy and Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Ali Al Nuaimi, known to much of the public as the Green Sheikh.

The Green Sheikh is a member of the royal family of Ajnan in the United Arab Emirates and serves as Environmental Advisor to the government of Ajnan. He’s the founder of the Green Sheikh academy for aspiring environmental advocates and has spent 25 years supporting environmental protection and justice efforts around the world, according to the Green Sheikh’s website. 

During the event, Abdul lectured on his Islamic views in relation to sustainability and environmentalism, drawing from his 40 years of experience in advocacy, education, conservation and engineering. 

Murphy responded to the Sheikh’s views with the environmentalist beliefs of the Catholic faith, as expressed in Laudato si’ — an encyclical published by the late Pope Francis in 2015.

Murphy said the panel event was partially inspired by the 10th anniversary of the publication of Laudato si’, as the Hank Center hosted the first university-wide response to Laudato si’ in September 2015. This included panel discussions from faculty across many departments, according to the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities.

Mozaffar said the idea for the event fully emerged when Palestinian-American businessman Talat Othman, a longtime community servant and friend of the Green Sheikh, offered to invite the Sheikh onto campus. Mozaffar realized the potential for the Sheikh’s environmental passion, combined with Murphy’s expertise on Laudato si, to create an engaging dialogue. 

Othman was present at the panel event and commented on the importance of interfaith dialogues. He said the goal of any dialogue is active listening and appreciating similarities and differences between diverse perspectives.

During his lecture, the Sheikh described his support of critically endangered silverback gorillas. Specifically, he said he participates in a Rwandan naming ceremony for newborn gorillas. Called Kwita Izina, Rwandan for “to give a name,” the annual event raises public awareness in support of Rwanda’s gorilla conservation efforts, according to the Nyungwe Forest National Park website.

The Sheikh also discussed his initiation of the BlueYouth water conservation initiative, in which young members of many countries collaborated on the creation of documents chronicling their difficulties with water access and shortages. 

“With this initiative, we inspire young people not to raise their voice, [but] to raise their words, to tell stories about the challenges they are facing,” the Sheikh said during his lecture. 

The Sheikh also mentioned his support of the United Arab Emirates’ goal of planting 100 million mangrove plants by 2030, due to their high carbon sequestering abilities.

“My vision will be like your vision — empowering generations, greening the planet, creating a legacy,” the Sheikh said to the audience. “We can all share. Muslims, Christians, Jews or even other traditions can have the same vision.” 

The Skeikh furthered this idea by acknowledging the intersections of religious environmental views with non-religious ones, namely, the universal values of compassion, justice and accountability.

Murphy said he agrees and believes Catholicism and Islamic faith traditions’ views on care for creation heavily overlap. Laudato si, which translates to “praise be,” is an invitation to be grateful for and connect deeply with nature and its resources — a value shared by Christians and Muslims, according to Murphy. 

Murphy also digressed with the Sheikh’s belief in the value of interfaith dialogues to people of no faith. 

“If you’re going to run into God, it doesn’t mean you have to leave your intellect at the door,” Murphy said. “No one’s coming to this event to be evangelized. We’re just looking at some serious contemporary thought because the Pope has a council of non-Catholic scientists, so the science is legitimate.”

Murphy said the Catholic and Muslim intellectual heritages are both based on reason as much as faith, and they both rely on scholarly discipline to guide religious belief, especially about environmental views. 

“Catholics and Muslims may have different ideas about the Messiah or about who Jesus is, but they have very similar feelings about gratitude to the maker for the gift,” Murphy said. “And so when you find some common ground or common tongue, what’s better than that?”

The Catholic intellectual heritage and the Islamic faith tradition employs scholarly discipline as a primary means of understanding truth, according to Murphy. He explained that the observant nature of the Islamic culture, which developed mathematics such as algebra, is comparable to the science employed by Catholic faith leaders when discussing environmental issues.

“[Islam] is a seriously observant intellectual culture,” Murphy said. “It gives us algebra. It sees the design. It sees the inner handiwork of the maker, scientifically alive. That’s a lot of fun to talk about in an academic environment.”