POPULATION-PHILIPPINES: After ‘Fatwah’, Muslims Face Taboo Issues

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Diana Mendoza

DAVAO CITY, Philippines, Apr 1 2004 (IPS) - Upon birth, a Muslim infant is called to greatness. An imam, the keeper of faith in the mosque, cuddles the infant and whispers prayers traditionally held to be the first words the baby should hear as Allah’s blessing.

Now, Muslim infants would have additional blessings after more than 200 Muslim religious leaders declared in early March a national ‘fatwah’, or religious decree, on family planning – one meant to assure that from now on, each and every infant who will be called to greatness is also a ”planned Muslim child”.

”I am calling on everyone to help us disseminate the good news – and heed the call to greatness. I encourage you to discuss the fatwah in your communities, to your neighbours, friends and especially, to your families,” Sheikh Omar Pasigan Mohammad, the grand mufti of Central Mindanao, told leaders of the Muslim community in declaring the ‘fatwah’.

The pronouncement took place in this southern Philippine city on Mar. 10, in a rare gathering of religious elders and Islamic scholars across Mindanao, where most of the nearly 5 million Muslims live, and from elsewhere in this South-east Asian country. The grand mufti is a legal expert with the power to speak on religious matters.

They adopted the equally urgent call expressed in the Arabic phrase, ‘Tanzim al-Usra’ or a ‘Call to Greatness’, to name their solemn assembly.

The ‘fatwah’, or the ‘Official Ruling on Family Planning and Reproductive Health’, discussed marriage, being single, sex between spouses, planning of pregnancies, breastfeeding and lactation, contraception, abortion and other subjects considered taboo in Islam.

Inscribed in Arabic with English translations, it discusses verses found in the Koran and the opinions of authorities in Islam and others on family planning. It recognises family planning as the ”most contentious aspect of reproductive health.”

But ”the permissibility of family planning is for the welfare of the mother and the child and for the couple to raise children who are pious, healthy, educated, useful and well-behaved citizens,” the ‘fatwah’ states in part. ”Family planning does not refer to abortion, neither to birth control. It refers to birth or child spacing. It should be a couple’s decision.”

Weeks after the decree was issued, experts like Dr Lampa Pandi, health secretary of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) – the administrative region that groups Muslim-majority provinces – calls the ‘fatwah’ ”the single most important event in the history of Islam in the Philippines”.

He said, ”Its declaration opens up discussion of sexuality and reproductive health. Muslims will no longer be afraid of talking about matters that touch their relationships, and their family life. They can now practise family planning without fear or religious censure.” The Philippines’ average population growth rate of 2.36 percent remains one of the higher ones in the region. In the Muslim-majority regions, the growth rate is 2.76 percent.

The issues of population planning and reproductive health have special significance for the ARMM. Official statistics say it the poorest region in the country, with the highest infant and maternal mortality rates, lowest practice of family planning and lowest human development indicators. Forty percent of Filipinos live below the poverty line, but nearly 70 percent of those in the ARMM are poor.

As many as 200 to 300 women die each year in the ARMM and in Northern Mindanao from pregnancy-related illnesses and from childbirth. Fifty-five of 1,000 infants born in the two regions die at birth.

So far, Muslims and non-Muslims have had different reactions to the ‘fatwah’. Some Muslims maintain that it is prohibited in the Korean. Ustadz Dimaporo, who has 19 children by different women, argued: ”There is no limit to the number of children. That is what is taught in Islam.”

In Quiapo in the heart of Manila, where a Muslim mosque and a Catholic church are located near each other, the sentiments are varied.

Damun Shariff, 32, a Muslim from southern Sultan Kudarat who tends to a shop selling pirated CDs, says it is his first time to hear about a ‘fatwah’ of this kind, but commended it. ”I have five kids, one wife. I’m hard up. I didn’t know how to plan a family. Don’t you think this is too late for me?” he asked IPS.

For her part, 22-year-old clerk Yasmin says in a hushed tone that the ‘fatwah’ may be helpful for Muslims who regard having families as a responsibility, ”but not to our culture that permits men to have many wives, and women to be married very early and against their will”.

Many Catholics, who make up more than 80 percent of the population, say they find the ‘fatwah’ more progressive than the Catholic hierarchy, which frowns upon the use of artificial contraception methods.

”This is real and courageous work. For once, we have a policy that touches the lives of people especially those in need of change,” says Maricar Sese, who works in environmental preservation.

She wonders if the Catholic church hierarchy, which identifies the use of condoms with sin, will ever address birth control and abortion. ”They don’t even want to touch the issue of sex with a ten-foot pole!”

Pandi says that in truth, the edict is expected to face resistance from Muslims and non-Muslims who have conservative views on family planning. But he says its strength is its clarity and emphasis that ”family planning is birth spacing, not birth control or abortion”.

In the weeks since the adoption of the ‘fatwah’, Muslim religious leaders have started meetings in their provinces to launch an aggressive information campaign.

The edict prescribes that, ”all methods of contraception are allowed as long as they are safe, legal, in accordance with the Islamic shariah (courts) and approved by a credible physician, preferably a Muslim, for the benefit of both the mother and the child”. But while it allows contraception, it prohibits the use of vasectomy and ligation, which are considered mutilations of the body – and not accepted by all in the Muslim community.

Sheikh Mohammad explains while Muslim religious leaders agree on the importance of family planning, they were divided over the methods that can be adopted. In the past, he said, ”There was little effort on our part as religious leaders to think seriously about the implications of family planning issues with the existence and survival of communities.”

The beginnings of the ‘fatwah’ date back to 1997, when the U.N. Population Fund in the Philippines began working with health officials and religious leaders. In January this year, a party of Muslim religious leaders, physicians and government health officials travelled to Egypt and got the endorsement of the ‘fatwah’ by the grand mufti there.