It is not a subpopulation but Islam followers also have high fertility rates that challenges politics in countries such as France.
I'm a Sunni Muslim who is fairly well-versed in the religion, and I can tell you it isn't an "obligation". Marriage is strongly encouraged, but usually without mention of children, though that's generally expected (probably more from a cultural angle). Islam is also generally (to my knowledge) accepting of contraception.
I have no doubt that American Muslims have more kids than the average American, but it's becoming increasingly common to see Muslim couples now with no kids (wasn't the case when I was a kid). Nobody thinks much of it.
(Above applies to Sunni Islam, can't speak for Shi'a denominations)
But it is beyond encouraged. Any faithful Muslim believe that marriage is half of faith.
“When a person gets married he has completed half of his religion, so let him fear Allah with regard to the other half.”
https://islamqa.info/en/answers/11586/is-marriage-half-of-re...
Are you Muslim? You realize people don't take "half of faith" literally, right?
By contrast, I feel like most American Christians wouldn’t react that negatively to someone in their family declaring they don’t want kids.
That depends on whom you ask, as those who are as culturally (or actually) religious as your Muslim friends and family would react the same way to someone in their family declaring they don't want kids. In other words, it is likely just you not realizing many American Christians' lived experience, as that is not your own lived experience. I see a similar phenomenon with my Indian family thinking that Americans are more cavalier and distant with their children and that Indians treat them better, when in reality they simply don't know the lives of many other Americans.
My Bangladeshi parents said something similar: “Americans don’t love their kids.” And while that characterization isn’t quite true, I’m married into an American family, and the stereotype does have a factual underpinning. That’s how the manifestations of individualism—particularly among WASPs—is perceived by south Asians.
Exactly, it's a cultural thing, not a religious one. See, for example, how a lot of Hindu Indian parents would react similarly.
The same is true for secular Americans. As an outsider, it’s quite obviously an outgrowth of mainline Protestant Christianity.
While too many religious people let their cultural and other beliefs/values contaminate their religious practice, it is still pretty simple to draw a line, and it's silly to try to infer something about a religious group based on the attitudes of your irreligious parents.
As a couple of us have pointed out, the same attitudes are exhibited by non-Muslim South Asians, so why are you still asserting their views reflect some vestige of their ancestral religion as opposed to the culture they come from?
Asia offers a good example of how religion makes a difference. The whole area has been the subject of extensive population control efforts. But the Muslim fertility rate in India is markedly higher than the Hindu rate. And the fertility rate for Indian Buddhists is much lower than either, and closer to East Asian countries with a strong Buddhist tradition.
Citation needed, they've been converging for a while now.
Sunni Islam is very diverse. I am sure there are many millions of Muslims out there who would agree with everything you said. But there are other Sunnis who disagree. Here are some quotes from the Salafist website IslamQA:
"it is permissible to temporarily stop having children, with the aim of spacing pregnancies or stopping them for a specific length of time, if there is a legitimate shar‘i need for that, according to the view of both spouses with mutual consultation and agreement, on condition that this will not lead to any harm..." (my emphasis) [0]
"If the decision to delay having children is widespread, at the societal, national or ummah-wide level, then in this case it becomes a destructive and negative choice, and in that case the ruling is that it is not allowed, because it has moved from being a permissible and natural matter to one that is imposed from without and will lead to negative consequences, and is therefore blameworthy" (my emphasis) [1]
"...having children is a right of both spouses, and it is not permissible for one of them to refuse with no excuse or good reason" [1]
"If the motive for delaying having children, or ceasing to do so, is to follow the cultural norms of non-Muslims and imitate them blindly, out of admiration for their culture and infatuation with their way of life, then undoubtedly the ruling in this case is that it is not allowed" [1]
IslamQA does say "not one of the scholars said that it is obligatory for a couple to produce children" [1] - however, read in the context of the rest of what they say, that seems to mean that married couples who have no children due to infertility or difficult circumstances do not sin - not that a married couple being "childfree by choice" is acceptable in Salafi Islam.
