Islam is especially potent on the fertility front because marriage and having children are considered a central moral obligation: https://www.alislam.org/book/pathway-to-paradise/islamic-mar.... Even among relatively secular muslims, the concept of “child free” would be something you wouldn’t say out loud.
> Islam is especially potent on the fertility front because marriage and having children are considered a central moral obligation
I'm a Sunni Muslim who is fairly well-versed in the religion, and I can tell you it isn't an "obligation". Marriage is strongly encouraged, but usually without mention of children, though that's generally expected (probably more from a cultural angle). Islam is also generally (to my knowledge) accepting of contraception.
I have no doubt that American Muslims have more kids than the average American, but it's becoming increasingly common to see Muslim couples now with no kids (wasn't the case when I was a kid). Nobody thinks much of it.
(Above applies to Sunni Islam, can't speak for Shi'a denominations)
Many of my American friends don’t have kids now pushing 40. I know two Bangladeshis of the same age who have no kids (out of my entire extended family)—and even then they wouldn’t say out loud that was the plan. And my family is quite secular. My dad, who hasn’t stepped foot in a mosque in decades was freaking out when my brother turned 30 without kids.
By contrast, I feel like most American Christians wouldn’t react that negatively to someone in their family declaring they don’t want kids.
> By contrast, I feel like most American Christians wouldn’t react that negatively to someone in their family declaring they don’t want kids.
That depends on whom you ask, as those who are as culturally (or actually) religious as your Muslim friends and family would react the same way to someone in their family declaring they don't want kids. In other words, it is likely just you not realizing many American Christians' lived experience, as that is not your own lived experience. I see a similar phenomenon with my Indian family thinking that Americans are more cavalier and distant with their children and that Indians treat them better, when in reality they simply don't know the lives of many other Americans.
> I see a similar phenomenon with my Indian family thinking that Americans are more cavalier and distant with their children and that Indians treat them better
My Bangladeshi parents said something similar: “Americans don’t love their kids.” And while that characterization isn’t quite true, I’m married into an American family, and the stereotype does have a factual underpinning. That’s how the manifestations of individualism—particularly among WASPs—is perceived by south Asians.
There’s no clear distinction between religion and culture. Both my parents are antagonistic to organized religion (because secularism is a class marker in Bangladesh) but they don’t eat pork. Their moral axioms are rooted in Islam, even if they don’t recognize it as such.
The same is true for secular Americans. As an outsider, it’s quite obviously an outgrowth of mainline Protestant Christianity.
> There’s no clear distinction between religion and culture.
While too many religious people let their cultural and other beliefs/values contaminate their religious practice, it is still pretty simple to draw a line, and it's silly to try to infer something about a religious group based on the attitudes of your irreligious parents.
As a couple of us have pointed out, the same attitudes are exhibited by non-Muslim South Asians, so why are you still asserting their views reflect some vestige of their ancestral religion as opposed to the culture they come from?
I’m talking about the other direction: religion influencing people’s culture. Religion and culture are deeply intertwined in a bi-directional exchange.
Asia offers a good example of how religion makes a difference. The whole area has been the subject of extensive population control efforts. But the Muslim fertility rate in India is markedly higher than the Hindu rate. And the fertility rate for Indian Buddhists is much lower than either, and closer to East Asian countries with a strong Buddhist tradition.
> I'm a Sunni Muslim who is fairly well-versed in the religion, and I can tell you it isn't an "obligation". Marriage is strongly encouraged, but usually without mention of children, though that's generally expected (probably more from a cultural angle). Islam is also generally (to my knowledge) accepting of contraception.
Sunni Islam is very diverse. I am sure there are many millions of Muslims out there who would agree with everything you said. But there are other Sunnis who disagree. Here are some quotes from the Salafist website IslamQA:
"it is permissible to temporarily stop having children, with the aim of spacing pregnancies or stopping them for a specific length of time, if there is a legitimate shar‘i need for that, according to the view of both spouses with mutual consultation and agreement, on condition that this will not lead to any harm..." (my emphasis) [0]
"If the decision to delay having children is widespread, at the societal, national or ummah-wide level, then in this case it becomes a destructive and negative choice, and in that case the ruling is that it is not allowed, because it has moved from being a permissible and natural matter to one that is imposed from without and will lead to negative consequences, and is therefore blameworthy" (my emphasis) [1]
"...having children is a right of both spouses, and it is not permissible for one of them to refuse with no excuse or good reason" [1]
"If the motive for delaying having children, or ceasing to do so, is to follow the cultural norms of non-Muslims and imitate them blindly, out of admiration for their culture and infatuation with their way of life, then undoubtedly the ruling in this case is that it is not allowed" [1]
IslamQA does say "not one of the scholars said that it is obligatory for a couple to produce children" [1] - however, read in the context of the rest of what they say, that seems to mean that married couples who have no children due to infertility or difficult circumstances do not sin - not that a married couple being "childfree by choice" is acceptable in Salafi Islam.
