Islam and the Securitisation of Population Policies

Muslim States and Sustainability

Katrina Riddell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780754675716
• eBook ISBN: 9781317112471
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

There has been much scholarly debate on the politically disruptive capabilities of Islam and the threats to global security posed by or to Muslim states and societies, but within this dialogue there has been little recognition of the role of population policies in security issues. Katrina Riddell's study focuses specifically on Islam and the securitization of population policies and sustainability. Opening with a discussion of contemporary population discourses and their historical foundations, the book examines how population growth has become an international security issue. The author takes the examples of Pakistan and Iran to provide a nuanced understanding of Muslim states' interaction with global debates on sustainability. She also explores how Muslim and non-Muslim states, societies and agents perceive issues of population growth and control. Providing an innovative approach to the pursuit of global sustainability and security, this book presents useful material to scholars whose research focuses on Islam and the future.

Chapter 1 Population From Low to High Politics in the Twentieth Century

DOI: 10.4324/9781315589954-1

Precursors to Contemporary Debate

In the twentieth century, population issues, particularly those pertaining to the growth of the global human population, were internationalised, politicised and securitised. It is from this that we have arrived at the twenty-first century understanding of population growth as being inextricably linked with global sustainability and security. The milieu of factors contributing to these shifts and the alternative concepts they have given rise to is the subject of this chapter. Over the course of the twentieth century population evolved from its long standing demographic conception, to a broader, holistic one that encompasses, amongst other things, development, environmental, human rights and security concerns. This is not to say that ‘population’ is an entirely modern concern: Contemporary population-security discourse originates from the discourses of ancient civilisations. Ancient Chinese, Middle Eastern and Greek discourses on optimal population size – such as Plato’s theory on overpopulation and war – are foundational to contemporary population conceptions (Mann 1993: 25; Wolfe 1929). The numbers and thinking may have changed, but the central themes endure: the question of numbers; the costs or benefits of large or small populations; the link to security; and the establishment of pro and anti-natalism as the overarching demographic paradigms.

European scholars in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries revisited ancient arguments in response to national population concerns; the most famous was Thomas Malthus. Malthus revived and popularised anti-natalist thought with his pessimistic tract On Population. In it, Malthus argued that population growth would cause food and agricultural shortages that the modes of production at the time could not meet. Fertility and therefore population control was, he argued, the only solutions. This is the essence of Malthusianism.

An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) was his response to the utopian population tracts of his predecessors William Godwin¹ and the Marquis de Condorcet² in 1793 (Boserup 1978, pp. 133–34; Himmelfarb 1960; Mann, 1993). Godwin and Condorcet, influenced by French egalitarianism, argued that proper education and guidance would enable men to make sensible fertility choices. Godwin stated that “Every man will see, with ineffable ardour, the good of all, free of the political, social and natural restraints upon him” (Malthus 1960: xv). Likewise, Condorcet argued that the “... duty of all men [is] to promote the general welfare of the human race or of the society in which they live or of the family to which they belong rather than foolishly encumber the world with useless and wretched beings” (cited in Himmelfarb 1960: xvi). Moreover, each was convinced that science and technology would enable man to master nature to his advantage, particularly in the agricultural sector; Condorcet speculated that with “new instruments, machines ... a very small amount of land will be able to produce a great quantity of supplies” (cited in Mann 1993: 26, see also Boserup 1978: 134). Population and fertility control were, therefore, unnecessary.

1 Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, 1793. 2 Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind, 1793.

Table 1.1 Major international population conferences

Year	Conference	Themes/Agenda	Attendees
1928	World Population Conference Geneva	Population Control, Birth Control, Economics, Maternal Health	Birth Control Advocates, Health Experts, Demographers, Some League of Nations Officials
1954	First United Nations World Population Conference (UNWPC), Rome	Demographic Data and Indicators, Economic Development	UN Officials, Demographers, Economists, Health Experts
1965	2nd UNWPC, Belgrade	Demographics, Health, Economics, Family Planning	UN Officials, Demographers, Health Experts, Economists
1974	3rd UNWPC, Bucharest	Demography, Health, Socio-economic Development, Human Rights, Women’s Rights, Child and Maternal Health, Peace, World Population Plan Of Action (WPPA)	State and UN Officials, Experts, Non-Government Organisations, Academics
1984	4th UNWPC, Mexico City	Reaffirmed Bucharest, joined Environment, Female Empowerment	State and UN Officials, Technicians, NGOs, Academics
1994	5th UNWPC, International Conference on Population and Development, Cairo	Reaffirmed Mexico City, joined Sustainable Development, Reproductive Health and Rights, Female Empowerment, HIV/AIDS, Religion	As Above
1999	ICPD +5	Reaffirmed Cairo, joined Global Peace and Security	As Above
2004	ICPD at 10	Reaffirmed Cairo and ICPD +5, Set 2015 Benchmar	As Above

