Life is meant to be lived in a clean environment. Cleanliness is healthy. Filth is a breeding ground for diseases. No one likes to live in or around filthy areas. All of us want our families to be in clean environments that promotes a healthy lifestyle. Everyone hates garbage piling up and swarming with flies and mosquitoes and all manners of creatures from cockroaches and rats. These are common sense statements. However, like they say, common sense ain’t so common anymore.
From an Islamic perspective, cleanliness is one of the fundamental conditions for good Muslim societies and individuals. Cleanliness is half of the religion (of Islam). Every book of fiqh (jurisprudence) starts off with the book of Tahara (or purification). Prayers are not accepted if there is filth on the body or clothes or the place of prayer. So Islam not only encourages cleanliness, it requires it from us. We have to invest time, money and effort to ensure a clean environment. It is not optional.
Generally, cleanliness is a communal effort. The people need to ensure that the local government should have a sustainable garbage management system in place with enough money budgeted to make it work from start to finish. The people also need to ensure that there are measures in place against littering and to ensure that people do not dirty their environment and clean up after themselves. There needs to be fines associated with it and enforced properly. There also needs to be an awareness and an ownership of the issue in the people: people should feel proud of achieving a clean environment and ashamed of a dirty environment. There need to be advertising campaigns to ensure the right attitude towards cleanliness is promoted with the society everywhere.
Everyone needs to do their part to make the surroundings cleaner for everyone. Everyone needs to stop throwing garbage everywhere. Everyone needs to call out anyone that litters and ask them to not do that. Don’t wait for others to take the initiative, start yourself today. Promote a clean lifestyle with everything you do or say. Make dawah about cleanliness within your circle of influence.
And Allah knows best!