Islam & the Modern World · Family, Marriage & Divorce
Children as a burden or a blessing
Handle with care. Handle with care: infertility and pregnancy loss are common and invisible. Do not make children a measure of a person's worth.
In short
- 1.The ONS reports total fertility in England and Wales at record lows, and most of Europe is far below the replacement level of about 2.1.
- 2.Islam frames children as an amanah, a trust, and provision as God's responsibility rather than a reason for fear.
- 3.This is not a demand that anyone have a large family; family planning within marriage is permitted.
The claim being examined
Falling birth rates across the Western world are usually explained by cost and choice, and children are frequently framed as an expense or an environmental cost.
The Islamic position
The Qur'an calls children a decoration of worldly life and a trust, and Islam forbids killing children out of fear of poverty.
Analysis
The Office for National Statistics has reported the total fertility rate in England and Wales falling to the lowest level since records began in 1938, and Eurostat records almost every EU member state below the replacement rate of approximately 2.1 births per woman. The demographic consequences — an ageing population, a shrinking working-age base, pension and care pressure — are debated by economists but the arithmetic is not seriously disputed. The Qur'an addresses the fear directly, and its context is instructive: Q 17:31 and Q 6:151 prohibit killing children out of fear of poverty, and both verses answer the fear with the promise that God provides for them and for you. Q 18:46 calls wealth and children the adornment of worldly life, and Q 8:28 calls them a trial or a trust — held together, this is neither the romanticisation nor the cost-accounting of children, but responsibility. Do not overstate the Islamic position into a demand for large families. Classical jurists permitted 'azl (coitus interruptus) on the basis of in al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, and the majority of contemporary Sunni scholars extend that to reversible contraception within marriage by mutual consent.
From the Qur'an
وَلَا تَقْتُلُوا أَوْلَادَكُمْ خَشْيَةَ إِمْلَاقٍ ۖ نَّحْنُ نَرْزُقُهُمْ وَإِيَّاكُمْ
Wa la taqtulu awladakum khashyata imlaq, nahnu narzuquhum wa iyyakum
Do not kill your children for fear of poverty. We provide for them and for you.
الْمَالُ وَالْبَنُونَ زِينَةُ الْحَيَاةِ الدُّنْيَا
Al-malu wa al-banuna zinatu al-hayati al-dunya
Wealth and children are the adornment of the life of this world.
From the Sunnah
Marry the loving and fertile, for I will outnumber the nations by you.
Sources
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