My impression is that IslamQA's position on this is the standard Salafi position. If some segments of Islam – such as the Salafis – view having children as highly encouraged, even quasi-obligatory, then (all else being equal) those segments of Islam are going to grow faster than segments of Islam who view having children as more optional.
To be frank, when I think of Sunni Islam, I tend to think of the four canonical schools and ignore Salafi nonsense. Their influence is disproportionate to their numbers, unfortunately. It's not abnormal for them to reach strange conclusions, but I am surprised to see them do so on this particular question.
In any event, Salafis do not constitute a majority of Sunni Muslims (by far), and Sunni Islam is not a religious system that includes a clergy. Nothing on websites like IslamQA binds anyone, and people who identify as "Salafi" do not automatically or necessarily adhere to rulings in the way you seem to imagine.
And as you note, even the "scholars" and other content creators on that site, try as they might, in the end must admit it is not obligatory.
> If some segments of Islam – such as the Salafis – view having children as highly encouraged, even quasi-obligatory, then (all else being equal) those segments of Islam are going to grow faster than segments of Islam who view having children as more optional.
Leaving aside whether that's actually the case, this was not the original claim that was being disputed. The original issue was whether getting married and having kids is obligatory for Muslims, a requirement of their religion like ritual prayer, fasting during Ramadan, etc. It isn't.
> In any event, Salafis do not constitute a majority of Sunni Muslims (by far),
True, but they have a lot of influence. I'm not Muslim, but my uncle (by marriage) is. My uncle has never really been the mosque-going type, but his father was. I remember his father complaining that the Salafis had taken over his mosque, using all their Saudi money. And I don't think his experience was particularly atypical.
Also, I don't think this is unique to Salafism. [0] repeats basically the same point of view (contraception is permissible to delay having children, but not to prevent it entirely). That's not a Salafi website, that's a website aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood – the Brotherhood are not Salafi, they represent an Islamism which is more traditional in its scholarship than the Salafis are
> and Sunni Islam is not a religious system that includes a clergy.
Whether that's true depends on how you define "clergy". Sunni imams or ulama are just as much "clergy" as Jewish Rabbis or Baptist ministers are. The claim that Sunni Islam lacks "clergy" relies on defining "clergy" in a narrow sense inspired by Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and "high church" Protestantism, and ignoring the broader sense in which the term also gets applied to Judaism and "low church" Protestantism, among others.
> and people who identify as "Salafi" do not automatically or necessarily adhere to rulings in the way you seem to imagine
I'm Catholic–how many Catholics do you think follow the Catholic Church's teaching that most forms of contraception are prohibited? So I was never making the assumption you are assuming I'm making
> The original issue was whether getting married and having kids is obligatory for Muslims, a requirement of their religion like ritual prayer, fasting during Ramadan, etc
In a strict sense, you are right – all Sunni ulama agree that marriage and children are mustaḥabb (recommended/encouraged) not fard (obligatory). However, I think it is more complex than that for two reasons (a) in some Muslim subcultures, certain things which are officially just recommended/encouraged become de facto obligatory, not necessarily due to the letter of religious teachings, but due to social pressures which exist in those religious communities; (b) something which is only mustaḥabb in the general case can become fard in specific cases, and certainly you will find ulama who think that sometimes happens in the matter under discussion, and if the specific cases become broad enough, they can end up outweighing the general case in practice
The same thing appears in the Bible so forgive my skepticism that Muslims will be unique among followers of Abrahamic religions in not facing the same pressures of the modern world everyone else does.
And you would be correct, if people drilled down into the data you'd see the birth rate drops off massively by 2nd/3rd gen when they hit the modern world.
