Religious Quest for Sustainable Development: An Islamic Standpoint

Scholars of various fields have taken interest in the Concept of Sustainable Development (SD) especially during the last few decades. From the mainstream literature, it is believed that the traditional development focused mainly on economic development and failed to address some issues such as the problem of inequalities, environment, and other things that are integral parts of the universe. Therefore, the concept of sustainable development (SD) emerged to cover the loopholes. It came to limelight after the publication of the report known as “Brundtland Report,” or “Our Common Future” in 1987. The report defined the concept as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” However, this concept with all its golden promises also has its defects. Based on this background the paper tries to present religious perspective of the concept especially from Islamic point of view. In other to achieve its objective, the paper utilizes Qualitative research methodology, which based on content analysis on Al-Qur’an, Hadith and other literature. The result shows that Western perspective of the sustainable development only based on materialistic aspect and neglects the spiritual side. It also shows that the notion is not new from Islamic civilization. Above all, Islamic based sustainable development is considered as holistic or comprehensive which left no stone untouched.