Is birth control allowed in Islam?
Salam brother Hashim and all,
As you have mentioned correctly, in the Quran “groom is commanded to pay dowry (Mahar) to the bride to take her as a wife.“ What problem you mentioned in your region, same problem is in Bangladesh as well. I understand birth control is not un-Quranic. Because sperm and ovum cannot fertilize to initiate a human being and that’s the way the most birth control techniques work.
Imagine, an adult man does not get marry due to extreme poverty. He is hoping his financial situation will be improved later and he will marry a girl then. Now at his present state, billions of his sperms are spoiling obviously.
So does he commit sin for not being married? I don’t think so. Even after marriage an adult person’s billions of sperms (most of his sperms) don’t utilize to form offspring. Therefore, if we develop a system to prevent fertilization sperm from ovum to control how many children we want cannot be a sin.
However, I come to know that in India, especially many Hindu couples prefer boy rather than girl baby and they use ultrasonic technique etc. to determine fetus gender before giving birth and many cases they destroy fetus if it is female one. It is obviously an evil act. Thank you.
Dr. Anisur Rahman
Subject: [God-Quran] Re: Having a strong team of children – Quran versus hadith
Salaam All brothers and sisters,
Today, Sunday, July 15th, I went to attend a marriage. There, I saw a friend who was an imam of a masjid before and now works as an Arabic teacher in a school. During talks, we were talking about the dowry system prevalent among muslim society, particularly in our Kerala State, where the parents of a bridegroom demand huge amount in the form of gold and money from the bride’s parents to take their daughters in marriage to their sons, which is against the Qur’an where the groom is commanded to pay dowry (Mahar) to the bride to take her as a wife.
He was telling about his father-in-law and his eight daughters and six are married and still two daughters haven’t got bride so far who are already 35 now because of this dowry menace and also because they are not fair looking or whitish.
I told him that people of old did not have any control of having children and just went on having children one after another, some even had 14 to 15 children, and if the man is poor (which is the case with his father-in-law), then it’s very difficult in this society of dowry hunters to find a groom to each of them at appropriate ages.
He told me that birth control is not allowed in Islam unless the woman is incapable of doing so because of health risks, we should not fear poverty and think of high education costs today and use modern birth control methods where parents restrict children to one or two.
Then as usual, he went on to say that hadees encourages to have more children, the more number of children a man has, the stronger the team will be; gave an example that in western countries, if a man has more children, he gets more tax benefits; another example, if a man has many sons and each are earning, the family becomes financially sound; another example, a businessman having more children will have a stronger business. He also told that financial constraints should not be a reason to control birth of children as God is the one who provides sustenance to all.
In a society like ours where people (particularly poor) have started thinking about a female child as a curse on them because of the dowry system and parents out of no go have to sell their own houses and everything to fulfill the demands of the groom and parents, there are live cases in our society and within our family where poor parents having more female children are undergoing mental trauma-like experience because of not able to pay the dowry and the daughters still sitting at houses with no hope of marriage.
I wanted to know the Quranic point of view about birth control and having as many as children as one requires. A man may say so because he is not the one who undergoes the pain involving childbirth. What about the case of women, are they birth machines to go on delivering children for the man to building a strong team without having a say. Your valuable opinion in this regard will be highly appreciable.
Salaam
Hashim