It's the Amish and Mennonites that seem to retain people well by having it be optional.
America is more likely to be Amish than anything else if we got solely by the trend.
> It's the Amish and Mennonites that seem to retain people well by having it be optional.
Both groups have many instances of rape happening that much of the wider world is not aware of, as they are cloistered societies, so, combined with the fact that many stay silent due to fear of retaliation, those are not the best examples to use.
Is one of those "various reasons" that many of them are immigrants? I don't think you're going to see French-born Muslims behave the same way as their parents.
There’s not anything nearly as strong in the Bible. American Muslims are more affluent and highly educated than the average American, but also have significantly higher fertility rates (2.4 in 2017, versus 2.1 overall). Also, it’s not the “modern world.” The US fertility rate was above 3.0 the same decade we put a man on the moon.
> American Muslims are more affluent and highly educated than the average American
Is this not just due to the immigrant effect, ie the only ones who can afford to immigrate (legally, at least) are those who are relatively rich (which correlates with high education levels) in their countries? It takes money to shore up a visa and buy a plane ticket, that most individuals in poorer countries would not be able to afford. American Hindus (including Indians), East Asians etc are also more affluent and highly educated than the average American, for the same reasons.
They may be more affluent than Indians back home, but many start at the bottom of the ladder in America. Asians are actually the highest poverty rate group in NYC. But Asian income mobility from the bottom of the income distribution is about 2.5x the income mobility of white Americans.
Also don’t forget that many East Asians came here as laborers and railroad workers in the 1800s and early 20th century, and as refugees in the 1950s-1980s. Third generation California Chinese, or Vietnamese, are also more affluent than white Americans today, for reasons that have nothing to do with immigration of affluent individuals.
It is not necessarily "rich", but you're on the right track. During the 70s and 80s, US immigration policy basically filtered/let through mostly people who came here for college or higher education. That was the case for India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh at least, I believe. So of course the South Asian population here skews successful and educated.
I am not sure what immigration policy was like for Arabs.
I'm saying that those who can even cross the seas are relatively richer than their peers in their home country. It is not just a function of a country opening immigration, the potential immigrant must first be able to afford to do so in the first place.
Maybe, I'm not sure; the trope of people coming here with pretty much nothing and being able to establish a life is a true one that plays out time and time again. My own grandfather came here from India with very little--literally few dollars to his name, had to live with someone he knew for a bit, ate "ketchup sandwiches" regularly, etc. So I think in his case he had the resource of a network, but not much financial resources.
And my dad came to the US for college from Pakistan, also with basically nothing--his family did not have much money.
But yes, I suppose there is literally the trip across the ocean that costs money.
How exactly did they come here? Who paid for their flight or ship voyage? That is the "relatively rich" I'm talking about. My parents (and I) also came here on not much money, but I can realize that having the ability to come to the country in the first place as well as secure a job cannot be understated.
Well, this is not universal - my great grandfather came from undivided Punjab in the 1920s as a merchant sailor and I think had about seven kids in USA.
Oh that's cool man, what's the story there? Was he among the Sikhs who settled in farming communities in California and intermarried with the Chicano population?
My parents were married in Rabwah in the eighties if that means anything to you but I think my branch is pretty much the only unassimilated one as far as my dad’s side goes (my mom is a Pakistani immigrant and my dad was the only one in his generation besides an uncle of his to marry “back home”)
I’m really sorry to say this, but sometimes the way that Pakistanis have treated me with my background, I regret learning Urdu and Punjabi sometimes. I have many wonderful Sunni relatives and Pakistani friends but why should I put any kids I might have through abuse like “han pato Qadiani” “yahudion ka chamcha” and “wajibul qatl” (the last of which another American born Pakistani sipping soda water kindly informed me in a bar my parents were the week after the ‘Muslim ban’) Like Bulleh Shah is cool and all but mostly I end up talking about that stuff with Sikhs for some reason.
My father and brother don’t speak the language, only my mom and I. In the 80s, my mom’s favorite author was the late Ishtiaq Ahmad, up until she encountered some of his interesting conspiracy theories about her community. In children’s novels!
lots of things appear in the bible that have just sort of been dropped over centuries, I also think Christians as a group are more splintered than Muslims - but that may be my lack of knowledge on this front - I certainly believe fundamentalist Christians are into this thing but not sure what percentage of each set [Christian, Muslim] has this as a core tenet.
