(A Special Report from the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism)
Rep. Keith Ellison, the Muslim Congressman from Minnesota who shed tears in protest over the congressional hearings on the growing radicalization of Muslims in the U.S., wrote the foreword to a book entitled Green Deen: What Islam Teaches about Protecting the Planet [1]. In Arabic, “deen” means religious creed. The author of Green Deen is Ibrahim Abdul Matin. He wrote his book to demonstrate that there is a close relationship between Islam and modern environmentalism.
It turns out Ellison would have been a good witness to how Muslims are being radicalized as foot solders not only for global Jihad but for a “green” future. It is an unholy alliance that threatens our future but which escapes the attention of media predisposed to believe that radical Muslims working with environmentalists could only produce positive results.
What is fascinating is that Matin works in New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s environmental planning department as a policy advisor for New York City’s long term sustainability, and was one of the Muslims promoting the idea that the new mosque being considered near Ground Zero should be a green one [2]. In fact, Matin devotes one whole chapter of his book to “Green Mosques” and provides a list of environmentally friendly practices that can and should be implemented at each local mosque. Being the progressive Muslim that he paints himself to be, Keith Ellison was very impressed with Matin’s abilities and proudly decided to endorse his book.
One of the reasons Ellison decided to work with Matin was because of his own growing personal involvement in the green movement, which surprisingly enough, is becoming more popular among Muslims. In an interview posted on the DC [3] Green Muslim’s website [4], Ellison commented that “my involvement in politics is really rooted in my desire to try to promote unity among people, trying to promote unity with the Earth and creation, and trying to promote justice.” Ellison is also involved in an organization called the “Environmental Justice Advocates of Minnesota (EJAM [5]).” Ellison, the first Muslim Congressman in U.S. history, thus believes in green Islamic social justice of sorts—a veritable Islamic political ecology.
Ellison first met Matin in 2008 at a Muslim American seminar caucus in Washington, D.C. Matin was a fellow of “Green For All [6],” the very organization founded by communist Van Jones [7] to help promote the financial wonders of the so-called Green Economy [8]. Matin also helped organize Green For All’s National Day of Action [9] calling for “Green Jobs Now,” which more than 50,000 people attended. Ellison was very impressed by Matin’s influence at the caucus: “Ibrahim made an important connection that day—that the faith community needs to be involved in the green movement.” He went on to conclude his foreword by saying that “Green Deen brings faith communities into the environmental movement by changing the conversation from the facts of global warming to the fact that we all live and work here together and have a collective responsibility to keep this place clean and safe for everyone.”
While there is certainly no small controversy over exactly what a caliphate [10] may be, especially with regard to how Sunnis and Shia [11]s view it, or how closely it may be tied to the ushering in of Sharia law [12], Islamic totalitarianism [13], terrorism [14] and violence [15], it is a word that shows up often in Matin’s Green Deen. Matin innocuously translates the word “caliphah” to simply mean “steward,” a very environmentally-correct term. While this may satisfy the environmental consciousness of modern Western elites, this definition is, of course, very far removed from how most of the Muslim world have historically understood this word.
However, no matter how green a Muslim may or may not be, by definition, the caliphate must still be an Islamic theocratic state under the dominion of Allah. Even though Matin maintains [16] that he wrote his book to help rebrand Muslims from being considered terrorists to environmentalists, he still prefaces his entire book with the idea that “the earth is a mosque.” This means that the environmental holism being espoused by Matin must necessarily be subject to Allah’s totalitarian authority over the earth. In other words, environmental holism and Islamic totalitarianism go hand in hand in Matin’s Green Deen.
Secret Conquest
If the entire earth is a mosque, as Matin maintains, then Allah’s boundaries are boundless, and this means that simultaneously Americans must live under the theocratic dictates of Allah, and environmentalism can easily be used alongside Sharia law to help bring America to its knees under Islamic jihadist control. While many on the left would naively consider such a possibility beyond the pale, something along these lines is exactly what the Muslim Brotherhood [17] has in mind for the future of America. Indeed, in 1991, the radical Muslim Brotherhood espoused [18] that “the process of settlement…in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and by the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.” In other words, something like environmentalism can be easily used as a jihadist tool in the hands of a green Muslim to help sabotage America from within. After all, Matin says that “Muslims have a personal connection to the color green,” and that “the favorite color of the Prophet Muhammad was green.”
More troubling is that Keith Ellison’s pilgrimage [19] to Mecca in 2008 was paid for by the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, which is just another name [20]for the Muslim Brotherhood. Ellison also likes to attend Hamas rallies [21], and has even worked with communist front groups [22] like the National Lawyers Guild [23]. He even once went so far as to praise [24] the terrorist record of Bernardine Dohrn—the wife of the infamous Bill Ayers. After converting from Roman Catholicism to Islam, Ellison also praised [25] the likes of Louis Farrakhan [26] and the Nation of Islam [27] during his college days. This hot-wiring of the anti-Semitic Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, together with environmentalism, only helps to serve up an explosive eco-fascist concoction not seen since the 1930’s [28].
