http://www.religiousconsultation.org/islam_contraception_abortion_in_SacredChoices.htm
THE RELIGIOUS CONSULTATION
on
population, reproductive health & ethics
Contraception and
abortion in Islam
Islam's views
on family planning are important for our planet since one out of
every six people on this earth is a Muslim
by Daniel
C. Maguire
(Excerpt
from Chapter 9 of SACRED CHOICES)
What can be said
from the outset is that there is pluralism in the Muslim world
as there is everywhere. There are conservatives, liberals, and
those who claim to be centrists. No major religion is a grid
into which all the faithful neatly fit. In approaching Islam, it
is necessary to see what the teaching authority structure is.
Clearly, the Qur'an is the prime authority, considered divine
revelation. However, the authority of the Qur'an is not magical.
Isma'il R. Al'Faruqi makes the interesting point that Muslims do
not claim any miracles for Muhammad to shore up the authority of
the Qur'an. "The Qur'anic revelation is a presentation to one's
mind, to reason." There is no papal figure or ruling synod in
Islam that can impose its views. "In Islam religious truth is a
matter of argument and conviction, a cause in which everybody is
entitled to contend and everybody is entitled to convince and be
convinced." Certain institutions like the Al-Azhar University in
Cairo have a lot of teaching prestige and the opinions and
pronoucements of certain authoritative persons have a lot of
weight, but their weight is not so heavy as to crush personal
conscience.
Also, as Riffat
Hassan points out, the Qur'an is not "an encyclopaedia which may
be consulted to obtain specific information about how God views
each problem, issue or situation." It is not a blueprint for
moral life covering all the questions from the seventh to the
twenty first century and beyond. For this reason, there are
other sources of truth in Islam. The Hadith are sayings
attributed to the Prophet Muhammad. These do not all agree and
the authenticity of many is doubted and debated. The Sunnah are
the practical traditions rising out of the life of Muhammad.
There is also the huge body of legal literature known as
Shari'ah which again is contradictory at times. Some of its
regressive and anti-woman prescriptions are preferred by
right-wing zealots. However, the Qur'an is the Supreme Court,
and its central values, outlined above, hold sway over any later
interpretation. The prime value there, as we saw, is justice
animated with mercy. Whatever contradicts that is not true to
Islam.
There is another
principle in Islamic teaching that is central to Muslim ethics.
It is called ijithad. This is the heart of any true religious
ethic. It means that you analyze the unique data of a current
moral problem, and argue from Qur'anic principles, using analogy
and logic to come to the best and most reasonable solution. As
the jurist and philosopher Azizah Y. al-Hibri says, this gave
Islamic ethics great flexibility. "It is an essential part of
Qur'anic Who_are_we, because Islam was revealed for all people
and for all times." It allows Islamic ethics to respond
realistically to new problems where there is no spelled-out
answer in the Qur'an. It established Islam's respect for our
faculty of reason.
In Islam as in
all the religions, fertility is highly prized and children are a
gift of God to bring "joy to our eyes." (Surah 25: Al-Furqan:74)
Conservatives argue also that family planning is a lack of trust
in the sustaining God. They cite texts such as this: "There is
no creeping being on earth but that upon God is its sustenance."
(Surah 11: Hud:6) The Qur'an also says that if we place our
trust in God, that is enough. I quoted my mother's Irish faith
above saying that God will not send a child without sending the
means to feed it.
This naive and
passive trust that no matter what we do or don't do God will
make up the difference, does not bear scrutiny and does not face
up to the perennial fact of starving children. It is dismissed
by Islam's best theologians. Theologian Fazlur Rahman says that
using the Qur'anic references to God's power and promise to
sustain all creation to argue "for an unlimited population out
of proportion to the economic resources is infantile. The Qur'an
certainly does not mean to say that God provides every living
creature with sustenance whether that creature is capable of
procuring sustenance for itself or not." We are not passive
sheep waiting to be fed, in the Islamic view. We are God's
vicegerents on earth gifted with reason and talent. God has
shared responsibility for providence with us and has given us
the power to be prudent, to see problems and do something
sensible about them.
