Madrassas begin education on family planning

t('articles.tweet')

* denotes required field.

• Your name *
• Email to *
• Comments *
• CAPTCHA *

Reset

LAHORE, Pakistan -- Art and Islam are coming together to help control the population explosion in Pakistan.

Maulana Raghib Naeemi, chief administrator of Jamai-e-Naeemia, uses Islamic arguments to advance the idea that family planning and reproductive health programs are fundamentally approved by Islam.

“Family planning is not sinful and anti-Islamic. Islam permits family planning and birth spacing (because) frequent childbirths harm a mother’s health,” he said.

Pakistan’s population increased to 144m in 2001 from 34m in 1951. If that growth rate continues, Pakistan’s population will reach 220m by 2020.

To counter the myths surrounding family planning and to raise awareness about it, the Ministry of Population Development (MPD) has involved religious scholars and graduates of local madrassas in its plans to link population control to Islamic philosophy.

The majority of Ulema in Pakistan perceive family planning as a way to limit the number of children, a policy that they say goes against Islam. Naeemi disagrees, citing 19th-century Islamic jurist Imam Ghazali: “Ghazali supported the use of contraceptives with one’s wife to protect her from the dangers of childbirth or simply to preserve her beauty. Ghazali also noted economic reasons for family planning, such as the wish to limit one’s family to a manageable size.”

Naeemi said couples should jointly decide how many children they want and when.

“Another valid reason for practicing contraception in Islam is the well-being of children. The presence of a nursing infant is a major reason for birth control. A new pregnancy sets an upper limit on lactation length, resulting in palpable harm to the child being nursed”, he said.

He quoted the Quran to show that it implicitly supports spacing children’s births several years apart: “And mothers shall suckle their children two full years to complete breast feeding”.

The ministry has also begun a program of selecting Ulema to go to villages and rural areas to spread the message about the benefits of using medical and scientific know-how to control family size.

“The government is determined to make the most of the authority enjoyed by religious segments in the society, amid the projected surge in the population to 202.1m by 2023”, said Tahir Raza Naqvi, the Population Welfare Department (PWD) secretary of Punjab. “The ministry has already engaged 22,800 Ulema and Imams of various mosques in its scheme of public counseling vis-a-vis family planning”.

Pakistan’s population increased fourfold in 50 years because of a lack of commitment on the part of religious scholars and politicians, Dr. Jamil Ahmed Chaudhry, provincial coordination officer (Punjab) of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), said.

“Religious scholars (need to) find ways ... to convince the ordinary people, particularly in rural areas, that birth control through scientific means is lawful and permitted by Islam”, he said. “Grass-roots level education ... on limiting family sizes by the governments has already begun”.

Discussing National Population Policy 2010, Muhammad Tanveer Jabbar, PWD deputy secretary for administration, said, “People will witness a paradigm shift in the approach toward the issue of population control in the country, with a major focus on ‘interspousal counseling’”.

The Ministry of Public Welfare also has been using art to provide information, education and communication (IEC) about family planning.

The UNFPA allocated US$14,783 to PWD Punjab during 2008-09 for art and promotional activities designed to help curb population growth.

“Counseling and information on population and family, along with art and literary performances on controlling population growth, are conducted to raise awareness and understanding about the relevance of population-related issues to all levels of decision-making”, said Naqvi. “IEC programmes [rely on] good interpersonal communication and counseling skills, particularly within the context of family planning and other healthcare services.”

IEC efforts have found play by PWD in a wide range of communications channels, ranging from one-on-one counseling to the mass media, traditional folk arts and public forums.

“Communications strategy tools are a vital means of inculcating awareness among the population”, said Naqvi. “Art activities can be very important where literacy is low or where written information is not widely circulated”.

“IEC programmes are an important vehicle for reaching young people, while less formal education on population issues can take place in the workplace, health facilities, trade unions, community centres, youth groups, mosques and women’s organisations and through vocational training, literacy programmes and art activities”, he said.