Note: As human scientific advancements increase and the need for energy resources grows, the challenge of preserving natural resources becomes more evident. These challenges, beyond environmental dimensions, must also be examined from a jurisprudential perspective. Hujjat al-Islam Mohammad Reza Mollanouri, who has been researching in the fields of environment and agriculture for years and recently held the Agricultural Ethics Conference, speaks in an exclusive interview with Contemporary Jurisprudence about the jurisprudential challenges of preserving natural resources:

Contemporary Jurisprudence: Given the non-acceptance of intergenerational ownership of natural resources in jurisprudential knowledge, can the necessity of preserving natural resources for future generations be envisioned?

Mollanouri: Perhaps it is possible to prove shared ownership or allocate ownership to non-harmful cases based on the principle of benefiting from natural resources. Even if ownership is not proven, concepts such as intergenerational justice, ethical responsibility, trusteeship, and the like will be helpful in this regard; although proving common ownership or individual allocation of ownership over natural resources, especially in cases where their use is considered “non-harmful” in some way, may face difficulties within traditional or modern legal frameworks, this does not mean completely negating the ethical and human connection of individuals to these resources.

Even in the assumption that legal ownership of individuals over natural resources is not provable, concepts such as intergenerational justice, ethical responsibility toward nature, and human trusteeship toward the environment can be cited as theoretical and ethical foundations to justify the right of benefit or limit harmful exploitations from natural resources. From the perspective of intergenerational justice, each generation must exploit resources in a way that does not damage the ability and right of future generations to benefit from those resources. In this view, humans are not only owners but trustees of nature; trustees who are obligated to preserve biological balance and avoid destructive approaches. Additionally, human ethical responsibility toward natural resources, even in the absence of formal ownership structures, requires that exploitation of these resources be accompanied by environmental, social, and human considerations.

Contemporary Jurisprudence: To what extent has the main approach of jurisprudential knowledge, which is “realization and otherworldly punishment,” caused jurists to focus on the hereafter and not seriously address topics such as preserving natural resources that organize people’s worldly life?

Mollanouri: A more precise formulation of authority may help this topic. The discussion should not be limited to otherworldly reward and punishment; rather, it apparently concerns attribution and reliance on the sacred legislator.

It seems that a more precise and foundational formulation of the concept of authority can play an important role in clarifying the dimensions of this discussion. In many cases, common analyses of authority are reduced to otherworldly effects such as reward and punishment, while a more comprehensive view of this concept requires reflection on the relation between authority and attributing the ruling to the sacred legislator. Authority in jurisprudence and principles is not merely a tool for detecting practical obligation for the obligated; rather, it is an epistemological and credit construct that establishes a link between the jurist and the legislator; meaning that acting based on valid authority, even if erroneous, is considered attributed to the legislator. Therefore, the validity of a religious evidence is important not in terms of its result and reward or punishment, but in terms of the correctness of attributing that ruling to the legislator. If we accept such a formulation of authority, then the main focus shifts from “the correctness of the ruling itself” to “the correctness of the attribution process”; meaning even if the inferred ruling is not actually in accordance with the real ruling, as long as it is obtained based on valid authority, it is accepted by the legislator.

Contemporary Jurisprudence: What do you attribute the jurists’ lack of serious attention to the category of natural resources—one sign of which is the absence of any dedicated chapter in jurisprudential and hadith books—to?

Mollanouri: Jurisprudence has been formulated in the position of expressing the obligated’s duty and categorizing chapters based on it; for this reason, worship chapters, especially prayer, have taken a larger volume. This foundational point must be noted: Islamic jurisprudence is fundamentally a duty-oriented science; meaning its focal point is expressing the obligated’s duty in various individual and social life conditions. Based on this, the jurist in inference primarily seeks to know what duty the obligated has before God and within Sharia, and how to act to realize compliance with the divine command; therefore, the structure of categorization and division in jurisprudence is also set based on this goal. In other words, jurisprudential chapters, whether worship, transactions, family rulings, and hudud, are all formed based on the diversity and scope of the obligated’s duties. In this regard, since worship—and specifically prayer—is considered one of the most important and frequent daily duties of every obligated and on the other hand has the most connection to divine affairs and worship rituals, it is natural that a larger volume of sources and jurisprudential chapters is dedicated to it.

