Islam, the State and Population

Much has been written about the attitude of Islam to family planning and population control. In the past much of this writing took as its starting-point the observation that Muslim countries, and Muslim minorities in non-Muslim countries, tended to have high fertility. It was only a small step from this to the argument that high Muslim fertility was immutable, arising inevitably from elements in Islamic belief and family and social structure. More recently, fertility in many Islamic populations has fallen sharply, giving the lie to the Islamic fertility argument. But many unanswered questions remain. Under what circumstances do Muslim populations experience sharp fertility declines? Are there elements of Islamic belief that require a different approach to understanding relative fertility trends and reproductive behaviour in Islamic and in non-Islamic populations?