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Muslim Personal Law Board President Opposes Family Planning By Yoginder Sikand In his address to the recently-held eighteenth annual convention of the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board at Bhopal the Board??s President, Sayyed Muhammad Rabe Hasani Nadvi, issued a controversial statement condemning family planning as unambiguously ???un-Islamic??. This statement appears to have gone ignored in the media. Seen in the context of recent appeals by Hindutva leaders calling upon Hindus to refuse birth control measures, Nadvi??s statement threatened to further complicate an already vexed controversy involving competing communal groups. Probably referring to a statement issued late last year by Maulana Kalbe Sadiq, the Board??s Shia vice-president, in favour of family planning and the consequent virulent protest that resulted from numerous Sunni ???ulama, Rabe Nadvi used his presidential address to emphatically insist that family planning was not in accordance with Islam. Ignoring Kalbe Sadiq??s own opinion, as well as the similar views of numerous other Islamic scholars, both Shia as well as Sunni, that did not see Islam as wholly against family planning, he went so far as to claim that his view had the unanimous support of all the ???ulama. He insisted that Islam does not allow for birth control in normal circumstances, and that only in an extreme case, such as when a woman??s life is in danger if the foetus she carries is not aborted, is it allowed for, and that too with the permission of a qualified Islamic scholar or ???alim. To fear that a large family would lead to poverty, he argued, was not in accordance with Islam. Seeking Qur??anic sanction for this claim, he stressed that God, in the Qur??an, had warned people not to kill their children for fear of poverty assuring them that He himself would arrange for their sustenance. Likening birth control to murder of children, he appealed to Muslims to desist from resorting to it. Nadvi??s is no voice in the wilderness, and many traditionalist Sunni ???ulama as well as Islamist ideologues in India share his views. This, however, does not represent the Sunni tradition as a whole as such. In fact, the doyen of the Sunni ???ulama, the fourteenth century Imam Ghazali, went so far as to allow for birth control even in order to protect the beauty of a woman. Today, however, few Indian Sunni ???ulama are willing to own up to this fact, and in condemning family planning outright they conveniently ignore the views to the contrary of numerous medieval ???ulama, whom they otherwise claim to hold in great reverence. They also overlook the numerous ???ulama, in countries such as Iran and Indonesia, who, by issuing fatwas in support of family planning, have played a significant role in government-sponsored family planning programmes. Since their understanding of religion is purely text-based, they are either unaware of or else deliberately ignore the immensity of the threat of population explosion, in particular the consequences of large families for the poor. Family planning, for them, comes to be seen as part of a grand ???anti-Islamic?? conspiracy allegedly hatched by the ???enemies of Islam?? to reduce Muslim numbers and to promote free-sex, licentiousness and prostitution among Muslims, thereby corrupting their morals and leading, inevitably, to their conquest by their non-Muslim ???foes??. This point is tirelessly argued in the writings of both the traditionalist ???ulama as well as Islamist ideologues such as those associated with the Jama??at-i Islami. A good illustration of the way in which many Indian Sunni ???ulama view the issue of birth control are the numerous articles on the subject that appeared late last year in the pages of the Urdu Rashtriya Sahara, one of the largest selling Urdu dailies published from Delhi, in the wake of Maulana Kalbe Sadiq??s appeal to Muslims to seriously consider family planning. Many of the participants to that debate were conservative ???ulama. As several of them saw it, family planning is a sinister ???anti-Islamic?? plot hatched by hidden ???enemies?? of Islam. Accordingly, Sadiq??s statement was interpreted as, unwittingly or otherwise, part of this alleged conspiracy. Thus, a certain Maulana Muhammad Inamullah Siddiqui of the Deoband madrasa declared Sadiq??s statement as ???wholly against?? the Quran and the Hadith, the normative statements attributed to the Prophet. It was, he said, the result of a ???conspiracy?? hatched by the BJP to fan anti-Muslim hatred. Similarly, a senior Deobandi leader and member of the Muslim Personal Law Board, Maulana Muhammad Burhanuddin Sambhali, declared family planning to be ???against Islam??, and accused 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. Likewise, Maulana Jameel Ilyasi, self-styled head of the ???All-India Association of Masjid Imams??, pronounced Sadiq??s statement to be completely ???against the shariah??. Some of the ???ulama participants in the debate on family planning sought to back their claims by selective quotations from the Quran and the Hadith, interpreting them in order to prove the ???Islamicity?? of their stance. Sayyed Jalaluddin Umri, deputy head of the Jama??at-i-Islami Hind, in a piece revealingly titled ???Family Planning: The Product of a Wrong Islamic Interpretation??, dismissed 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 asked. Rather than seeing this as a ???problem??, he said, it should actually be considered as a blessing, for, he claimed, a growing population adds to the country??s ???manpower??, which