Is Islam opposed to Family Planning ?
Let us examine what Maulana Sadiq says, by looking at some other Islamic countries.
Indonesia, with the largest Muslim population of any country in the world (190 million), has had one of the most successful population stabilisation programmes, far more successful than ours. A major reason for the success has been the government’s ability to convince the
Indonesian religious leaders that family planning and population control was in the national interest. So much so that a fatwa was issued approving the intrauterine device (IUD) as a birth control measure. In October 1983, almost 22 years ago, a national conference of the Ulama (local-level religious leaders), passed a resolution stating, “Islamic teachings justify family planning for the betterment of health conditions of mother and child, to make the child healthy, intelligent and devout”.
Passages from the Qur’an and from the teachings of Mohammad were included in the resolution to show that both the Qur’an and the Prophet justified family planning. Even the sterilisation methods of male vasectomy and female tubectomy, along with implants (the best known being Norplant) and injectables (such as Depo-Provera), are currently used in Indonesia’s family planning programme. Indonesian religious lea-ders promote the virtues of birth control.
In the 1960s, Indonesia had a population growth rate far in excess of India’s and a standard of living lower than us. Today, the annual population growth rate is a manageable 1.4% a year (India’s is close to 2%) and the Indonesian per capita income above ours.
In the Islamic Republic of Iran, after the overthrow of the Shah in 1979, the new fundamentalist leaders dismantled the country’s earlier family planning programme and introduced pro-natalist policies. They soon realised their mistake, as the population rate soared, increasing by almost 40% in a decade. In the late 1980s, they made an abrupt about-turn, promoting modern methods of contraception, including the pill, IUDs and condoms. Later, even implants and sterilisation were permitted. Today, Iran has one of the most successful family planning programmes in the world. And the country is still run by Islamic fundamentalists.
Tunisia, another almost wholly Islamic country, has a successful family planning programme which goes back to the mid-1970s. It is the only Islamic nation where polygamy – having more than one wife – is banned by law. Soon after Tunisia got its independence from France in 1956, its far-sighted leader, Habib Bourguiba, argued that even though the Qur’an permitted polygamy, it was only on condition that all the wives must be treated equally – a logical impossibility and, therefore, not permissible. There was no opposition from the religious leaders and the law still stands. As a result, Tunisian women have been empowered as perhaps in no other developing country in the world, with a high percentage of them elected to its parliament.
Morocco has closely followed suit. Its king, Mohammed VI, recently announced a radical change in the Family Law: The legal age of marriage was raised to 18, for men and women; a woman was given the right to ask for divorce; and polygamy, though still allowed, was subject to such stringent conditions that it was virtually made impossible. In family planning centres, run by the government and NGOs, the reproductive health needs of women are addressed and youngsters given advice on modern contraceptive methods, which are widely available.
“In the last 10 years, Morocco’s annual population growth rate has come down from 1.9% to 1.6% and the fertility rate of women (the average number of children women have) from almost four to under three”, according to Zakia Mrini, president of the Ennakhil (Palm Tree)
Association Pour La Femme et L’Enfant. She also told us that 35 members of the Moroccan legislature were now women. “It is now a criminal offence for a man to beat up a woman”, explained Dr Khoumsi, head of the Family Planning Association of Morocco.
Indonesia, Iran, Tunisia and Morocco are only four of several Islamic countries – Bangladesh, Turkey and Egypt are two others – where family planning is widely practised, using modern methods of contraception, including sterilisation. Abortion, admittedly, remains a controversial area, but some of these countries permit it if the health of the woman is in danger. The
AIMPLB should wake up to reality. It should take a lead in enlightening Muslims in India with what is happening in the Islamic world.
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