Promoting Family Planning Program for

Welfare and Better Educated Children,

Does It Against the Religion?

Over population: a great poverty contributor

The most pressing problems facing this nation in the early 1990s were overpopulation. This problem likely will keep rising as the lack of social and economic facilities among Indonesia’s poor. Even though Indonesia’s growth rate had decreased over the decades since independence, the population continued to grow and population density increased significantly, particularly on the main islands. In June 2000, Indonesia’s population had reached 206,264,595 with an annual growth rate of 1.49 percent ⁽¹⁾.

Population growth placed enormous pressures on land, the education system, and other social resources, and was closely related to the dramatic rise in population mobility and urbanization. At such rates of growth, the population was expected to double by 2025. Even if birth control programs in place in the early 1990s succeeded beyond expectations and each Indonesian woman had only two children, Indonesia’s population was still so young that huge numbers of women would reach their child-bearing years in the first decades of the twenty first century. By the year 2010, Indonesia’s population was projected to reach at least 210 million, with the country maintaining its position as the fourth most populous nation on earth after China, Russia and the United States.

Family planning program versus religion

Most family planning programs in countries with predominantly Islamic populations have faced difficulties in promoting contraceptive use. One reason has been the orientation of clerics, many of whom view family planning as the replacement of the will of God with that of individuals in regard to reproduction.

Soon after the family planning program that preceded the National Family Planning Coordination Agency (BKKBN) was launched, both of Indonesia’s major Islamic groups expressed unease with family planning. In 1968, The Majlis Tarjih of the reformist organization Muhammadiyah declared that preventing conception was against Islamic doctrine and that contraceptive use was to be allowed only in case of emergency. In 1969, Nahdlatul Ulama stated that family planning was permissible only for spacing, not the prevention of births.

 

… وَلاَ تَقْتُلُواْ أَوْلاَدَكُم مِّنْ إمْلاَقٍ نَّحْنُ نَرْزُقُكُمْ وَإِيَّاهُمْ …

 

“…Kill not your children on a plea of want; we provide sustenance for you and for them;” (Al-Qur’an 6:151)

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“Kill not your children for fear of want: We shall provide sustenance for them as well as for you: verily the killing of them is a great sin.” (Al-Qur’an 17:31)

These verses seems conveying the same message but on scrutiny We realize that the first verse is meant for poor parents, who fear that if one more child is born in the family neither they will be able to survive nor the child, thus Allah (SWT) says we provide sustenance for you and for them. In the other verse Allah (SWT) says We shall provide sustenance for them and as well as for you, referring to rich parents who feel that if they have less children they can concentrate on them better and give them better education and quality life.

Faced with this challenge, BKKBN officials chose from the beginning not to circumvent religious opposition or push forward in spite of it, but rather to engage religious leaders and modify policy in response to their concerns. In addition, they opened up direct discussions with Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama leaders on the subject of family planning.

This approach soon had results: In 1971, Muhammadiyah decided to allow the use of contraceptives for the purpose of spacing births; and in 1972, Nahdlatul Ulama’s women’s division created a population project.

Reliable Answer : Al-Qur’an and Hadith

 

A Muslim at least has these two sources of knowledge to obtain answers to the questions pertaining to various aspects of human life. These sources are:

1. The Holy Qur’an

No Qur’anic text forbids prevention of conception. There are, however, some Qur’anic verses which prohibit infanticide and these are used by some Muslims to discourage birth control.

But contraception does not amount to killing a human being. These verses in fact were revealed to forbid the pre-Islamic Arab practice of killing or burying alive a newborn child (particularly a girl) on account of the parents’ poverty or to refrain from having a female child. Perhaps in those days, people did not know safe methods of contraception and early abortion.

2. Sayings (Hadith) and acts (Sunnah) of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (SAW)

The principle of preventing conception was accepted in those sayings of the Prophet which allowed some of his followers to practice ‘azl or coitus interruptus. These ahadith embodied the earliest legal reasoning of Muslims on contraception and were essential instruments of argument in later Islamic thought on contraception. There is a sufficient number of ahadith on contraception. The most commonly quoted ones are the following.

1. According to Jabir, “We used to practise ‘azl in the Prophet’s lifetime while the Qur’an was being revealed.” There is another version of the same hadith, “We used to practise coitus interruptus during the Prophet’s lifetime. News of this reached him and he did not forbid us.”

2. According to Jabir, “A man came to the Prophet and said, ‘I have a slave girl, and we need her as a servant and around the palm groves. I have sex with her, but I am afraid of her becoming pregnant.’ The Prophet said, ‘Practice ‘azl with her if you so wish, for she will receive what has been predestined for her.’”

