The world’s seven billionth child, a girl child to be exact, arrived at 7:20 am on a pleasantly cool morning in a nondescript community health centre near Lucknow, the Capital of Uttar Pradesh, where sex ratio is 899:1000.
Does Islam provide any guidance with regard to this, today’s hot question with regard to over population? What are the values that the ideology of the one-fifth of mankind articulates, or is expected to articulate to maintain poise and equilibrium in society? Why does this significant question not bother others? Nargis Yadav is a bundle of joy. Her mother is fortunate in having received proper health care. Otherwise Bharat’s maternal mortality ratio – the number of women dying due to maternal causes per 1,00,000 live births – is pegged to 212.
CURRENT POPULATION
India’s population has increased more than 4 times in 110 years to touch the 1.2 billion mark. According to the provisional figures of the 2011, Census accounting for a 17.5 per cent of the world’s population, the country’s population is almost equal to the combined population of US, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Japan.
Today the parents of Nargis are thrilled, joyous and in a mood of celebration. But do the thinking-section of our society also feel so? They are cautious, wary and not committed indeed! Their worry is: Is the ever-increasing population not a graver threat to environment, ever-depleting water, ever-squeezing resources and ever-shrinking space to live?
Minus the Islamic world, to a considerable extent, this paranoid thinking is global. It mostly consists of those who have banished God from society. Instead of having faith in Him, they have faith in themselves. Their fear is “population bomb is ticking” and a debate has started on an unfounded fear that is what would happen in future. Had they been a firm Believer, positive thoughts of sharing the pie coupled with all-round development would have evaporated their apprehensions into thin air. The feeling of discomfort could have some relevance had each and every inch of earth been brought under the plough.
There is another dimension, blissfully ignored by the wiseacres of the West: Who is the greater user and consumer of the resources – rich or the poor? India’s noted Nobel laureate, Mr. Amartya Sen rightly observed in a 1994 article, titled: “Population Delusions and Reality”: “One additional American typically has a larger negative impact on the Ozone layer, global warmth and other elements of the earth’s environment than dozens of Indians and Zimbabwians put together.” Is this reading not true even today after 37 years? It is the West that has raised this bugbear with ulterior motives.
Look at the issue from another angle: is it not the rich and the neo-rich countries alone that motivatedly visualise a threat to their lifestyle in a larger world population? The ground reality is that a few rich eat away a greater part of the pie leaving the left-over for the larger hungry poor. The richer are more consumptive than the poor. World Bank estimates that the richest fifth of the world has more than three quarters of the income; the poorest fifth just 1.5 per cent. If you go deeper in the malaise, you would discover Industrial Revolution and French Revolution, particularly the Renaissance behind the open or promiscuous relationships in the western hemisphere. All this contributed massively in the name of individual freedom and the popularity of unrestricted sex including sodomy and lesbianism. Today a few only look down upon these vices. Fidelity, faithfulness and chastity are at a discount.
Today the rich specially boast loudly about their conquests. And things have reached a pass where at least the French do not raise their eye-brows over their degradation. One need not trace shame on the face of Dominique Strauss Kahn, the IMF chief or Roman Polanski, the renowned film-maker or William Kennedy Smith, John F Kennedy’s nephew or Kobey Bryant, NBA player or Moche Katsav, former Israeli President or Julian Assange, editor-in-chief of Wikileaks or R. Kelly, the known singer or Jose Mesa, the well-known Baseball player, or Jacob Zooma, the South African President, or Mike Tyson, the Boxing champion or Morlan King, the known footballer. All of them, having masters in seduction, have big followings and, exceptions apart, the West at large looks the other way at their pastime.
BHARAT’S RECORD
Bharat’s own record is quite inglorious in this regard. According to a survey, done by Plan India, 20 per cent children face abuse in India. The October 15 newspaper revealed this uncouth fact. A report in October 31 papers disclosed that 5,484 children were sexually assaulted indifferent parts of the country and 1,408 others were killed, so said the National Crimes Record Bureau.
Satara in Maharashtra has a unique feature. There the parents do not give names to their daughters. On Oct 17, Two Hundred and Twenty-Two girls were officially given names in a ceremony. So strong is the desire of a male child that christening the girls is kept in abeyance. They have a word for such girls “Nakushi” meaning unwanted in Marathi. New Delhi now is said to be the National Rape Capital. Here 414 rapes per one lakh were reported not long ago and just over a quarter of the assailants were convicted. (This sophisticated manner of reporting hides the hideous truth.)
At Bhopal a new variety of birth certificates came to notice on Sep 28. A 7-year old had on his birth certificate three names. All the three were rapists of his mother who was unsure about the parentage of her illegitimate child. The nadir was touched when a trial court convicted 215 officials accused of raping and torturing the tribals of a village in Tamil Nadu in 1992. To quote, V. Shoba, in a sledgehammer of a verdict a Tamil Nadu session court found all 269 officials – 54 of them died over the years – accused in the incident guilty of having committed atrocities against villagers. It handed over prison sentences to all 215 – 7 to 10 years to the 17 rapists and 1 to 3 years to other offenders.
Add to it two pieces of news: A Gurgaon high court, on July 20, solemnised a till-now-illegal marriage between two lesbians Beena and Savita.
The Health Minister, Mr. Ghulam Nabi Azad had to face protests by the practitioners of sodomy when he remarked that “Gay sex is an unnatural disease”.
MUSLIM VIEWPOINT
The Muslim view is that sex being one of the most fragile spots in man and women needs to be tackled, and is tackled, respectfully and responsibly. Islam doesn’t approve of irresponsible and indecent sex. Much before the severest possible punishment awarded to a rapist or a fornicator or an adulterer, Islam creates a salubrious, moral and constructive atmosphere in society where woman is seated at the highest pedestal because Paradise lies under the feet of the mother. She teaches rather inculcates certain healthier values in the mind of her children like respect to father, brothers, sisters, neighbourly elders and those who are shown proper respect by his or her elders.
Then the study of Qur’ān and Hadith deepens the understanding of the Islamic social system where Purdah is observed. Islam does not encourage an open society where no bars exist. And, as we all know, if any bar exists anywhere in any society, it falls down within no time. Islam does not encourage rather strictly discourages razzmatazz or gaiety. There is no question of drinking parties amidst music and dance. It runs into the face of Islam which stands for sobriety, nobility and an ambience in which only virtue flourishes and evil stands eternally condemned. In an ideal Islamic state, we feel, a lone woman would travel from Kutch to Kerala and Kashmir to Kanyakumari and in her heart she would have fear of none except Allah.
ONCOMING CHALLENGE
The oncoming challenge of over-population must be tackled by Muslims the world over. They have to prove to the hilt what character Islam envisages, what values Islam inculcates in boys and girls. What is desirable and what is undesirable. And what behaviour Islam expects from young adherents. Muslim focus should not waver from this fundamental fact. Sadly, Islam today has no model or an Ideal Islamic dispensation. It is in books and books have their own limitations. Islam has to be “lived” for a proper appreciation. As they say that taste of the pudding lies in eating, we Muslims feel Islam is sweeter than honey. Taste it.