Is Permaculture a Civilizational Return for Asian Muslims?

Abstract

This study examines whether permaculture can be understood as a civilizational return for Asian Muslim societies rather than merely a trade in the model of sustainable farming from the West. Although permaculture was developed in the Global North as a response to the ecological and social emergencies of industrial agriculture, its significance in Muslim settings remains theoretically underexplored. Systematic integrative literature review (PRISMA-informed) methods were employed to integrate scholarly articles on permaculture studies, agroecology, Islamic environmental ethics, and historical studies of Muslim agricultural arrangements to develop a civilizational explanation of sustainability. The findings validate four interrelated themes. First, permaculture was developed in Western settings as a review of industrial innovation, ecological deprivation, and the philosophical parting of humans from nature. Second, Asian agroecological literature demonstrates that permaculture is often modified through pre-existing native and cultural knowledge systems rather than implemented as a complete epistemological disagreement. Third, Islamic environmental ethics offer a complete sustainability framework grounded in principles such as khalifah (stewardship), amanah (trust), mizan (balance), and maslahah (public welfare), which strongly unite with permaculture philosophies. Fourth, Muslim agricultural systems validated advanced ecological practices, including biodiversity management, water governance, and agroforestry, that mirrored core permaculture design philosophies but were later marginalized through colonial reorganization and industrial modernization. These findings further claim that although permaculture signifies a civilizational remedy in Western contexts, it can be better understood in Asian Muslim contexts as a process of civilizational recapture that restarts ecological knowledge rooted within Islamic intellectual and agricultural traditions. This reframing provides decolonial sustainability by challenging direct models of environmental innovation and highlighting the balance between indigenous Islamic ecological ethics and contemporary penitentiary design frameworks.