Islam, Gender, and Civic Environmentalism

The growing waste crisis has emerged as a pressing environmental challenge in Indonesia, driven by rapid urbanization, the growth of the food and beverage industry, and persistent improper disposal practices. Although Islamic environmental discourse has gained increasing normative recognition, much of the existing scholarship focuses on theological formulations rather than on how religious values are enacted in everyday environmental practices. Furthermore, studies of environmental movements often pay limited attention to the role of religion and gender in shaping grassroots collective action. To address this gap, this article examines how Muslim women leverage Islamic values in community-based waste activism. Drawing on qualitative research conducted between July and September 2023—including participant observation, focus group discussions, and in-depth interviews with Muslim women environmental activists across several Islamic institutions—this study approaches Islam as lived religion embedded in civic practice. The findings indicate that waste management is framed not merely as a technical issue but as both a civic responsibility and a religious obligation grounded in Islamic notions of stewardship, cleanliness, and moral accountability. Waste banks emerge not only as mechanisms for waste reduction but also as social spaces for collective learning, community mobilization, leadership formation, and women’s economic empowerment. By positioning waste management as a domain where religion, gender, and civic engagement intersect, this study argues that Muslim women’s initiatives constitute a form of civic environmentalism in which Islamic values are mobilized as moral resources to address contemporary patterns of consumption and waste. This study contributes to the sociology of religion and gendered environmental activism in contemporary Indonesia by demonstrating how environmental responsibility is enacted through everyday religious practice and grassroots-level institutional innovation

Environmental sociology · Environmentalism · Grassroots · Islam · Moral obligation · Normative · Participant observation · Scholarship · Social movement · Municipal Solid Waste Management · Religion, Ecology, and Ethics · Waste Management and Recycling