Yoginder Sikand

The recent statement in favor of family planning issued by the widely respected Shia scholar and Vice-President of the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board, Maulana Kalbe Sadiq, has, expectedly, stirred up a major controversy in Muslim circles. Numerous Muslim ulama or Islamic scholars and other community leaders have been quick to denounce the statement, roundly condemning Sadiq and claiming that family planning has no sanction whatsoever in Islam.

On the other hand, several other Muslims have come out in strong support of Sadiq’s stance, arguing that Islam does indeed allow for certain methods of family planning. This heated debate over the normative Islamic position on family planning is being played out in the Urdu press, and numerous articles and letters have been published on the issue, with no clear conclusion appearing to emerge on what exactly Islam has to say on this vexed subject.

A good indication of the issues involved in the ongoing debate are the numerous articles on the subject that appeared in the pages of the Urdu Rashtriya Sahara, one of the largest selling Urdu dailies published from Delhi, on the 26th of September. The conservative ulama clearly seem to be dominating the debate, and the paper carries numerous pieces penned by them. As some of them appear to see it, family planning is a sinister ‘anti-Islamic’ plot hatched by hidden ‘enemies’ of Islam.

Accordingly, Sadiq’s statement is presented as, unwittingly or otherwise, part of this alleged conspiracy. Thus, a certain Maulana Muhammad Inamullah Siddiqui of the Deoband madrasa declares Sadiq’s statement as being ‘wholly against’ the Quran and the Hadith, the normative statements attributed to the Prophet. It is, he says, the result of a ‘conspiracy’ hatched by the BJP to fan anti-Muslim hatred.

A senior Deobandi leader and member of the Muslim Personal Law Board, Maulana Muhammad Burhanuddin Sambhali, declares family planning to be ‘against Islam’ (khilaf-i-islam), and accuses Sadiq of providing an excuse to non-Muslims to ‘rejoice’ by creating ‘even more problems’ for the Muslims by setting off a controversy on the question of family planning. In a similar vein, Maulana Jameel Ilyasi, self-styled head of the All-India Association of Masjid Imams (‘All-India Tanzim ‘Aima-i-Masajid) pronounces Sadiq’s statement to be completely ‘against the shariah’.

Some of the ulama participants in the debate on family planning seek to back up their claims by selective quotations from the Quran and the Hadith, interpreting them in order to prove the ‘Islamicity’ of their stance. This is what Maulana Sayyed Jalaluddin Umri, deputy head of the Islamist Jama’at-I-Islami Hind and one of its chief ideologues, seeks to do in his piece revealingly titled ‘Family Planning: The Product of a Wrong Islamic Interpretation’.

Umri reveals a complete insensitivity to the reality and immensity of the population explosion crisis, dismissing the arguments of the advocates of family planning as completely misconceived. ‘If the population of any community in the country is increasing, what is the reason for concern?’, he naively asks. Rather than see this as a ‘problem’, he says, it should actually be considered as a blessing, for, he claims, a growing population adds to the country’s ‘manpower’ (afradi quvvat), which would allegedly be ‘useful in the service of the country and the community’, working to strengthen both.

Umri thus turns a complete blind eye to the plight of the poor laboring under the burden of large families. He conveniently makes no reference to the millions of unemployed, poverty-stricken and illiterate Muslims (and others) who are by no stretch of imagination engaged in the sort of ‘useful service’ that he claims a mounting population will help promote.

Umri insists that family planning has no ‘Islamic’ sanction, claiming that those who argue otherwise ‘wrongly’ interpret the shariah in order to ‘change the intention of the Quran’. Poverty does not result from a mounting population, he claims, for God, in His wisdom, allocates to all of His creatures his or her own share of sustenance (rozi). To fear that population growth would lead to poverty is thus, he argues, erroneous, and is, he seems to suggest, tantamount to doubting God’s beneficence.

In this regard he quotes a Quranic verse that exhorts people not to kill their children for fear of poverty, assuring them that God shall provide for them. Aware that pro-family planning Muslims take this verse as condemning the killing of children already born and not as denouncing family planning as such, Umri interprets the verse to argue that the Quran not only denounces the killing of living children but also the ‘intention’ behind the act. This would, presumably, also include methods of family control other than killing children after birth.

Umri claims that the Quran bitterly opposes the desire to limit the size of the family simply because of the fear of poverty. This he roundly condemns, likening it to the fear of the pre-Islamic pagan Arabs who ‘doubted God’s sustenance (razaqi)’. Controlling the size of one’s family for purely economic reasons, he thus appears to argue, weakens one’s faith in God’s mercy and bounty. Umri goes so far as to claim that if one resorts to family control methods for fear of poverty resulting from a large family, ‘it would, on a small scale, be akin to the actions of the pagan Arabs, who killed their children’.

Umri is aware of the fact that other Muslim scholars have indeed allowed for certain family planning techniques, particularly the practice of ‘azl or coitus interruptus, that is methods that ensure that the seminal fluid of the man does not enter the woman’s uterus. ‘Umri’s condemns this in no uncertain terms, and claims that the Prophet considered ‘azl to be ‘pointless’ (la hasil). Umri here quotes a hadith related by Abu Said Khudri, a companion of the Prophet, according to which the Prophet is said to have declared that it was ‘preferable’ to desist from ‘azl as ‘it could not stop God from creating the creatures He had decided to send to this world till the Day of Judgment’ in any case.

Umri is aware of the fact that other Muslim scholars have indeed allowed for certain family planning techniques, particularly the practice of ‘azl or coitus interruptus, that is methods that ensure that the seminal fluid of the man does not enter the woman’s uterus. ‘Umri’s condemns this in no uncertain terms, and claims that the Prophet considered ‘azl to be ‘pointless’ (la hasil). Umri here quotes a hadith related by Abu Said Khudri, a companion of the Prophet, according to which the Prophet is said to have declared that it was ‘preferable’ to desist from ‘azl as ‘it could not stop God from creating the creatures He had decided to send to this world till the Day of Judgment’ in any case.

Umri quotes another hadith report, according to which the Prophet announced that when a couple has intercourse it is not necessary that a child be conceived, for this is a matter that God alone decides. This suggests, Umri tells his critics, that one is completely mistaken if one believes that by practicing ‘azl one can stop a child from being born, for the birth of a child is something that is in God’s hands alone. Hence, he insists, ‘azl is ‘unnecessary’ (ghayr zaruri) and ‘unnatural’ (ghayr fitri).

That Umri’s position on ‘azl is questionable from within the broader Islamic tradition itself is clearly apparent in an article that appears in the same page of the Urdu Rashtriya Sahara, penned by a scholar from the Barelvi Muslim sect, Maulana Mumtaz Alam Misbahi. Misbahi evokes a different hadith attributed to the Prophet, related by Jabir bin Abdullah, who reported that he used to practice ‘azl ‘when the Quran was being revealed’, and that when the Prophet heard of this he did not prohibit it.

Hence, Misbahi argues, in complete contrast to ‘Umri, that ‘azl is indeed ‘permissible’, provided the husband has the consent of his wife and only for proper reasons, such as for, instance, if their economic conditions are such that they are not in a position to properly rear another child or if pregnancy poses a grave medical danger to the woman. Misbahi also adds, echoing what appears to be a general consensus among the ulama that certain other methods of family planning, such as vasectomy and abortion are, as a rule, not permissible in the shariah.


Copyright©2004 Yoginder Sikand. About the author