My impression is that IslamQA's position on this is the standard Salafi position. If some segments of Islam – such as the Salafis – view having children as highly encouraged, even quasi-obligatory, then (all else being equal) those segments of Islam are going to grow faster than segments of Islam who view having children as more optional.
[0] https://islamqa.info/en/answers/144543/ruling-on-delaying-ha...
[1] https://islamqa.info/en/answers/231777/is-contraception-hara...
In any event, Salafis do not constitute a majority of Sunni Muslims (by far), and Sunni Islam is not a religious system that includes a clergy. Nothing on websites like IslamQA binds anyone, and people who identify as "Salafi" do not automatically or necessarily adhere to rulings in the way you seem to imagine.
And as you note, even the "scholars" and other content creators on that site, try as they might, in the end must admit it is not obligatory.
> If some segments of Islam – such as the Salafis – view having children as highly encouraged, even quasi-obligatory, then (all else being equal) those segments of Islam are going to grow faster than segments of Islam who view having children as more optional.
Leaving aside whether that's actually the case, this was not the original claim that was being disputed. The original issue was whether getting married and having kids is obligatory for Muslims, a requirement of their religion like ritual prayer, fasting during Ramadan, etc. It isn't.
True, but they have a lot of influence. I'm not Muslim, but my uncle (by marriage) is. My uncle has never really been the mosque-going type, but his father was. I remember his father complaining that the Salafis had taken over his mosque, using all their Saudi money. And I don't think his experience was particularly atypical.
Also, I don't think this is unique to Salafism. [0] repeats basically the same point of view (contraception is permissible to delay having children, but not to prevent it entirely). That's not a Salafi website, that's a website aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood – the Brotherhood are not Salafi, they represent an Islamism which is more traditional in its scholarship than the Salafis are
[0] https://fiqh.islamonline.net/en/contraception-permissible/
> and Sunni Islam is not a religious system that includes a clergy.
Whether that's true depends on how you define "clergy". Sunni imams or ulama are just as much "clergy" as Jewish Rabbis or Baptist ministers are. The claim that Sunni Islam lacks "clergy" relies on defining "clergy" in a narrow sense inspired by Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and "high church" Protestantism, and ignoring the broader sense in which the term also gets applied to Judaism and "low church" Protestantism, among others.
> and people who identify as "Salafi" do not automatically or necessarily adhere to rulings in the way you seem to imagine
I'm Catholic–how many Catholics do you think follow the Catholic Church's teaching that most forms of contraception are prohibited? So I was never making the assumption you are assuming I'm making
> The original issue was whether getting married and having kids is obligatory for Muslims, a requirement of their religion like ritual prayer, fasting during Ramadan, etc
In a strict sense, you are right – all Sunni ulama agree that marriage and children are mustaḥabb (recommended/encouraged) not fard (obligatory). However, I think it is more complex than that for two reasons (a) in some Muslim subcultures, certain things which are officially just recommended/encouraged become de facto obligatory, not necessarily due to the letter of religious teachings, but due to social pressures which exist in those religious communities; (b) something which is only mustaḥabb in the general case can become fard in specific cases, and certainly you will find ulama who think that sometimes happens in the matter under discussion, and if the specific cases become broad enough, they can end up outweighing the general case in practice
It's the Amish and Mennonites that seem to retain people well by having it be optional.
America is more likely to be Amish than anything else if we got solely by the trend.
I'd say there is a lot more too it than that
Both groups have many instances of rape happening that much of the wider world is not aware of, as they are cloistered societies, so, combined with the fact that many stay silent due to fear of retaliation, those are not the best examples to use.
https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-48265703
https://www.npr.org/2020/01/19/797804404/investigation-into-...
For various reasons Muslim population in france grew form basically 0% to ~10% in 50 years, in the same time the number of baptisms was divided by 2
> Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it Genesis 1:28
In Orthodox Judaism (from the Mishna/Talmud) this takes the status of a commandment to try to have kids.
