From January 1 2026, China, in an attempt to reverse its plummeting birth rate, has started the implementation of 13% taxes on contraceptives such as condoms, birth control pills and contraceptive devices. In contrast, it removed value-added tax (VAT) from childcare and marriage-related products and services. This move follows years of aggressive population control, from its infamous one-child policy in 1980, when it restricted every family to only one child, to subtler cultural discouragements of large families. Today, faced with a rapidly ageing population, shrinking workforce, and economic uncertainty, the same state that once feared “too many mouths” now worries about “too few hands.”
And yes, China is not alone. Several countries are quietly (and sometimes loudly) retracing similar steps. Pronatalist movements and policies are springing up in every corner of the world. In the United States, Vice President J.D. Vance has argued that the government has failed an entire generation. Consequently, Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” includes child-benefit incentives.
In Europe, for several years now, there has been a range of incentives and a strong push to reverse declining birth rates. Estonia offers an additional tax-free allowance for parents with two or more children. Poland runs the Family 800+ programme, a universal child benefit that pays families for childbirth and child-rearing. Italy introduced the General Family Allowance (Assegno Unico Universale) in 2022, with similar mechanisms. In some parts of Russia, schoolgirls who become pregnant are reportedly paid more than 100,000 roubles (≈$1,300) for giving birth and raising their babies.
Many European white Christian ideologues lament the so-called “great replacement” and clamouring for higher birth rates. We can witness the rise of far-right movements in the West, which campaign for fewer restrictions on childbirth, framing their arguments around notions of freedom and gender equality. However, similar developments can also be observed in some Muslim-majority countries. The Turkish government has declared 2025 the “Year of the Family.” In fact, it has begun paying allowances for a third child and offering interest-free, long-term loans to those seeking to marry.
In this regard, the world now celebrates pronatalism after decades of promoting family limitation through economic pressure, urban planning, or state rhetoric. After the average number of births per woman fell from 5.0 in 1950 to 2.2 in 2021, and the projections that it would drop further to 1.6 by 2100, the world now encourages childbirth, offers incentives for marriage, or laments declining fertility as a national crisis. The global mood has shifted from population explosion to population implosion, and this has indeed become a headache for some parts of the world.
This oscillation invites a deeper question. How should Muslims understand population, reproduction, and demographic anxiety, especially when global policies swing between fear and desperation? What does the recent romance of global pronatalism by the world teach the world?
Muslim Countries and Policy Imitation
When some Muslim-majority societies started adopting population control rhetoric that was imported from global development institutions, the philosophy of Islamic civilization stopped mattering. Fertility was framed as backwardness, and large families were treated as obstacles to modernity. Today, with ageing populations and youth migration, the same societies struggle to reverse the cultural damage. This may drive us to ask: to what extent have Muslim societies outsourced their moral imagination to global policy trends?
Of course, Islam does not deny economic realities. But it resists reducing human life to economic variables. When Muslim states imitate demographic strategies without ethical grounding, they risk repeating the same policy swings where restriction comes today, and desperation follows tomorrow. In Islam, acts take meaning from intention. Raising children with a consciousness of God, justice, and responsibility is a form of worship. Parenthood is not merely biological continuity but an ethical labour.
This perspective dissolves demographic panic. A Muslim does not have children to save the economy, nor avoids children to protect personal comfort. Decisions are guided by responsibility, capacity, and trust in God, not by fear-driven projections. This is in contrast to secular demographic discourse, where reproduction becomes reactionary. When numbers fall, states scramble. When numbers rise, states regulate. Islam, therefore, offers steadiness where the world oscillates.
The Modern Panic over Numbers
Meanwhile, contemporary population discourse is largely utilitarian. Birth rates are discussed in relation to labour markets, pension systems, military strength, and economic growth. Children are often framed not as human beings with intrinsic value, but as future taxpayers or demographic assets. When numbers fall, panic ensues, and when they rise, control mechanisms follow. This anxiety-driven logic explains why population policies are rarely consistent. States expand or restrict reproduction depending on economic needs, not moral vision. What was once “irresponsible fertility” becomes “patriotic reproduction” and what was once discouraged becomes incentivised. Hence, human bodies become instruments of state planning.
Islam approaches the same subject from an entirely different moral universe. In Islamic thought, procreation is neither a blind biological impulse nor a state-managed economic strategy. It is situated within a web of ethical meanings: marriage, responsibility, sustenance, and trust. The Qur’an repeatedly warns against fear-driven calculations concerning provision: “Do not kill your children out of fear of poverty. We provide for them and for you” (Qur’an 17:31).
While the verse historically addresses infanticide, its moral logic extends further as it emphasizes that human anxiety about sustenance must not override trust in divine provision. Children are not burdens first and blessings later. They are blessings by default, which are entrusted to human care. At the same time, Islam does not romanticise reproduction without responsibility. Classical and modern Muslim jurists have engaged family planning (ʿazl) without undermining health, capacity, and consent. The Islamic position is therefore neither reckless pro-natalism nor anxious population control, but moral balance.
While modern discourse often frames population as a numbers game, i.e. too many or too few, Islam reframes the question entirely by asking: What kind of humans are we producing? The Prophet Muḥammad (ﷺ) expressed joy in a growing ummah, but growth in Islam is not merely numerical. It is ethical, spiritual, and civilisational. A smaller population rooted in justice, knowledge, and compassion outweighs a large population hollowed by moral disintegration. This does not mean Muslims should be indifferent to declining fertility. Rather, it means the concern should not be economic panic but moral continuity. Are families stable? Is marriage accessible? Are children raised with values, care, and purpose?
Many societies now panic about birth rates while simultaneously undermining the very institutions that sustain family life. In numerous communities, marriage is delayed or discouraged, economic systems exhaust parents, moral confusion destabilises gender roles, and children are reframed as lifestyle obstacles. As a matter of fact, some women now choose to be single mothers by choice, i.e. no interest in marital or family obligations, but their independence and ‘ownership’ of one or two children.
A Civilisational Lesson
China’s contraceptive tax and similar policy reversals elsewhere reveal the moral incoherence of the contemporary world. It exposes the limits of a worldview that treats human reproduction as a lever to be pulled when convenient. Islam offers a quieter but deeper wisdom: societies flourish not when they manipulate birth rates, but when they cultivate meaning, justice, and trust. Children thrive where families are honoured, marriage is dignified, and provision is not monopolised by fear. The question, then, is not whether birth rates are rising or falling. The real question is: What vision of the human being guides our concern? Until that question is answered, population policies will continue to swing - restless, anxious, and ultimately hollow.
*The views expressed in this content are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of İdrakpost.
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