Biodiversity Is Being Colonized — Are we Distracted?

Colonization doesn’t always come with flags and guns. Sometimes, it comes for your flowers. Your fields. Your seeds.

The systematic destruction of agriculture is one of the oldest—and most effective—tools of domination. Because to erase a people, you start by starving them. You take what feeds them. What roots them. What grows.

Syria. Palestine. Afghanistan. Ukraine. Sudan. Nora`s Garden?

Wherever war arrives, the soil is the first to suffer. Seed banks are looted. Indigenous crops are eradicated. Entire ecosystems of knowledge, memory, and life—gone in a flash. Not by accident. By design.

This is agro-colonialism. And yes, it’s real.

Even the Flowers Aren’t Safe

Think about the Damask rose. It's a global symbol of luxury, fragrance, and beauty. But where does it come from? Damascus. And where is it grown now? Commercialized, repackaged, exported—stripped from its origin, sold without memory.

Tulips? Stolen from Central Asia, claimed by the Dutch. Syrian olive oil? Marketed as “Mediterranean.” Seeds from Kabul? Vanished. The Euphrates water? Controlled.

This isn’t just about plants. It’s about power. It’s about memory theft. It’s about who gets to feed the world—and who doesn’t.

Who Owns the Seeds, Owns the Future

Major international seed banks now control samples from every corner of the Earth. They say it’s to "protect humanity." But who defines 'humanity'? And who profits?

When seed access becomes privatized, so does survival. Whoever controls the seeds decides:

·        Who can farm.

·        Who can eat.

·        Who can live.

They call it preservation. But it's a quiet war. A war fought with patents instead of tanks, gene editing instead of airstrikes. And before they erase a people, they erase their food systems.

“The real terrorists wear suits, not masks.”

Tal Hadya, near Aleppo, once held about 16,000 plant samples from Syria, Jordan, Turkey, and Iran—wild grains, legumes, heirloom seeds from the heart of the Fertile Crescent. A genetic treasure. Gone.

Farming as Resistance. Farming as Faith.

Islam doesn’t just tolerate farming—it uplifts it. The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ condemned hoarding and waste, honored farmers, and called for compassion toward the land and animals. Cultivating the earth is an act of worship. A form of jihad. A legacy.

And yet, today, that legacy is fading. Urbanization, war, and consumerism are severing us from our roots. Many young Muslims no longer know that farming is a spiritual act—that sustainability is a sacred duty.

The Earth Remembers. Do We?

They can steal the seeds. They can poison the soil. But the land remembers. Even scorched earth can rise again—if we are willing to defend it.

Maybe one day, Europeans will migrate to Africa, chasing clean water and fertile soil, having destroyed their own. But without seeds… who will feed them?

To those who stay silent, who turn away thinking they won’t face the fallout—wake up. Like flowers left untended, they wither alone in shadow. The earth does not forget; injustice roots deep and spreads wide. But change begins not just in the soil, but in the soul. Make your own garden—begin with your heart. Nourish it with courage, water it with hope, and watch as life blooms beyond the darkness.

Jannah is near—for those who stand, who fight, and who believe in the promise of renewal.

“Indeed, Allah is the cleaver of grain and date seeds. He brings the living out of the dead and brings the dead out of the living. That is Allah; so how are you deluded?”

— Surah Al-An'am (6:95)

“With Him are the keys of the unseen — no one knows them but Him. He knows what is on the land and in the sea. Not a leaf falls but that He knows it. And no grain (seed) is there within the darknesses of the earth and no moist or dry [thing] but that it is [written] in a clear record.”

— Surah Al-An’am (6:59)