With such a cadre of characters and organizations under Ellison’s belt, is it any wonder that suspicions should arise over his activities, even over something as allegedly harmless as environmentalism? Which brings us back to Matin. Why in the world would Matin want Ellison’s endorsement if all he wants to do is try and show Americans that Muslims are not terrorists but are becoming progressive environmentalists? Neither should it be overlooked that the Muslim American Society also touts [29] the Green Deen book. Matin even considers Malcom X, who was also one of his heroes as a child when he used to listen to his tapes, to be a green Muslim [30]. Such disconcerting connections betray the image that Matin’s Green Deen is as benign as it reads.
Indeed, Matin’s whole approach to energy is viewed as a green Muslim apocalyptic dichotomy between heaven and hell. Matin considers gas, coal and oil as energy from hell, i.e., from the ground: “it is dirty, and it is a major cause of pollution and climate change. Energy from hell is non-renewable; it takes away from the Earth without giving back. It disturbs the balance of the universe and is therefore a great injustice.” As such, it appears that energy from hell needs to be placed under the caliphate control of Allah to help bring about a green Muslim social ethic on the earth: “one way we can stand out firmly for justice is by ending our reliance on oil and coal. Energies from hell are particularly devastating and unjust to people and the planet.”
From One Hell to Another
With the likes of the OPEC oil cartel largely run by the Middle East, coupled with the environmental restrictions on the homefront, perhaps the earth indeed is becoming one giant mosque. Worse is that Matin’s Green Deen only promises to become more hellish, leaving America increasingly exposed to the harsh natural elements of the sun, storm and wind. Yet, Matin views such exposure as a gift from heaven. For him, solar and wind power are Allah’s answers to America’s energy problems: “energy from heaven comes from above. It is not extracted from the Earth and it is renewable…energy from above is a gift from heaven.” The problem now, however, is that America’s electrical grid is not ‘smart [31]’ enough yet to incorporate Allah’s heavenly gifts into her energy system.
Matin also proudly notes in his book that the EPA received much needed help from a green Muslim by the name of Dr. Aziz Saddiqi. In the 1960’s Saddiqi was a young doctoral candidate who was doing groundbreaking research in the Houston area on chemical engineering. The University of Houston was so impressed with his work that he was offered a job: “Soon he found himself guiding the development of curriculum that would help the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency carry out its new mission of enforcing the Clean Air Act.” His chemical engineering expertise was much needed at the beginning to help the EPA get off of its feet: “In 1973 the EPA was only three years old and did not understand the full breadth of its power.” The EPA thus had a lot of growing up to do, and Dr. Saddiqi was at the heart of it all at the very beginning: “The EPA, its scientists, and its partner agencies needed to be trained on how to monitor pollution from smokestacks and other commonly used industrial practices.”
In fact, it seems that they were all on the learning curve together on this, as Dr. Saddiqui “had to learn how to explain his research in chemical engineering to this group of regulators.” Dr. Saddiqi “also authored the training materials used to teach EPA scientists how to sample ambient air and develop pollution controls.” Today, Dr. Saddiqi is in charge of the largest Islamic community in the United States, called the Islamic Society [32] of Greater Houston.
It is certainly comforting to discover that the EPA had a green Muslim helping them all out at the beginning on how to be good regulators. Environmentalism and the Islamic caliphate working together arm in arm at the very foundations of the EPA? Green hippies and a green Muslim expert working hard together trying to come to grips with the full regulatory power of the Clean Air Act?
Conflict of Civilizations
However innocent some green Muslims and environmentalists may or may not be in this whole ecological experiment that America is increasingly rushing headlong into, ratcheting up secular problems with apocalyptic concerns and solutions will only feed radicalism and religious fervor. It also draws in the naïve and unsuspecting to do things that they would not normally do. By apocalypticizing their worries and concerns [33], environmentalists have managed to take something as banal and neutral as handling natural resources and have turned it into a gigantic worldwide ethic of ecological social justice requiring immediate action that now is even beginning to draw [34] in the Muslims as well.
Muslims like Ibrahim Abdul Matin and Keith Ellison would do well to think again about the differences between Gaia [35], considered the spirit of the earth by environmentalists, and Allah. Though both have totalitarian [36] goals, they are by no means the same. Ecological pantheism [37] cannot be mixed with monotheism [38], even if the Muslim religion is symbolized by a crescent moon. At some point, these two ideologies will collide, and even though I am not a betting man, I would put my money on the growing juggernaut of Western pantheism. It has already largely devoured the Judeo-Christian worldview in America, and is well on its way to spitting out the pieces of what is left of free market capitalism.
There they go again. The 
Clare Lopez is a senior fellow at RadicalIslam.org and a strategic policy and intelligence expert with a focus on the Middle East, national defense and counterterrorism. Lopez served for 20 years as an operations officer with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
