They feel that getting sterilized is a sin and happily accept every gift from mother nature. “I don´t wish to have many children. But then, our religion doesn´t allow family planning,” Amina Khatun of Simara says, her 11th child in tow.
Khatun, who runs a small shop in Simara, has seven sons and four daughters. “They´ve not been forced upon me either,” she says about her 11 children and adds, “The number of children went up as we don´t practice family planning in our community.”
This is not an isolated case in Simara. The number of children in the Muslim community has been on the rise in neighboring villages as well. Some feel that more income is generated by having more members in the family who earn but the general feeling among Muslims is that children are gifts of Allah. “How can we obstruct their arrival?” questions Sarajul Ansari of Chorni, Parsa. He says most Muslim couples in the village have more than six children.
Educated Muslim youths feel that the problem has been compounded by the maulavis in the increasing number of madrasas who oppose the notion of family planning. “They teach in their sermons that family planning is a sin. So, even those who want to try family planning get scared,” states Mainuddin Ansari of Chorni-7.
He discloses that even he was sacred to try family planning until the arrival of his fourth child. But he was left with no option as management of an ever-growing family started to take its toll. “Many protested when I did it. But then my financial condition and the health of my family are very sound now,” Ansari proudly says.
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