would, or so he claimed in his wisdom, be ???useful in the service of the country and the community??, working to strengthen both. Obviously, Umri had nothing to say about the plight of the poor labouring under the burden of large families. He conveniently made 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 claimed a mounting population would help promote. Umri went on to insist that family planning had 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 claimed, for God, in His wisdom, allocates to all of His creatures his or her own share of sustenance. To fear that population growth would lead to poverty is thus, he argued, wholly erroneous. In this regard he quoted a Quranic verse that exhorts people not to kill their children for fear of poverty (the same verse that Nadvi referred to in his presidential address to the Board), assuring them that God would 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 interpreted it 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 claimed that the Quran bitterly opposed the desire to limit the size of the family simply because of the fear of poverty. This he roundly condemned, likening it to the fear of the pre-Islamic pagan Arabs who ???doubted God??s sustenance??. Controlling the size of one??s family for purely economic reasons, he thus appeared to argue, weakens one??s faith in God??s mercy and bounty. He went so far as to claim that if one resorted 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??. Like Nadvi, Umri was also probably 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. Yet, Umri??s condemned this in no uncertain terms, and claimed that the Prophet considered ???azl to be ???pointless??. He referred to a hadith 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 quoted 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 suggested, so Umri claimed, 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 insisted, ???azl is ???unnecessary?? and ???unnatural??. That Umri??s position on ???azl is questionable from within the broader Islamic tradition itself is clearly apparent in an article that appeared in the same page of the Urdu Rashtriya Sahara, penned by a scholar from the Barelvi Muslim sect, Mumtaz Alam Misbahi. Misbahi evoked a different hadith attributed to the Prophet, related by a companion of the Prophet, 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 argued, in complete contrast to Umri, that ???azl was indeed ???permissible??, provided the husband had the consent of his wife and that it was resorted to only for proper reasons, such as for, instance, if their economic conditions were such that they were not in a position to properly rear another child or if pregnancy posed a grave medical danger to the woman. The lack of any consensus of what precisely constitutes the definitive Islamic position on family planning is further exemplified in the arguments put forward by certain modern educated, non-???ulama Muslim participants in the debate in the pages of the Urdu Rashtriya Sahara. One of these, Iqbal Ansari, a Muslim social activist, insisted that contraception was not ???anti-Islamic??, and that neither the Quran nor the Hadith clearly prohibit ???azl. Interestingly, some of these pro-family planning voices were those of Muslim women. Thus, Naheed Taban, who works for the Urdu unit of the National Council for Educational Training and Research, wrote, ???Nowhere in Islam is family planning forbidden?? and insisted that ???Islam does not say that people should keep producing children??. If some people are opposed to vasectomy, she said, there are other methods that are permissible. She appealed to Muslims to move ???in accordance with the times??, and, critiquing the ???ulama who oppose family planning on supposedly ???Islamic?? grounds, made so bold as to declare that, ???The ???ulama are not at all bothered about [the plight of] women, but are concerned only about themselves??. The confusion over the legitimacy or otherwise of family planning in Islam reflects the obvious fact that the ???ulama themselves are not unanimous in agreeing as to precisely what Islamic law or the shariah, which they regularly invoke, actually means in terms of concrete laws on a range of issues. Many of them offer conflicting interpretations of Quranic verses and invoke different Hadith reports that appear to provide differing prescriptions in order to legitimize their own stances, which provide competing understandings of the legitimacy or otherwise of family planning in Islam. To add to the confusion, some ulama appear to regard ???family planning?? (khandani mansubanadi) as synonymous with vasectomy (nasbandi), ignoring various other methods of birth control that other Muslims argue are indeed permissible in Islam. Furthermore, they are either ignorant of or else deliberately ignore the views of numerous other ???ulama, more learned than themselves, who have argued, using the same scriptural resources, for the legitimacy of certain methods of family planning. Rabe Nadvi??s views on family planning in Islam need not, therefore, be taken as the last word on the subject, notwithstanding the fact that this is what he, and, presumably, the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board that he presently heads, would probably insist. |
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| << May24, 2005 - [India Thinkers Net]Politics, Tamil Cinema Eshtyle ,Travel to Manali, Marble Rocks Jabalpur |
May27, 2005 - [India Thinkers Net] Bangla fascism news &BJP'S DIRGE ON 'DEMOCRACY' >> |
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