http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/world/asia/15mazar.html?_r=1&ref=global-home



Broaching Birth Control With Afghan Mullahs
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: November 14, 2009

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

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Holly Pickett for The New York Times
Afghan religious leaders attended a workshop on birth control, birth spacing and
breast feeding in Mazar-i-Sharif last month.

Related
Times Topics: Afghanistan

The New York Times
A nonprofit group works with mullahs in Mazar-i-Sharif.

"A baby should be breast-fed for at least 21 months," said the instructor. "Milk
is safe inside the breast. Dust and germs can't get inside."

It was a seminar on birth control, a likely subject for a nation whose fertility
rate of 6 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.

The mullahs were reluctant participants. Truth be told, they were paid to show
up. But surprisingly, they seemed to emerge from the session invigorated.

"This was a useful and friendly discussion," said Mullah Amruddin, a tall man in
a dramatic turban. "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 Koran. 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.

"People kept asking us how to have less children," he said.

Afghan women who work for Marie Stopes, distributing birth control door to door
in the country's capital, have also noticed an interest. An overwhelming
majority of people are still skeptical of their motives. (Foreign spies!
Christian missionaries who want to reduce the Muslim population!) But a growing
number are open to the idea.

"Sometimes they are kind of surprised that this kind of thing exists," said one
of the workers, a woman named Aziza.

In 2009 alone, the sale of birth control pills nearly doubled to 11,000 in
September from 6,000 packages in January, according to Marie Stopes figures.

One woman was so happy to have birth control pills that she hugged and kissed
Aziza, ripped open a package and swallowed a pill with a gulp of water.

"She said she didn't want to wait until evening," Aziza said, laughing at the
memory. The total number of the woman's children: 17. Three dead, 14 living.

The most difficult families are ones headed by mullahs. Aziza and her colleagues
tread carefully in those households. Mahmouda, another worker, recalled walking
into one such house and finding the mullah's wife washing clothes and trying to
calm a baby. She signaled silently that Mahmouda should talk in a low voice.

" 'If my husband finds out, he'll punish me,' " Mahmouda recalled the woman
saying. " 'I'm pregnant now. I really need those pills.' "

Taking birth control in secret is not unusual, the women said. Even Aziza's own
husband opposes her using it.

"He said, 'We are Muslims and God gives us babies,' " she said.

She lies to him, but with a clear conscience. "I talked to him in a good way,"
she explained. "I told him about the benefits, but he didn't listen to me."

Those who oppose it sometimes get violent. Aziza recalled people running her out
of a neighborhood in Kabul after she introduced birth control there. They
accused her of being on the payroll of the Americans, taking dollars to weaken
the country.

" 'They want to capture Afghanistan,' " she recalled that they said. " 'If the
Muslims are many, they won't be able to.' "

In Mazar-i-Sharif, it is one mullah at a time.

Mr. Massoom, the mullah trainer, put it most directly. "This is an Islamic
country," he said. "If the clerics support this, no one will oppose it."

Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting from Mazar-i-Sharif and Kabul.


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