Moreover, the worshipful and prescriptive nature of worship has caused jurists to address their details and conditions with more precision and scrupulousness; because in these domains, the place for free ijtihad and rational analogy is much more limited, and the need for narration, precision in chains, examining opinions, and analyzing narration conflicts becomes much more serious. This is why in jurisprudential books, from “purity” to the end of “prayer,” sometimes several volumes and hundreds of issues are dedicated solely to explaining the conditions and rulings of these worships.

Contemporary Jurisprudence: Given the religious texts’ stipulations on ownership of mines by natural persons, how can they be considered among the anfal and the Islamic government be regarded as responsible for preserving them?

Mollanouri: In any case, to reach a coherent analysis of the relationship among types of mines, kinds of ownership, and the role and guardianship of the Islamic government, a comprehensive view of each of these elements is necessary, and their relations must be analyzed with jurisprudential precision. In this path, a kind of rational and religious reconciliation among these three elements can be achieved that both oversees jurisprudential principles and religious rules and responds to the needs of a systematic Islamic government.

First, it must be pointed out that mines in Islamic jurisprudence have various types; some are among the anfal and considered public property, others may be privately ownable under specific conditions, and some, like surface and accessible mines, follow the rule of “precedence” and “revival.” On the other hand, Islamic jurisprudence has precisely differentiated kinds of ownership: individual ownership, public ownership, and Islamic government ownership (public treasury or general guardianship). In such a context, the Islamic government with its general guardianship can not only enter as the trustee of the Islamic society in managing natural resources but is obligated to set the framework for using these resources by considering public interest, distributive justice, and preserving intergenerational benefits.

Of course, this does not mean that the Islamic government’s guardianship conflicts with religious ownerships; rather, since guardianship is exercised based on societal interests and within Sharia, it can be complementary and regulatory for kinds of ownership regarding resources like mines. In other words, reconciliation among mine types and ownership with the religious guardianship of the Islamic government is completely possible and even necessary.

Contemporary Jurisprudence: To what extent can the individual and non-governmental approach of jurisprudential knowledge—due to the historical lack of Shiite jurisprudence’s sovereignty until before the Islamic Revolution—be considered one of the reasons for jurists’ lack of serious attention to preserving natural resources?

Mollanouri: Undoubtedly, the absence of major and extensive responsibility at the level of a comprehensive government renders many issues without subject; in addition, many existing challenges in natural resources are products of the modern era and industrial uses, etc. A fundamental reality in systematic and structured Islamic jurisprudence must be pointed out: many jurisprudential rulings assume the existence of an efficient political system and a comprehensive Islamic government; therefore, in the absence of such a government that undertakes major responsibilities in public arenas, including managing natural and industrial resources, many jurisprudential issues lose their subject or face disruption in execution.

Islamic jurisprudence is not merely a collection of individual obligations but includes extensive sections of social, political, economic, and environmental rulings that are only realizable and implementable within an Islamic governmental system. For this reason, the lack of a powerful and responsible governmental structure causes many rulings related to public resources, ownership limits, supervision of exploitation, and macro policy-making to practically become without subject or non-executable. Moreover, a significant portion of challenges related to natural and industrial resources are fundamentally products of the modern era; meaning rooted in industrial transformations, extensive extraction technologies, capitalist growth, consumer economy, and complex corporate ownerships. Many issues related to air pollution, mine exploitation, forest destruction, ecosystem degradation, and energy crisis in the contemporary world have emerged in a space whose relation to traditional concepts of ownership, exploitation, and benefit requires jurisprudential rereading and rethinking. In this situation, the active and institutionalized presence of the Islamic government as policy-maker, regulator, supervisor, and guarantor of social justice becomes doubly necessary.

The Islamic government, relying on principles such as justice, preserving public rights, prohibiting harm, and considering the ummah’s interests, can provide a framework for solving these emerging challenges.