Green Ummah — a non-profit organization co-founded in January 2020 by law alum Aadil Nathani (JD 2020), third-year law student Mariam Rajabali, and LLM student Yousef Wahb — aims to create a green movement among Canada’s Muslim community.

Towards that end, the group will host an online climate forum on Saturday and Sunday, March 6 and 7, entitled “Building a Greener Community.”

Nathani credits the idea to Windsor Law’s Cities and Climate Action Forum and specifically, a 2019 guest lecture by environmental lawyer Diane Saxe highlighting the need to approach climate change from different angles to truly address the problem.

“From here, the idea was born to look at how climate change can be addressed within the Muslim Canadian community,” says Nathani.

“Our hope is that this digital event will carve a necessary space to speak about how we can integrate inclusivity, allyship, intersectionality, and community-building within the environmental movement in Canada.”

Green Ummah has partnered with Nature Canada and Windsor Law, among other organizations, to host the conference, and built its themes around a four-part curriculum toolkit it is developing for Islamic high schools. This toolkit is expected to be available for testing by September 2021.

Key themes of the curriculum and conference include:

• How do we build a greener community?
• What does Islam say about the environment?
• How can we build an inclusive movement?
• How can we nurture Indigenous and Muslim allyship?

This national event is free and open to the public and will be American Sign Language accessible. Register on Eventbrite.