Malthus’ rejected the notion that man was capable of controlling nature, because “the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for men” (Himmelfarb 1960, p. 9): this is his enduring legacy. Man is incapable of manipulating the earth to sustain geometric population growth thus population growth must be controlled to match arithmetic rates of food production (Malthus 1960, pp. 8–9). Furthermore, his moral conception of population control, in which he considered it “difficult to conceive any check to population which does not come under the description of some species of virtue or vice” (Malthus 1960: xxii), also endured. Malthus referred to natural constraints on population growth, such as disease, misery and immoral practices, which included the use of contraception, as vice. The second edition of On Population (1803) approved chastity as a control, serving as a “... restraint on a strong natural inclination, it must be allowed to produce a certain degree of unhappiness; but evidently slight, compared with the evils which result from any of the other checks to population” (Malthus 1960: xxix). Malthusianism, then, informed the dominant contemporary socio-economic paradigm, which posits population growth as an impediment to development, and demonstrates the historical foundations of moral objections to contraception and population control in twentieth century debate.

Despite its initial popularity, Malthusianism declined as European conflict and instability gave rise to resurgent geo-strategic pro-natalism, advanced by military and strategic theorists who advocated policies enabling and encouraging population growth. Clausewitz, for example, argued “... superior numbers are becoming more decisive with every passing day. The principle of bringing the maximum possible strength to the decisive engagement must therefore rank higher than it did in the past” (Clausewitz 1968). Instability in Europe made this paradigm politically attractive. France, Belgium and Germany, reacting to declining national birth rates, institutionalised it through strategic pro-natalist policies with the explicit aim of growing their national populations to increase military and political power and security vis their adversaries (Johnson 1987: 3, Symonds and Carder 1973, pp. 3–4). Moreover, the simultaneous population and economic growth in Europe and North America strengthened academic and political beliefs that the former was casual to the latter, giving further impetus to pro-natalism, and the saliency of the strategic paradigm (Ehrlich 1991, pp. 158–59). The spectre of depopulation and its negative strategic implications, coupled with religious and moral sensibilities enabled the strategic paradigm to persist into the twentieth century in a majority of European states. France, Germany, Italy, Belgium and Sweden pursued pronatalism through economic incentives to encourage high fertility.³ Britain was the exception, where static birth rates gave no cause for depopulation concerns, allowing Malthusianism to re-emerge in national, and then international, debate.

3 For more on the specific policies of these countries see Symonds and Carder, 1973, pp. 3–7.

An international discourse emerged in 1900, but at the non-state/nongovernment level, with no evidence of a concurrent intergovernmental discourse until 1910. Between 1900 and 1914, 304 neo-Malthusian and birth control leagues were established globally, which lobbied for service provision and ran clinics to service an unmet contraceptive need. In 1900, the first of several international neo-Malthusian conferences was held by the Federation Universelle de la Regeneration Humaine in Paris. Here experts discussed the health and welfare benefits of birth control and the causal link between overpopulation and war. Essentially, these groups advanced the neo-Malthusian economic paradigm and established the nascent security and reproductive health paradigms that endure to this day. Whilst their ultimate aim, population control, remained a non-political issue, the importance of their work of, in the context of contemporary debate, lies in their internationalisation of debate and in establishing the now universally accepted socio-economic and reproductive health paradigms. The first intergovernmental discourse emerged as a product of the growth and influence of the birth control movements, and through national policies to restrict the propagation of information by subjecting the movement to restrictive obscenity laws. In 1910, governments convened to establish an international convention to suppress the trafficking of obscene material and publications, including contraceptive information in its remit. The omission of population discussion reflected the conceptual distinction between it and birth control that persisted at the state level (Symonds and Carder 1973, pp. 3–25; Johnson 1987).

