The real story behind the claim of Muslim population explosion and having many wives- Read the FactCheck

After the trailer of the movie, hum do hamare barah, Muslims are being mocked for having lot of kids and many wives all over social media. Sharing a clip of AajTak social media user wrote, “#HumDoHamareBaarah, #HumDoHamareBarah is based on true events.” In the clip, Achor Sweta Singh is telling the story of Rafique Mia having 2 wives and 19 children.

Meanwhile, another user wrote, “Odd day: Islam is fastest growing religion, go cry Even day: How can you show Muslim family with many kids, we cry” with #HumDoHamareBaarah hashtag.

Similarly, another user Tweeted, “Muslim population jihad. In the fifties and sixties, Muslims outnumbered Buddhists, Orthodox Christians and Shinto. By 1970–2000, the number of Muslims outnumbered Protestants, Hindus and Catholics. Now the population of Muslims will exceed that of the entire Christian sect.”

There are many similar tweets on social media accusing Muslims on population jihad and claiming that soon they will overtake Hindus population in few years. 

Fact Check

DFRAC team found that there are many misconceptions and misleading news spread about Muslim community and their population growth. We have fact-checked these claims below.

Muslims have too many kids and will overtake the Hindu population in a few years.

According to a report of siasat and data of the Nation Family Health Survey, the maximum decline in Total fertility rate(TFR),  from NFHS1(1992-93) to NFHS5(2019-21) is of Muslims i.e -46.5 %.

 TFR is the average number of children, a woman gives birth over her lifetime. In view of Muslim, it declined the most i.e from 4.4 children per woman in 1992-93 to 2.3 children in 2019-21.

If the TFR is 2.1 then it is called replacement rate. This means in order replace themselves, the number of children that a couple should have. In simple term, if the TFR will be 2.1 then there will be no significant change in the population There has been a sharp decline the TFR of all communities and TFR of Muslim population is also near the replacement rate.

Muslim Men have more than one wife.

According to the recent NFHS data and a report of TOI, polygyny among Muslims is 1.9%, among Hindus it is 1.3%, and 1.6% among other religious groups. The highest percentage of Polygamy can be seen among ST communities i.e 2.4 %. The data also shows that polygamy is prevalent in backward area which lacks education and it’s not about Muslims only. Moreover, it is declining in every community and has nothing to do with religion.

Therefore, the claim that Muslim Men have more than one wife is not correct as the percentage of such Muslim men is only 1.9%.

Conclusion

According of official data of NFHS and several surveys, having more kids is more prevalent in rural areas. Both rural families irrespective of the community used to have a lot of kids. Presently, the number of kids in both rural and urban of all communities including Muslims is declining sharply. Also, there is only a small percentage (1.9%) of Muslims have more than one wife. Over the years the percentage of polygamy has also declined among all communities. Therefore, according to this DFRAC factcheck analysis the claim that Muslim men have a lot of kids and wives is misleading.