**Abstract**

This chapter describes the role of the religious self in relation to sustainability ideation. The religious self that can foster sustainability ideation is the genuine religious self. The process is to realize the duty of humans as a caliphate and learn the science of God's creation as part of human obedience to God. The traditional perspective of religiosity that separates the science of religion from the general science, and considers the general science has nothing to do with religiosity, needs to be retheorized. Retheorization is necessary. Thinking about religiosity provides the opportunity to a Muslim who studies the natural sciences and other sciences to carry out the human duties as caliph, namely guarding the earth.

**Keywords:** self, religiosity, sustainability, eco-theology

### **1. Introduction**

The environment is often excluded from the religiosity discourses which tend to focus on the ritual behavior of "worshiping" or "praising" God, and controlling its follower's behavior through the establishment of rules claimed to be "religious law". The popular theory of religiosity confirms these limitations. Glock and Stark [1] explained that one's religious system can be differentiated into dimensions of ideology, ritual, experience, intellectual, and consequences. Other theories define religiosity based on its components, namely, religious practice, daily spiritual experiences, and religious/ spiritual coping [2], and some focus on aspects of closeness to God, religious orientation and motivation, religious support, and religious struggle [3]. Downgrading religion to the domain of law, which contains guidance of conduct and rules to obey, and that those rules include only (1) the divine domain that governs the way a person perceives God and communicates with or prays to God; and (2) the social domain that governs the way person interacts with fellow human beings, causing humans to lose their opportunity to concern toward nature.

In terms of the risk, human give to nature, the absence of guidelines for behaving toward nature, potentially make humans ignorant of what is needed by nature to maintain its sustainability. The lowest risk exists when a person assumes that nature is none of human's business. This kind of individual cannot be relied on to take care of nature, but at least do not damage nature. At a level in which the risk to nature is

greater, the absence of behavioral guidelines toward nature can potentially lead ones to think that human has the freedom to take the most benefit of natural resources among other beings. Those are humans that potential to destroy nature at a higher scale of damage. At the greatest level of risk to nature are those who master the knowledge of natural resources and how to utilize them, then use that knowledge to utilize nature based on economic motives for the sake of their profits. The way the latter two groups of people behave is considered to be rooted in the anthropocentric worldview of monotheistic religions [4]. Those people are among the most to worry about, due to their extensive knowledge, great ability, and their authority, that is potential to influence nature on a macro/large scale.

Climatologist Paul Crutzen in 2000 introduced formally into the contemporary scientific and environmental discussion the notion that human beings have become the primary emergent geological force affecting the future of the Earth System. He declares a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, to displace the Holocene epoch of the last 10,000–12,000 years [5, 6]. The Anthropocene represents what has been called an "anthropogenic rift" in the history of the planet. Although often traced to the Industrial Revolution in the late eighteenth century, the Anthropocene is probably best seen as arising in the late 1940s and early 1950s [7]. Recent scientific evidence suggests that the period from around 1950 exhibits a major spike, marking a Great Acceleration in human impacts on the environment, with the most dramatic stratigraphic trace of the anthropogenic rift to be found in fallout radionuclides from nuclear weapons testing [8]. Confirmations that humans are the main cause of environmental damage at the earth scale in turn leads to the development of the psychology of sustainability [9, 10], and then of the Anthropocene psychology. The Anthropocene psychology is a breakthrough, by critically expanding the horizon of psychological knowledge, by seeking to investigate the relationship between the human and more than human worlds, a process that is interrelated with multi-species, multi-cultural, and multidisciplinary approaches, and with a priority in specific situations [11].

It is a very important development when ecology has a subfield of "deep ecology" science that involves self-aspects as part of nature or the ecological environment. The concept initiated by the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess [12] believes that only by changing one's view of their own self, that human is part of nature and not a unit separate from nature, will allow individuals to behave toward nature as if they behave for their own. Rothenberg argues that the idea of involving the concept of self in explaining the human-nature relationship, has already been valued in the tradition of Mahayana Buddhists [13]. In Christianity, the discussion is contained in the concept of eco-theology [14], while in Hinduism known as the concept of *Tri-Hita Karana* [15].

Humans-environment interaction demands humans as an actor who performs actions to the environment. People could choose to plant trees and limiting the use of plastic, or otherwise damage the environment such as throwing garbage out of place or not limiting water use. Whatever the behaviors, it is self-determined and has nothing to do with religion. Quran is a manuscript contains messages, prohibitions, appeals, and models for all Muslims around the world. However, those who are exposed to the exactly similar Quran have different attitudes and behaviors. Some people believe that Quran is true and fully obedient to the values of the Quran, others obey some of the rules and apply some of its values, and there are also groups who do not value Quran as the truth. Therefore it is not Quran's words that determines human behavior, but human does. Based on this logic, the discourse of environmental conservation in Islam needs to consider the self as a modality that is connected to the environment. This chapter will discuss a Muslim's self and their relationship to the environment or nature.
