Meet the Woman Leading Efforts in the Muslim Community Making Chicago Greener

Nearly twenty years after studying physics, Caroline Williams, 50, found a way to combine her love of nature and her Muslim faith.

She founded the Chicago Muslims Green Team in 2018. The organization connects Muslims and the broader Chicago community to environmental justice issues and sustainable living rooted in Islamic teachings.

Borderless Magazine met Williams at the Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary, one of her favorite spots in the city, to talk about how her faith and commitment to the environment have persisted through her career changes and immigration journey to the United States.

The Road to Bridge Two Worlds

My parents both grew up with a strong Western influence.

They gave my siblings and me Western names: Caroline, Harry, Andre, Jimmy and Gunther.

I was named after my paternal grandmother, who was half Indonesian and half Dutch, Caroline Kalempouw.

My parents came from different religious and cultural backgrounds. My father came from a Christian family, and my mother came from a Muslim family.

Although my mother’s family is a devout Muslim family, she grew up with her much-older sister in an American compound in Indonesia because her husband worked for an American oil company. My mother jokes that she was raised on cheeseburgers.

When my parents married, my father didn’t convert to Islam. They wed in a church in the ‘70s.

My parents worked for an American oil company, so I grew up attending Christmas celebrations where my parents worked.

When I was in high school, my parents divorced, and their pest control business collapsed. During this period, I became more religious.  I was worried about my future as we were experiencing financial difficulties, but it brought me closer to God. The Quran said, God knows what is best for us, and I believe that to this day.

At the same time, Indonesia faced political, social and economic turmoil under President Suharto’s authoritarian New Order regime, which promoted a Western lifestyle. Wearing a hijab in public spaces was considered fanatic and a threat to the Indonesian secular government.

I had a rebellious spirit, and wearing a hijab felt right. My parents and I had to sign a waiver saying that my school wasn’t responsible if something bad happened to me for wearing my hijab.

In high school, I also joined the Nature Lovers Club. We hiked mountains, trained in mountaineering and wilderness survival skills, and immersed ourselves in nature. I still remember my first hike. It was on Mount Gede in West Java, Indonesia. The view from atop the bright stars on the night sky sparked my deep connection to the environment and led me to study physics.

Physics deepened my appreciation for the natural world. In college, I joined another Nature Lovers Club and trained with Indonesia’s forest department to help catch illegal loggers.

From a young age, I also learned that caring for nature is a core part of Islam. The Holy Book emphasizes cleanliness and protecting the environment. One well-known teaching describes humans as Khalifa, caretakers of the earth. Another, from the Sunnah (traditions and practices of the Prophet Muhammad), tells us not to be wasteful.

One of my favorite teachings says that even if tomorrow is the end of the world and you have a seed or seedling in your hand, you should still plant it.

Some people say what I do is a waste of time and not real work. My family has shown little appreciation for starting a nonprofit in the environmental field. But their concept of a successful life in America is different from mine.

For me, I am living out my dream. I found notes from when I was young in which I wrote about one day starting a nonprofit and being an environmental activist.

A Discovery of Love and a New Life in the U.S.  

I met my husband online while finishing graduate school. We connected in a chat room over our shared interest in science. We emailed and called regularly for two years. We fell in love and decided to wed.

Before we could marry, I told him he needed to convert to Islam. He had grown up Christian, with Irish and German roots.

In 2004, he flew to Indonesia so we could meet in person for the first time and get married.

I said, “Hello, nice to meet you. Let’s go get married!” So we went to a mosque.

It was complicated for a foreigner to marry an Indonesian in Indonesia. Because of all the paperwork, we did not have time to prepare for a big wedding. It was a small ceremony attended by my close family. I didn’t even invite my close friends.

We had to wait another year to see each other again because my visa wasn’t approved immediately. I cried after one of the interviews because I felt that I was being treated like a criminal. They probably thought it was a fake marriage—that I just wanted to come to the U.S.

When I lived in Indonesia, I learned about the United States as a welcoming, civilized and diverse place. I believed if you moved here, you would live happily ever after. I asked my husband if that was true, and he laughed.

My first impression of Chicago was how diverse it was. I wanted to explore it immediately. I drove around and rode the trains and buses, traveling up and down the red line, from the North Side to the South Side. That is how I learned about segregation in Chicago for the first time, seeing it for myself.

My husband and I have been married for over twenty years, and I’ve lived in Chicago for almost as long.

I fell in love with this city.

An Organization Takes Bloom

In 2018, I completed the Chicago Conservation Corps Training through the Nature Museum. This experience inspired me to start activities that would serve the Muslim community with environmental justice.

I started by approaching an organizer of the Sisters of Islam Potluck Picnic, and she was supportive. After that, we organized activities at the Downtown Islamic Center, where people also responded positively to our work. I realized there is some fire there to get this going.

That is how the Chicago Muslim Green Team was born.

We launched our first Green Ramadan in 2019, and it was an exciting start. But then–boom–COVID-19 hit, and everything changed. We had to pivot to virtual events and learned how to use Zoom. It wasn’t easy. I lost my father and my mother-in-law to COVID-19.

Still, we kept going. We now have a small team of full-time and part-time staff and volunteers, but we are working hard because our focus is still on survival mode.

Our community has been focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, so it is hard to focus on environmental issues in our community right now, but I know the fire is there.

This year, we held our first in-person Green Ramadan since 2019, with three mosques participating. We focused on reducing food waste through composting and replaced disposable containers with compostable items.

We also run a tree ambassador program in which we train community members to help residents request trees from the city. So far, we have requested about 500 trees, about half of which we estimate the city has already planted.

This year, we started the Tree Equity Program to help address the inequitable distribution of tree canopy across the city. Chicago’s North Side has substantial tree coverage compared to the West and South Sides.

I believe that in a couple of years, we can mobilize our community to move forward with support and attention. Many Muslims, not just me, want to do something for the environment.

This story was produced using Borderless Magazine’s collaborative as-told-to method. To learn how we make stories like these, check out our as-told-to visual explainer.

Aydali Campa is a Report for America corps member and covers environmental justice and immigrant communities for Borderless Magazine. Send her an email at [email protected].