1. You’re welcome to name one then. The Marcionites would qualify if that movement weren’t extinguished thousands of years ago. All modern Christian denominations more or less agree on points that were decided that early on in the history of Christianity.
2. Right, most people do not follow this in practice even if such commands appear in their religious scriptures. You might remember that the whole point of the comparison was my contention that we can expect something similar to happen with Muslims.
Ok back to point two - I agree that it appears in scripture, I made it sound like individuals don't follow the religion which is true, but also I believe there are denominations of Christianity that don't push it.
It is one thing to hear go do this constantly from the pulpit (hence my reference to fundamentalist Christianity which often does this) and decide as an individual not to go do it, it is another thing to never hear it pushed from the pulpit, read it in the book, and not care.
This goes back to my statement
> I certainly believe fundamentalist Christians are into this thing but not sure what percentage of each set [Christian, Muslim] has this as a core tenet.
by core tenet I do not mean something written in your text and agreed that this is an important part, but something that is hammered on all the time.
What does "is hammered on all the time" mean?
If a priest spends lots of time saying that people should go out and have children and find other Christians to marry to make a Christian nation I would consider that really hammering the issue.
IF they don't then that church doesn't care.
If pretty much none of the leaders of that denomination do so then I would say it is not a core tenet of the denomination.
So the question is if it is a core tenet of Muslim denominations? Which I don't know how many there are of that, I get the feeling they are in some ways much less fractured but perhaps in other ways it might be they are more fractured in belief systems than the large set of peoples normally called "Christian"
If however it is a core tenet then my belief is that core tenets do not change in a single generation, I would think several generations would need to happen before the religious leaders were not saying it all the time and the followers were thus not feeling obligated to follow. Sure in three generations I would expect alignment with other groups, by and large.
This belief of mine is however only a belief as I am not aware of any kind of large scale study in memetics or (perhaps to get away from a loaded term) idea transmission in multi-generational hierarchical organizations which is what a religion would be.
I am also willing to believe I am totally wrong here - for example if one found a religion that went from salvation by works to salvation by faith alone in one generation among a large Christian denomination then I would say - huh, I am definitely wrong and it means large scale hierarchical organizations / religions can be changed in one generation (although I would expect to see charismatic leadership involved now that I am considering the idea)
Islam is all about growing the percentage of people that follow the religion. Having lived in the Middle East for the first half of my life I can report that this idea is baser level, seamlessly incorporated into every person in the population. I’m honestly not concerned about them though, what I am concerned about it sub Saharan Africa because they can’t seem to take care of the people they already have.
So is Christianity (and definitely demolitions like LDS). My dad has 6 siblings due to Catholicism which doesn’t really happen much in the USA anymore, but definitely still applies to the Latin America.
What was the previous generation's child mortality rate? From what I read, that seems to be the dominant factor for the number of children you're expected to get, not so much what religion one has.
Probably contraception availability also plays a role there, but I'd be surprised if the two don't go hand in hand: if you have money to spend on healthcare then you'll also have the money for cheap contraceptives.
After WW2? Mortality rates were pretty good. None of my dad’s siblings died in childhood. In Latin America, child mortality isn’t bad either. Catholics (at least back then, and many today outside of the USA, especially in the Philippines) do not believe in contraception.
>Probably contraception availability also plays a role there, but I'd be surprised if the two don't go hand in hand: if you have money to spend on healthcare then you'll also have the money for cheap contraceptives.
Contraception is forbidden by the Catholic Church.
It applies to the poorer countries, but less and less so. The more developed countries in Latin America have a birth rate that is similar or in some cases lower than the USA (Uruguay) and are definitely more secular in their culture.
Except western society, and particularly Anglosphere. Our culture prioritizes individual success over the family unit. It's actively increasing the costs and risk of family formation, and decreasing the number of children it's possible to have.
You do realize that the denomination whose source you linked is considered by most Muslims to have a relationship to them like that of the Mormons to Christianity?
This appears to be heavily downvoted but hard to argue against seeing how irreligious the second generation has been since the big influx of North African immigration started. Religion has not been very successful in France for a while now
No, of course not. Second-generation immigrants and later trend towards the culture of their host country. Third generation is indistinguishable from the rest of the population. This is universally seen...except for Jews, who have long memories of systematic oppression.
