Investigating Population Control from a Religious Point of View

It is necessary to study population control from different aspects. On the one hand, crises resulted from a large population and lack of material and immaterial resources have forced some scholars to maintain that the only way to survive is to adopt birth control which leads to a decrease in growth rate. On the other hand, another group of thinkers believe that population growth not only does not lead to those crises but also is the main factor of material and spiritual development of the society in various fields. They hold that minimum growth rate should not be recommended without paying attention to its negative consequences in moral, social and industrial aspects promoting economic development in hope of transient peace and welfare in life.
Islam has a moderate approach toward population control. Having provided a brief introduction to the concepts, this article tries to clarify Islam’s moderate approach to population control. First, it addresses the arguments provided by proponents of population control then the most important arguments by advocates of population growth and their opponents. Finally, the moderate view has been proposed trying to reconcile these two intra-religious approaches.