Population Debate Inter-War

Through the League of Nations (hereafter League), established in 1919, the population debate was internationalised and institutionalised. The League enabled debate and interaction between states, and between state and non-state actors that developed into an international population discourse. Moreover, the absence of a dedicated population commission meant that debate was undertaken by various League organs, resulting in the merging of population concerns with other agendas. In short, these activities established enduring patterns of interaction, concepts and conclusions in international population discourse. Population matters, particularly sensitive ones concerning control and limitation, remained the preserve of the nongovernmental sector: the League’s hesitant direct involvement was a result of the unwillingness of many European governments to countenance sensitive population discussions (Johnson 1987, pp. 6–7). This was clearly demonstrated in 1922 when states convened at the League to reconfirm the 1910 International Obscene Material Convention. Through its delegate Mr Hannequin, France, where Catholic and Right Wing groups had successfully secured similar prohibitive legislation, argued, “Contraceptive propaganda is undoubtedly made the cloak of obscenity ...” However, the British reaction demonstrated that the global anti-birth control consensus was decaying. In Britain, the activities of the birth control movement, sanctioned by the medical profession and Church of England, had metamorphosed into family planning or Planned Parenthood, which was understood to have socio-economic benefits and thus had attained a degree of moral respectability. Britain’s decision to distance itself from the stated conference aims reflected this perceptual shift. It stated that eventually “... circumstances would permit the consideration of an international agreement for the defence of all states against this social menace” (cited in Symonds and Carder 1973: 23, see also pp. 22–4, Wolfe 1929, pp. 93–4).

State reluctance meant that the nascent population control agenda was largely driven by non-governmental actors, whose international influence was growing as a result of domestic support and the growing rift in the League’s anti-birth control consensus. Whilst the British Malthusian League⁴ was unsuccessful in its attempts to force population onto the League’s agenda, Margaret Sanger⁵ founder of the American Birth Control League, was instrumental in establishing the first World Population Conference held by the League at Geneva in 1927.⁶ However, the reluctance of some states to submit completely to this agenda resulted in diluted League participation, as demonstrated by the distance between Sanger’s vision and the conference proper. Sanger envisioned a conference attended by economic, sociological, demographic and biological experts, and League delegates, to identify and solve pressing population problems. However many high profile League, state and non-state delegates refused to attend a conference with a pro-birth control, neo-Malthusian agenda. Then League Secretary-General, Sir Eric Drummond, declined League representation fearing the conference would discuss issues “... which arouse the strongest national feelings and which were of a delicate character ...” (cited in Symonds and Carder 1973: 13). Dissention within the League demonstrated the growing cognisance of the importance of birth and population control amongst high profile officials. Then Director of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Albert Thomas expressed to the organisers his hope that the conference would “be the beginning of an international movement which will contribute much to the solution of world problems which are largely the result of the bad distribution of the population of the globe” (cited in Symonds and Carder 1973: 14). Whilst the conference did not fulfil Sanger’s vision, it did institutionalise population as an international concern, albeit a technical one.

4 This group unsuccessfully lobbied to restrict League membership to pro-birth control states, in 1919 and 1925. 5 I would like to acknowledge that Sanger has been largely criticised because of her overtly eugenicist agenda. However, in the context of this book, her work is important because, whatever her intentions, she played a crucial role in getting population and birth control issues onto governmental and international agendas. 6 For more on the League’s debates see, Johnson, 1987.

Post-conference, two distinct agendas emerged: one upholding moral objections to, and the defining the conceptual distinction between, birth control and population matters, the other approaching population and its implications from a pragmatic perspective. European states such as Italy were concerned over increasing domestic population pressures caused by restrictive post-war migration policies. At the 1927 International Economic Conference in Geneva, Italy’s delegate, Mr Belloni argued that this would have “serious repercussions on world peace,” (cited in Symonds and Carder 1973: 16), thus demanding demographic assistance from the League. However, this did not shift the distinction between population and birth control, which was reinforced at the League’s 13th session in 1932 where birth control was labelled “a practice abhorrent to a large section of religious beliefs and contrary to the national laws of certain countries” (cited in Symonds and Carder 1973: 1). In 1937, the Second Committee of the 18th Session of the Assembly agreed to request that the League Council:

take the necessary steps to draw up a scheme of work for the study of demographi...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Population: From Low to High Politics in the Twentieth Century
• 2 Population and Family Planning in Islamic Jurisprudence
• 3 Islam and Fertility: Twentieth Century Myths and Realities
• 4 Islam, Politics and Population: The Iranian Debate from 1953–1989
• 5 Islam, Population, Sustainability and Security: The Iranian Debate from 1989–2006
• 6 Islam, Politics and Population: Debate in Pakistan 1947–1988
• 7 Islam, Population, Sustainability and Security: The Pakistan Debate 1988–2006
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index