“It is not true that the Muslim community produced lots of children”: Taslima Nasreen

GG News Bureau

New Delhi, 21^st July. The Muslim community did not produce a large number of children, according to Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen.

The author tweeted a comparison between herself, her sister, mother, and grandmother: “The more civilised you are, the less children you have.” Despite not naming a nation, the Muslim author’s comments came at a time when there is controversy surrounding the Muslim population.

“It is untrue that the Muslim community has a large number of offspring. If infant mortality is high, any community requires far more children than it has. My mother had 4, my sister is expecting one child, my grandmother had 11, and I didn’t have any children. The less children you have, the more civilised you are “tweeted the author.

Not true that Muslim community reproduces lots of children.Any community needs more than enough children if infant mortality rate is high. My grandmother had 11 children,my mother had 4, my sister is having 1 child, I've none.The more civilized you are,the less children you have.

— taslima nasreen (@taslimanasreen) July 20, 2022

In response to remarks made by Yogi Adityanath, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, regarding the imbalance in the population, AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi recently claimed that Muslims use contraceptives the most. The Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh stated that the population control programme must continue without causing any population imbalance in response to a United Nations report predicting that India will overtake China as the world’s most populous nation in 2023. “It should not happen that the rate of population growth or the percentage of some community is high and we stabilise the population of the ‘moolniwasi’ (natives) through awareness or enforcement,” he said when referring to population imbalance.

In response, Owaisi questioned whether Muslims were not indigenous to India and rejected the idea that Muslims were driving up population numbers. Later, he added that he would never support a law that only allowed for two children. “The overall fertility rate in India is falling. It will stabilise by 2030. We shouldn’t make the same mistakes China did “Owaisi stated earlier.

Whereas, Abdul Qadir Patel, the Health Minister and a PPP member, suggested on Monday that couples who want more children should leave Pakistan and increase the Muslim population in countries where Muslims are a minority.

The minister stated at a seminar in Islamabad that Pakistan’s population is predicted to reach 285 million by 2030. “We don’t want the number of Muslims to decline. We want to make Muslims better and more educated, and we want to give them access to better medical facilities, he said.

The Health Minister’s suggestion was referred to as “out of the box” by Pakistani media outlets like Geo News.

Pakistan’s problems are largely due to its population, especially given how fragile and indebted the country continues to be. Pakistan’s population is expected to grow by 56% to over 366 million people by 2050, according to a UN projection.

A Muslim cleric in Uttar Pradesh, however, asserted that Muslims should not be asked to use birth control because it is against Sharia law. Maulana Shahabuddin Razvi, Dargah Ala Hazrat, Bareilly, responded to the demand for a “uniform” population control law in India by saying that he cannot demand that any Muslim limit births because it is their prerogative to have as many children as the productivity cycle is in Allah’s hands.

However, the cleric declared that if the government implements a policy on population control, he will not object and will follow it.

The Bareilly-based Maulana made his statement after numerous political figures, including Union Minister and BJP leader Giriraj Singh, vehemently argued for a strict law to limit the nation’s population.

On the occasion of World Population Day, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said that while a population imbalance should not occur, the population control programme must move forward successfully.

The world population is expected to reach 8 billion people on November 15; the United Nations has predicted that India will overtake China as the country with the greatest population in 2023.

According to a UN report, the world’s population crossed the 7 billion threshold in 2011, will be close to 7.9 billion in 2021, and will increase to about 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050, and 10.9 billion in 2100.

The world body also addressed the issue of fertility rates, noting that both life expectancy and fertility rates have significantly changed over the past few decades. Women had 4.5 children on average in the early 1970s; by 2015, the global fertility rate had decreased to under 2.5 children per woman. The average lifespan across the globe has increased, going from 64.6 years in the early 1990s to 72.6 years in 2019.