Religion and Family Planning Programs: Case of Iran

This article aims to examine the linkage between religious approaches and legitimacy or illegitimacy of family planning programs in Iran. The act of looking at changes in Iranian fertility rate and use of contraception in recent decades may lead to this immature assessment that the rising trend in Iranian population growth is due to religious beliefs and religious forces. Such an assessment is not only supported by a portion of Shiite scholars' decrees (fatwa), but it also appears to be consistent with conditions under which some of the Islamic countries are experiencing rising trends in population growth. Nonetheless, the success of family planning programs in Islamic Republic of Iran, as well as in some other Islamic countries, can be interpreted as pointing to the lack of any correlation between religion and religious beliefs and legitimacy of family planning programs. Therefore, despite the existence of 'religious beliefs' on the matter, we should concentrate on other variables such as the roots of 'social trust', that is the trust that society shows towards agencies of change