Ruling on delaying having children in order to be able to do Hajj
Question Is it Okay for a man and a woman to use contraception (for 5 or 6months) because they want to go to hajj and dont want the woman to suffer becuase she is pregnant or has a baby. The man and the woman are newly married couple. Praise be to Allah. It is permissible…
Question
Praise be to Allah.
It is permissible for the man and woman to use means of
contraception for a period of six months and the like for this purpose,
which is to be able to do Hajj, because it is permissible to delay having
children for a reason that the spouses think is in their interests.
In a statement of the Islamic Fiqh Council it says:
After examining the research presented by its members and
experts on the topic of family planning, and listening to the discussions
that took place on this topic;
And based on the fact that one of the aims of marriage
according to Islamic sharee‘ah is to have children and perpetuate mankind,
and that it is not permissible go against this aim, because doing so is
contrary to the shar‘i texts and their teachings that call for having many
offspring and maintaining this principle, because maintaining the principle
of perpetuating the ummah is one of the five essentials which are protected
by sharee‘ah,
the Islamic Fiqh Council has determined the following:
Firstly: it is not permissible to issue a general law
restricting the freedom of the spouses to have children.
Secondly: it is haraam to remove the ability to have children
for the man or the woman, which is known as sterilisation, so long as there
is no case of necessity which dictates that, on the basis of shar‘i
principles.
Thirdly: 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 and that means
used are Islamically acceptable, and that this will not cause any harm to an
existing pregnancy.
End quote from Majallat Majma‘ al-Fiqh, issue no. 5,
vol. 1, p. 748.
And Allah knows best.