3. According to Abu Sa’id, “We rode out with the Prophet to raid Banu al-Mustaliq and captured some female prisoners . . . we desired women and abstinence became hard. [But] we wanted to practise ‘azl; and asked the Prophet about it. He said, ‘You do not have to hesitate, for God has predestined what is to be created until the judgment day.’”

4. According to ‘Umar Ibn Khattab, “The Prophet forbade the practice of ‘azl with a free woman except with her permission.”

5. According to Anas, “A man asked the Prophet about ‘azl and the Prophet said, ‘Even if you spill a seed from which a child was meant to be born on a rock, God will bring forth from that rock a child.’” ⁽²⁾

These hadith reflect two points: first that the Prophet knew about the practice and did not prohibit it (no. 1), and second, that the Prophet himself permitted the practice (no. 2 & 3).

Government feat Moslem Leader

The family planning partnership between the Indonesia government and the country’s nongovernmental organizations, religion institution in this case, has stressed the importance both of access to high-quality family planning services and of helping families make informed decisions on some of the most personal aspects of their lives.

The decrease in family size has translated into healthier and better educated children. In a developing country context, the single most important factor in the survival of young children is a mother’s ability to space out her births, and this is reflected in Indonesia. Infant mortality has undergone more than a fourfold decline, from 142 deaths per 1,000 birth live births in 1967 to 35 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2000 (USAID).

Government has collaborated with faith-based organizations to help improve the provision of family planning services. In a predominately Muslim country, the key to the overall success of the family planning program has been the unwavering support of Muslim religious leaders since the early days of the program.

Dr. Sudibyo Markus, Chairman of the National Executive Board of Muhammadiyah, one of Indonesia’s largest and most influential Muslim organizations with more than 30 million members said the organization encourages its members to consider birth spacing and limiting the number of children as ways to improve the lives of their families. Muhammadiyah has also provided family planning services in its extensive system of hospitals and health clinics.

“… in our religion we want all our Muslim families to live under the ‘Family Welfare Program.’ Basically, this article, or guideline, in our Ku’ran system helps us control the population of our families, so that we can reduce the economic burdens that happen when families have too many children. And I believe that family planning in Indonesia would not have succeeded without the support from religious organizations like Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama. ^(3).

Attention to the health and well-being of Indonesian families has resulted in some significant demographic dividends. Indonesia’s total estimated population today is around 220 million people. Without its family planning program, the country’s population would likely have been nearly 280 million. This means that the world’s fourth most populous nation has 60 million fewer people today because of family planning.

National Family Planning Coordination Agency (BKKBN) chairman Sugiri Syarief said Tuesday the success of the family planning program was closely linked to the involvement of religious leaders. “Religious leaders play a central role within the community. They are people’s role models. People listen to their views and follow them,” he said in Sanur, Bali, during the International Conference of Muslim Leaders to Support Population and Development Programs to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

Nasarudin Umar, the director general of community guidance at the Religious Affairs Ministry, said a successful national family planning program was impossible without the backing of religious leaders. He said such support was necessary to counter “the people who use religious arguments to reject family planning and to maintain persisting views legitimizing discrimination (against women)”. ⁽⁴⁾.

Many parents acknowledge that with smaller families they can better afford to send their children to school. Girls have been the particular beneficiaries of this. Millions more girls are now attending schools because their families can afford to send them, and the gap between male and female educational attainment has considerably reduced.

Conclussion

 

Muslims are required the multiplication of their numbers, in order that they might be able at the time to fulfill their responsibilities in defending the mission of Islam and protecting the true religion of Allah against the power and multitudinous adversaries threatening it. But now we find that conditions have changed. We find that the density of population in the world threatens a serious reduction in the living standards of mankind to the extent that many men of thought have been prompted to seek family planning in every country so that the resources may not fall short of ensuring a decent living for its people to provide public service for them.

Islam has never been opposed to what is good to man. Indeed it has always been ahead in the effort towards the achievement of this good so long as it is not in conflict with the purposes of Allah’s law. Family planning, understood by Islam, is not opposed to marriage or to the begetting of children, nor does it’s concept imply disbelief in the doctrine of fate and Divine dispensation–for Allah Almighty has bestowed reason upon man to enable him to distinguish between the useful and the harmful, and to help him follow the path that would assure him happiness in this world as well as in the world to come.

References

⁽¹⁾ http://www.bps.go.id/sector/population/Pop_indo.htm

⁽²⁾ Khalid Farooq Akbar .Family Planning and Islam: A Review http://muslim-canada.org/family.htm

⁽³⁾ http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/global_health/pop/news/indonesia_ graduation.html

⁽⁴⁾ The Jakarta Post: Thursday, February 14^th 2007