Footsteps steering group member, Kamran, recently gave an interview on BBC Radio 5 Live about how the Bahu Trust and other mosques in the UK are reducing their plastic waste in the month of Ramadan. You can listen to the interview below
Street Iftar
Footsteps also took part in the Street Iftar at Sparkbrook Mosque on Saturday May 11th 2019. This year the mosques and partner organisations gave the iftar an environment theme ‘Our Common Home’. Our chair, Ruth Tetlow made the following contribution to the event:
“Thank you for inviting me to join you in this holy month of Ramadan – which is an inspiration to me and to many other Christians to reflect on our own faith and our relationships with our Muslim friends and neighbours.
I am especially inspired and delighted by the fact that you have chosen to make this iftar ‘green’, as well as interfaith. I chair a local group called ‘Footsteps – Faiths for a Low Carbon Future’, and we are seeking to campaign and explain to people of all faiths and ages here in Birmingham why they should take climate change very seriously.
Why ? There are 2 main reasons:
- The threat is real and will affect the poorest people on the planet the worst. Already this year we have seen the devastating effects of cyclones in Mozambique and India. Such events are already becoming more frequent and more severe. At the same time, less dramatically, our own biodiversity in the UK is threatened, with serious effects on food production and on our health and well being. The issue of congestion charging in the centre of our own city brings it home, but it’s not just about the serious health costs of pollution, it’s also about our carbon emissions changing the climate of the whole planet, causing the extinction of many species and irreversible flooding of coastal areas.
- Secondly, the care of God’s creation is an area in which all faiths can come together – and not least Christians and Muslims. In 2015 Pope Francis published his important encyclical called ‘Laudato Si’ – on Care for our Common Home’ – in which he says, ‘The environment is God’s gift to everyone, and in our use of it we have a responsibility towards the poor, towards future generations and towards humanity as a whole.’ I was delighted to read of the opening last month of the first purpose built Eco Mosque in the UK, in Cambridge – a beautiful building and an inspiration to all of us.
I will close by wishing you many blessings during the rest of this holy month and by pledging to renew my own commitment to a greener, fairer, safer future for all our children and grandchildren.”