Is this not just due to the immigrant effect, ie the only ones who can afford to immigrate (legally, at least) are those who are relatively rich (which correlates with high education levels) in their countries? It takes money to shore up a visa and buy a plane ticket, that most individuals in poorer countries would not be able to afford. American Hindus (including Indians), East Asians etc are also more affluent and highly educated than the average American, for the same reasons.
Also don’t forget that many East Asians came here as laborers and railroad workers in the 1800s and early 20th century, and as refugees in the 1950s-1980s. Third generation California Chinese, or Vietnamese, are also more affluent than white Americans today, for reasons that have nothing to do with immigration of affluent individuals.
I am not sure what immigration policy was like for Arabs.
And my dad came to the US for college from Pakistan, also with basically nothing--his family did not have much money.
But yes, I suppose there is literally the trip across the ocean that costs money.
How much of his religion and culture survived down to your generation of the family tree?
I’m really sorry to say this, but sometimes the way that Pakistanis have treated me with my background, I regret learning Urdu and Punjabi sometimes. I have many wonderful Sunni relatives and Pakistani friends but why should I put any kids I might have through abuse like “han pato Qadiani” “yahudion ka chamcha” and “wajibul qatl” (the last of which another American born Pakistani sipping soda water kindly informed me in a bar my parents were the week after the ‘Muslim ban’) Like Bulleh Shah is cool and all but mostly I end up talking about that stuff with Sikhs for some reason.
My father and brother don’t speak the language, only my mom and I. In the 80s, my mom’s favorite author was the late Ishtiaq Ahmad, up until she encountered some of his interesting conspiracy theories about her community. In children’s novels!
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the sons of one’s youth.
Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them.
Ps. 127:3-5
2. explicit rejection is not quite the same as not following all things in common practice of the religion.
I know people classed as Christians who do not at any rate follow the whole be fruitful and multiply guidance.
2. Right, most people do not follow this in practice even if such commands appear in their religious scriptures. You might remember that the whole point of the comparison was my contention that we can expect something similar to happen with Muslims.
It is one thing to hear go do this constantly from the pulpit (hence my reference to fundamentalist Christianity which often does this) and decide as an individual not to go do it, it is another thing to never hear it pushed from the pulpit, read it in the book, and not care.
This goes back to my statement
> I certainly believe fundamentalist Christians are into this thing but not sure what percentage of each set [Christian, Muslim] has this as a core tenet.
by core tenet I do not mean something written in your text and agreed that this is an important part, but something that is hammered on all the time.
What does "is hammered on all the time" mean?
If a priest spends lots of time saying that people should go out and have children and find other Christians to marry to make a Christian nation I would consider that really hammering the issue.
IF they don't then that church doesn't care.
If pretty much none of the leaders of that denomination do so then I would say it is not a core tenet of the denomination.
So the question is if it is a core tenet of Muslim denominations? Which I don't know how many there are of that, I get the feeling they are in some ways much less fractured but perhaps in other ways it might be they are more fractured in belief systems than the large set of peoples normally called "Christian"
If however it is a core tenet then my belief is that core tenets do not change in a single generation, I would think several generations would need to happen before the religious leaders were not saying it all the time and the followers were thus not feeling obligated to follow. Sure in three generations I would expect alignment with other groups, by and large.
This belief of mine is however only a belief as I am not aware of any kind of large scale study in memetics or (perhaps to get away from a loaded term) idea transmission in multi-generational hierarchical organizations which is what a religion would be.
I am also willing to believe I am totally wrong here - for example if one found a religion that went from salvation by works to salvation by faith alone in one generation among a large Christian denomination then I would say - huh, I am definitely wrong and it means large scale hierarchical organizations / religions can be changed in one generation (although I would expect to see charismatic leadership involved now that I am considering the idea)
Probably contraception availability also plays a role there, but I'd be surprised if the two don't go hand in hand: if you have money to spend on healthcare then you'll also have the money for cheap contraceptives.
Edit: another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37720354) linked to a video by the author of the book that I read the above claim in: https://youtu.be/2LyzBoHo5EI?t=962 (the conclusion is what I linked, about 1 minute of watch time)
Contraception is forbidden by the Catholic Church.