what is misleadingly termed “family planning.”

After discussion and the exchange of views on the matter, the Council unanimously resolved as follows:

Because the Islamic sharia urges Muslims to increase and spread their progeny, regards children as a blessing and a tremendous favor that Allah has bestowed upon His servants, and because the revealed texts—from the Book of Allah and the sunnah of His Messenger—concur in showing that advocating birth limitation or the prevention of pregnancy contradicts the innate disposition upon which Allah has created humankind and opposes the Islamic law that He has chosen for His servants;

and because those who champion birth limitation or the prevention of pregnancy are a faction whose call is meant to undermine the Muslims—seeking to reduce their numbers in general, and in particular the Arab Muslim nation and other oppressed peoples—so that they may better colonize their lands, subjugate their inhabitants, and enjoy the wealth of Islamic countries;

and since adopting such a stance resembles the practices of jahiliyyah (pre-Islamic ignorance), betrays ill thoughts of Allah the Exalted, and weakens the Islamic structure that is built upon the abundance and cohesion of its human building-blocks;

for all these reasons the Islamic Fiqh Council has unanimously decided that birth limitation is absolutely impermissible, and that preventing pregnancy is likewise impermissible when the motive is fear of poverty, for Allah, the Provider, the Possessor of Might, says: “There is no creature on earth but that its provision rests with Allah” (Hud 11:6),

or when the motive is any other reason that carries no weight in the sharia.

However, employing means to prevent or delay pregnancy in individual cases of proven harm—such as when a woman cannot give birth naturally and must undergo surgery to deliver the child—is permissible in the sharia. The same ruling holds when postponement is required for other legitimate or medical reasons determined by a trustworthy Muslim physician; indeed, preventing pregnancy may even become obligatory if continuing the pregnancy is certainly harmful to the mother and her life is feared for, on the basis of a report from