An ecologically attuned reading of the hadith shows that the early Muslim community consisted of both human and nonhuman agents. Stones reportedly started introducing Muhammad to his forthcoming prophetic role years before he received the divine message. During the Prophet’s emigration to Medina, a spider and two doves hid him and his friend from his pursuers, the former by weaving a net and the latter by placing a nest at the entrance of the cave where the two hid. Nonhuman beings’ roles were indeed multifaceted, as they contributed to political, social, and religious events and were treated as partners and as a source of inspiration. They were also at the receiving end of this partnership. The Prophet was consistently there for them as he was for his human companions. From this, one discovers the hadith’s heavily anthropomorphic nature and detects a clear effort to curb anthropocentric feelings. Whereas modern treatments of nonhuman agency tend to deemphasize the elements of rationality and intentionality to create a space that is more inclusive of nonhumans, narratives that highlight nonhumans’ contribution to Islam’s sacred history attribute to them emotions, intentionality, and rationality. Moreover, by consistently emphasizing the uprightness of the entire creaturely order while presenting humans and jinn as the only exception, one discovers that the hadith seeks to integrate humanity in the rest of creation.

Bio: Sarra Tlili is Associate Professor of Arabic literature at the University of Florida, Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. Her main areas of research are animal and environmental ethics in Islam, Qur’anic stylistics, and tradition and modernity in Arabic literature. Her publications include Animals in the Qur’an, “All Animals Are Equal, or Are They? The Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ’s Animal Epistle and its Unhappy End,” and “From Breath to Soul: The Quranic Word Rūḥ and Its (Mis)interpretations.”