In the Holy Quran we have very loosely translated that where God says that if you are afraid that having more children you will not be able to feed them properly, then do not fear, that is my responsibility. How do we explain for all the starvation of the children which is happening nowadays for example? That’s not because of more children being born, that’s because of other factors, economic factors, racial factors, political factors, factors of man’s corruption as a whole.
So many things are responsible, geographical factors, but not the factor of human population by itself, because droughts and famines and human population have had a constant relationship with each other since times immemorial. And when the human population was very little, even then very severe droughts and very severe famines were suffered by mankind, and still they are faced, I mean the same problems are faced and handled by human beings as they used to be in the olden days.
Let us say we have a hypothetical situation say in the middle of Africa somewhere, where a Muslim knows how the situation is on famine and something like that and decides not to have more children because of the situation he’s in. Wherever this question will be raised with reference to the shortage of food, the Holy Quran would prevent such family planning on the basis that it is a reflection on God. The fact is that a few months ago when the Nigerian delegation representative came to ask a few questions, this issue was also partially raised, and I counted the factors which were responsible for the shortage of food in Nigeria, that was human corruption, not the increased number of children they were giving birth to.
The fact is when the corrupt people send their wealth out through illegal means and backdoors, what would be left for the country would be short, less than the country’s requirements mostly, and there is a limit when everything is smuggled out, then whether you are left with less population or more population, you still face the problems. And there are so many other factors, I mean this is not just a simple population question.
What would happen to the poor countries now if they start family planning and the rich countries do not? This should be the logical corollary from this, if you accept it in principle. That would be that first of all the rich countries are already dominating the world, and because of having improved their health and improved their chances of survival, and achieved greater longevity, they are already much, much better off, and population wise also there is a possibility of an explosion there, if the poor countries on the other hand are advised, stop producing children, that is your answer. What would be the result?
Such people would ultimately be made extinct. This is not just a theoretical threat. In Australia this is exactly what happened. They made these aborigines to go into family planning and created conditions where they could not reproduce as fast as the whites did there. The result is that already extinction is threatening them, and threatening them so fast that in fact a majority of their olden tribes who spoke about 600 different languages, already no more, mainly about six, six main languages or about twenty-some dialects are left of the 600 languages once spoken.
And now the government is reversing the policy and trying to save them like the animals are saved from extinction, just to keep them as historic facts of the olden times. And what about the Red Indian population in America? What is the problem there? Is it a food shortage problem or what? So apply these factors to the realities of modern days and then you will come to the conclusion that the Holy Qur’an is right and they are wrong. It is the human corruption and the wrong attitudes of the powerful people which are creating all these problems, and the selfish attitudes of the rich people.
If you kindly permit me, in support of what you have so eloquently said, during the last five years now, even the United Nations economists and experts have now reached the conclusion that family planning has nothing to do with regard to the shortage of food. The family planning programs which were inspired and supported officially by the Western governments were really aimed at stopping the demographic pressures from the Asian and Latin American populations. United States was afraid that the Mexicans and the Puerto Ricans would come to the United States.
The Canadians were afraid, Australians were afraid that the Indonesians and the aborigines will come in large numbers. Indians were afraid that the Pakistanis and Indians, even the Soviet Union also supported this because they were afraid that the Muslim populations of Central Asia will overwhelm the European and the white populations of Soviet Union.
Today, sir, that if cumulatively speaking, collectively speaking, the food production far exceeds the food consumption in our world. Nearly 80 million tons of food surpluses are in storage today. In EEC countries alone, nearly 15 million tons of food including butter, milk and grains have been stored, which costs each man, woman and child in European countries $80 a year just to store this. This storage of food and subsidy of food and keeping the prices high is a part of the political policies of these governments.
They want to appease the farmers whose votes they need because they have to get re-elected and they are also restricting the supply of all the food aids and inputs which are needed in the developing countries. Therefore, I think now both in economic terms as well as in political terms, it has been conclusively now proved that there is really no food shortage and the famine and the shortages and starvation is due to maldistribution, the wrong policies as well as the policies adopted by the food producing countries.
This is what I want to say. Thank you, sir. Last year, this question was asked differently with reference to Ethiopian famine and there I pointed out that the food surpluses of Europe were lying without use and there was no possible need for them in the near future for European countries, no danger of any wars setting and no such predictions that they were keeping their food for difficult times. So if they had moved in time and if they had wanted really to help Ethiopian people, they could, moving ahead in time, that is to say, because they were born four years in advance, they could easily also overcome the transportation problems.
But in the end, they said the food is here, of course, but the transportation poses so many big problems, insurmountable problems for us, so we can’t do it. But this was not what was happening. I told it was the political rivalry of the western bloc with the eastern bloc, which was causing all that suffering, both the Russians and the Americans and their allies knew in advance by four years that this calamity was to befall Ethiopian people and the people of the surrounding areas, yet for their own ulterior motives, they would not take lead on each other in helping the people.
Americans wanted, or the western bloc wanted them to give a lesson that Russia is your allies for now, ask her to feed you, you are a communist country, it’s their responsibility and why don’t they come and now feed you? And Russia was waiting for the general reaction to develop against the rich people, that more the people would suffer, the more ground would be created, atmosphere would be created for communism to spread. So many factors are involved in all this problem, that to say simply that it’s the population explosion, this is absolutely wrong.
As you have pointed out very rightly, population explosion is what they fear for themselves. So it is for us, produce less, and for the Americans, produce more, children I mean. This has been the policy for them. China has applied this policy on a very large scale and very conscientiously and as far as the system goes, I think this has been most meticulously applied in a country as big as China. And now they are facing a very different problem.
You know one child for one family, it’s a good slogan, but the fact is you can’t maintain that. And in family planning, in attempts to plan the family, more sterile women are created than if you are not planning. And more sterile men are also created, with the result that vacuums are created here and there. And moreover, for a while you can apply strict standards and enforce discipline, but not beyond a certain limitation. After that it becomes free for all and then people begin to produce. China first faced that problem of shortage of population, because if it continued, China’s population would peter out gradually.
And later on, they relaxed and the whole population relaxed and no longer is that discipline observed as it used to be, vis-a-vis the family planning. So the whole thing is just deceptive. I remember Hazrat Musleh Maud, when Ayub Khan first introduced the family planning and advised the people to go for less smaller families, Hazrat Musleh Maud advised Ahmadis to do exactly the opposite. And that sermon was very interesting. He also compared the facts of that time with the facts of history, and how the advantageous people fear the population explosion of weaker nations or poorer nations, and how ultimately the population explosion is of advantage to the poor people.
And how they are compelled to invade the rich countries, and nobody can stop that invasion. So he said, as far as Ahmadis are concerned, I defy this advice and I tell them to go for producing more children. This is the answer to the problem, not the other one. So for the Ahmadis here, the same is my advice.