This squares
beautifully with Thomas Aquinas' description of humans as
"participants in divine providence." Also, in Catholic
theology,relying on God's sustaining power to do what we have
been equipped by God to do for ourselves is called the sin of
"tempting God."
Contraception has
a long history in Islam. Early Islam actually developed
contraceptive medicine and instructed Europe on it. Avicenna the
Muslim physician in his book "The Law" discusses twenty
different substances used for birth control. Such Islamic books
of medicine were used for centuries in Europe. When Europe was
in its "dark ages" Islamic culture with its stress on education
kept the light of learning burning to the benefit of all
peoples.
The most common
form of birth control when Islam began was called azl,
withdrawal, coitus interruptus. There are five major schools of
law in Islam and all five permit the practice of azl, four of
the five insisting that the consent of the wife is necessary.
And here is where ijtihad come in, reasoning analogically from
something already permitted. The Arab Republic of Egypt
published a booklet called "Islam's Attitude Towards Family
Planning." They state in its introduction that broad
consultation with the most authoritative sources in Islam went
into the research on this book. After noting that azl was
permitted they argue that any method that has the same purpose
as azl and does not induce permanent sterility is acceptable for
Muslims. They then go on to list methods such as the cervical
cap, the condom, contraceptive pills, injections to produce
temporary sterility, and the "loop device" placed in the uterus
to prevent implantation of the fertilized egg.
There are many
reasons justifying contraception: reasons of health, economics,
the preservation of the woman's appearance (!), and improving
the quality of offspring. This last reason is important in Islam
because the Islamic approach to contraception has a social
conscience. It is concerned with the common good. Producing
sickly, weak, or underdeveloped or uneducated children is not
good for the umma, for the society. The Egyptian study says that
"the strength of a nation is measured not by numbers or
quantities, but rather by quality." The study stresses the
importance "of being rational and moderate and of living within
the possible means and available resources." The hadith
literature also says it is better to have few who are virtuous
than many who are not. Once again, human life deserves to
thrive, not just to eek out a living.
What then about
sterilization? In blessing the use of contraceptives, we saw the
pre- condition that none of them cause permanent sterility.
There is a wisdom in this. It is senseless to permanently
sterilize if temporary sterility would meet the needs of the
situation. Having stated the Islamic opposition to permanent
sterilization, the Egyptian study immediately moves to
exceptions and says that if the husband or wife suffer from a
contagious or hereditary disease, permanent sterility is needed
and moral. The study then invokes the principle of the lesser
evil. That means you may have objections to sterilization but at
times it will do less harm and is to be preferred.
Interestingly, Catholic theologians today are using that same
"lesser evil" argument to justify the use of condoms to prevent
the spread of AIDS. Even the Vatican is showing some flexibility
on this and invoking the "lesser evil" principle to allow
exceptions.
And then we come
to abortion. There are those in Islam who oppose all abortions.
A favored text to support this is: "Do not kill your children
for fear of poverty for it is We who shall provide sustenance
for you as well as for them." (Surah 6: At-Talaqa:2-3) Professor
Hassan notes on this text that the reference is to killing
already born children--usually girls. The text was condemning
this custom. Also, she notes the Arabic word for killing in this
text "means not only slaying with a weapon, blow or poison, but
also humiliating or degrading or depriving children of proper
upbringing and education." So once again, as in other religions,
a text is being freighted with meaning that it cannot sustain.
The text doesn't explicitly address the abortion and therefore
doesn't close the argument on it.
So the "no
choice" view is not the prevailing view in Islam. There is broad
acceptance in the major Islamic schools of law on the
permissibility of abortion in the first four months of
pregnancy. Most of the schools that permit abortion insist that
there must be a serious reason for it such as a threat to the
mother's life or the probability of giving birth to a deformed
or defective child. However, as the Egyptian study says:
"Jurists of the Shiite Zaidiva believe in the total
permissibility of abortion before life is breathed into the
fetus, no matter whether there is a justifiable excuse or not."
That would be a pure form of what some call "abortion on
demand."