Purity is Half of the Faith: Islam and Excreta

ABSTRACT

A new currency system called “Feces Standard Money,” which the Science Walden Center at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) has created, is changing the existing view of excreta. Feces Standard Money is based on the idea that a person’s feces are valuable that are treated without water and transformed into the form of energy or compost. The value of such feces that one person produces in a day is defined as 10 Ggool (10 Honeys). Feces Standard Money can help people share good values, in that Feces Standard Money transcends the value standard of existing money, placing humans at the center of every value, and aiming to return humans to real and original humanity. As an alternative currency with a new value standard, Feces Standard Money creates a new level of capital: toilets, facilities producing energy from feces, pipes transporting bio-energy from feces, electricity generation facilities using bio-gas from feces, buses running on bio-energy from feces, restaurants using energy from feces, and farmland cultivated with compost made from feces and urine and with liquid manure, and so on. This paper discusses a possibility of change in the Muslim perception of excreta as contaminating pollutants to an ecological substance. Islamic law defines excreta as essentially impure. Muslims regard purification as half of faith. Composting toilets can help save the environment as feces are treated without water and used to make bio-energy. If such toilets are used widely, then the Muslim perception of excreta may change from essentially dirty to an ecological substance.