Designing an educational intervention that engages male and female Muslim religious leaders and addresses gaps in knowledge on all contraceptive methods is a promising strategy for increasing family planning uptake in rural Tanzania.
Muslim religious and lay leaders in rural Tanzania interpreted Islamic teachings as accepting of family planning (FP) for birth spacing and uniformly supported spacing through breastfeeding and the calendar method.
The need for more FP education in Muslim communities was widely agreed upon, and leaders were open to helping to provide this education.
Leaders’ insights yielded recommendations for educating Muslim religious leaders in their communities. These included educating men and women both together and separately depending on context and partnerships between medical and religious leaders to co-teach educational sessions.
Muslim religious leaders can be empowered to teach their own communities by receiving education about contraceptive methods, including how the methods work, their efficacy, and potential side effects.
Uptake of effective contraceptive methods can be hindered by poor understanding and uncertainty about its compatibility with religious beliefs. We sought to understand the perspectives of Muslim religious leaders in rural Tanzania on family planning (FP) and acceptable strategies for providing FP education to leaders and their communities.
We conducted in-depth interviews with Muslim leaders from 4 communities in northwest Tanzania. Open-ended questions explored leaders’ views on FP in relation to their communities, Muslim texts and teaching, and their experience as leaders. We also investigated how FP education could be provided in their communities and asked practical questions regarding seminar implementation. Interviews were conducted in Kiswahili and transcribed and translated into English. Data were coded independently by 2 investigators using NVivo 1.5.1 and analyzed thematically.
We interviewed 17 male and 15 female Muslim leaders. All leaders supported FP as a concept in which births are spaced, interpreting this as espoused by the Qur’an and a basic right of children raised in Islam. Leaders uniformly endorsed the use of breastfeeding and the calendar method to space births but had divergent and sometimes opposing views on other methods, including condom use, oral contraceptives, and intrauterine devices. All leaders acknowledged the need for FP education among their congregants and were in favor of helping to teach an FP seminar in their communities.
Our data reveal insights into how education for Muslim leaders may equip them to promote birth spacing and enhance understanding of FP in their communities in ways that are concordant with Islamic teaching. Our findings will guide the design and pilot-testing of an educational intervention for Muslim religious leaders to promote knowledge and uptake of FP in rural Tanzania.