“There is a big damage in taking people away or disconnecting people from their land and doing that intentionally. We are seeing the impact of that now.” Rabiah Abdullah
E96 – Rabiah Abdullah ON EARTH MEDICINE, RECIPROCITY AND IHSAN/EXCELLENCE
LISTENING IS SEEING ALL THE BEAUTY
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About this interview:
“Speaking and listening to the earth and listening to each other ultimately is healing. There is only so much healing that can happen if your full selves can’t be present.”
In this episode Amisha speaks with Rabiah Abdullah, traditional herbalist, activist and community healer.
Guided by her love for nature her practice is rooted in the understanding of our symbiotic relationship between nature, humans and spirituality. Rabiah is the co-founder of ‘The Rabbani Project’ and founder of Green Deen Tribe Retreats, where she hosts retreats for Muslim women exploring and building their connection to the Divine and nature; a safe space honouring their spirituality, faith and cultural backgrounds.
Amisha and Rabiah reflect on the connection between nature, spirituality and healing. Their conversation explores how living in reciprocity with earth can build our sense of belonging and heal the stories we are wearing imposed by oppressive systems. Rabiah shares her gift of creating safe spaces that offer opportunity for muslim women of colour to immerse in nature, to build intuition and to inspire grassroots community activism. They consider ihsan : excellence asan uplifting alternative to our systemic baseline of perfectionism and egotistical leadership.
“So what we have to do now, is just really recreate and redefine our connection to the earth and a big part of that is knowing the earth, and knowing the herbs and the plants and the trees and the animals and the birds and knowing them by name.” Rabiah Abdullah
Rabiah studied Western Herbal Medicine at the University of Westminster and has been a qualified herbalist since 2008. After her degree, she travelled to Ghana, where her time spent with a local traditional herbalist re-ignited her love for nature and grew her understanding of the symbiotic relationship between nature, humans and spirituality.
In 2010, she co-founded ‘The Rabbani Project’ a not for profit community collective dedicated to the exploration of creativity, nature and spirituality. She is the founder of Green Deen Tribe Retreats. The retreats are catered to Muslim women to explore and build their connection to the Divine and nature honouring their spirituality, faith and cultural backgrounds. The retreats have grown into an inclusive platform for all Muslims to explore their relationship with Nature. They now include projects like the annually Green Deen ethical iftar and swap shop.
Rabiah is an alumni of St Ethelburga’s spiritual ecology leadership programme. She is also a musician and has performed across the world with the group ‘Pearls of Islam’.
To find out more about Rabiah’s work, visit @greendeen_tribe
To connect or work with Amisha, visit amisha.co.uk
To find out more about St Ethelburgas, visit stethelburgas.org
Listening To Each Other, Listening to Earth, is a collaboration with St Ethelburgas, and is funded by the Kalliopeia Foundation. For this collaboration — will be hosting 8 podcasts, and some live events. We give deep gratitude to both for making this possible. 
Listening to each other : Listening to Earth reaches for the place where spiritual ecology and climate justice meet. It explores the integration of spirituality with grounded action through the lives and leadership of people of colour. St Ethelburga’s builds community resilience for times of ecological and social emergency. Their work is organised around 4 principles which are:
- Put values into action
- Seek opportunity in crisis
- Build community across differences, and
- Protect what is sacred
Links from this episode:
St Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation & Peace
Listening to each other : Listening to Earth
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