Afghan mullahs consider advantages of birth control

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan — The mullahs stared silently at the screen. They shifted in their chairs and fiddled with pencils. Quranic verses flashed above them, but the topic was something that made everybody a little uncomfortable.

It was a seminar on birth control, a likely subject for a nation whose fertility rate of six children per woman is the highest in Asia. But the audience was unusual: 10 Islamic religious leaders from this city and its suburbs, wearing turbans and sipping tea.

The message was simple. Babies are good, but not too many; wait two years before having another to give your wife's body a chance to recover. Nothing in Islam expressly forbids birth control. But it does emphasize procreation, and mullahs, like leaders of other faiths, consider children to be blessings from God, and are usually the most determined opponents of having fewer of them.

It is an attitude that Afghanistan can no longer afford, in the view of the employees of the nonprofit group that runs the seminars, Marie Stopes International. The high birthrate places a heavy weight on a society where average per capita earnings are about $700 a year. It is also a risk to mothers. Afghanistan is second only to Sierra Leone in maternal mortality rates, which run as high as 8 percent in some areas.

"If we work hard on this issue, we can rescue our country from misery," said Rahmatuddin Bashardost, a doctor who helps lead the mullahs' classes.

"This was a useful and friendly discussion," said Mullah Amruddin. "If you have too many children and you can't control them, that's bad for Islam."

Maybe they were so receptive because a mullah led the class, using their own language — scripture from the Quran. Or maybe it was because some attitudes are starting to change.

Syed Wasem Massoom, 29, a mullah and one of the trainers, said urban Afghans were looking for ways to have fewer children. Afghanistan was changing, he said, especially its cities, and mullahs had better be thinking about these issues.

Afghan women who work for Marie Stopes, distributing birth control door to door in the country's capital, have also noticed an interest, though an overwhelming majority of people are still skeptical of their motives.