Egypt’s Dar Al-Iftaa Launches ‘Birth Control is Permissible’ Hashtag to Counter Overpopulation

In light of state efforts to counter overpopulation, Egypt’s Dar al-Iftaa, the official Egyptian Islamic governmental body, launched a recent campaign on its pages on Facebook and Twitter titled,  “Birth Control is Permissible.”

This is in attempt to oppose religious discourse that claims the prohibition of family planning and birth control methods, and to raise awareness on these false claims.

In several tweets, Dar Al-Iftaa wrote that “the control of birth or its regulation is not interfering in God’s will,” and that “all legal rulings from the Quran and Sunnah include no texts that prohibit the control of birth.”

#تنظيم_النسل_جائز

— دار الإفتاء المصرية 🇪🇬 (@EgyptDarAlIfta) February 17, 2021

On Tuesday, during the inauguration of a number of hospitals, President Abdel Fattah El Sisi stated that “overpopulation is a national security matter” and that the impact of public projects will not reach the citizens unless annual population growth is cut to 400,000 [from 2.4 million].

In 2018, the Ministry of Social Solidarity launched a campaign called ”2 Kefaya (Two [children] is enough) in order to get curb the number of children in Egypt, particularly in the most populated areas.

The campaign seeks to provide free birth control to families and cooperates with 100 local NGOs to develop family clinics and appoint 3500,000 home visits in Egypt’s highest governorates with the highest birth rates such as Beheira, Giza, Beni Sweif, Luxor, Aswan and Qena.

Egypt’s current population is now 101 million, increasing by 1 million in less than 8 months since it passed the 100 million mark on Feb. 11, 2020, according to the most recent announcement by Egypt’s Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics.