ترجم إلى العربية: Surah al-Naml is one of the many surahs that articulate different dimensions of the natural environment and man’s relation thereto. It subtly and effortlessly weaves a number of environmental lessons into the body of its main themes. The focal point of the surah is the relationship between man and the truth whose signs have been inscribed on the pages of the revealed Qur’an and the pages, so to speak, of the many-sided and many-layered creation and its ways of operation. What enhances and weakens such a relationship, and what aids man on the way to self-realization and spiritual fulfilment, and what hinders him, is thoroughly elaborated and dealt with. In that connection, three types of character have been presented. The first type is characterized by arrogant Pharaoh, the malicious chiefs of Thamud and the rebels of the people of Prophet Lut, the second by Prophet Sulayman, and the third type by the queen of Sheba.
The main environmental lessons in the surah revolve around unreservedly respecting the environment and reading it as a compendium of signs (ayat). As God’s vicegerent on earth, man is not to conceitedly and ravenously impose his will and power on the rest of creation. He is to forge constructive alliances with the protagonists and forces of nature, trying to understand them as much as possible. When God describes man as the vicegerent or inheritor of the earth, He indicates that the earth has been placed in his custody. Man acts at once as an individual and member of a group or a community, the latter greatly outweighing the former in significance and scope. When the surah highlights the three chief appellations for human settlement: baldah, qaryah and madinah, it brings home the importance of man as a social being and his performances as such. It also accentuates how meaningful and consequential the relationships between people and their Creator, between people and their built and natural environments, and between people and themselves are, and how delicate and entwined they are. The future and quality of human civilization, and the quality of the planet earth as its physical locus, depends on them.
The surah likewise through the case of the ants especially brings to light the position and role of animals and their rights over man. The contributions of every creature to the smooth running of the world are to be recognised and appreciated. More often than not, those contributions are more extensive and more sophisticated than it seems. The complex way of life and advanced dwellings of ants are a testimony to that. Sulayman and the speaking ant acted as the ambassadors of the human race and animal kingdom respectively. Their contact and interaction served as an epitome of the significance and character of the relationship between humans and nature. Finally, the aspects of the Islamic worldview pertaining to the natural world, plus the comprehensive Islamic environmental moral code, functioned as a blueprint for the profound identity and rich history of Muslim landscape architecture, which is as spiritually strong, intellectually enlightening and aesthetically appealing as the values and ideas that gave rise to it.