ABSTRACT
Islamic and Catholic conservatives protested against the global population-development security paradigm that had emerged throughout the twentieth century, questioning, criticising and denouncing the global population agenda. Islamic agitation, coupled with persistent high fertility and growth rates throughout the Muslim world, fostered myths and assumptions about Islam as conservative, monolithic, and pro-natalist, and as obstructive to global population objectives. The official conceptualisation of population was consistent with the dominant global paradigm of that time: population control as the means to economic development. The regime adopted a pro-natalist stance informed by factors including religion, nationalism and geostrategic concerns. In the post-Zia period, successive governments attempted to re-establish population as a national political concern and priority. Secular and non-secular agents viewed the government's position rather cynically. Islam and/or Islamic agents do not necessarily prevent Muslim states and societies from engaging with global population norms and discourses including securitised ones and developing consistent ones.
