"I let others speak about condoms:" Muslim religious leaders' selective engagement with an NGO-Led family planning project in rural Tanzania. (January 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Rafiq, Mohamed Yunus; Wheatley, Hannah; Salti, Rashid; Shemdoe, Aloisia; Baraka, Jitihada; Mushi, Hildegalda
• Is Part Of: Social science & medicine. Volume 293(2022)
• Publication Date: 2022-01
• Subjects: Religious leaders -- Participatory development -- Family planning -- Ethnographic -- Selective engagement -- Tanzania -- Islam; Social medicine -- Periodicals; Medical anthropology -- Periodicals; Public health -- Periodicals; Psychology -- Periodicals; Medicine -- Periodicals; Medicine -- Periodicals; Médecine sociale -- Périodiques; Anthropologie médicale -- Périodiques; Santé publique -- Périodiques; Psychologie -- Périodiques; Médecine -- Périodiques; Electronic journals; 362.105
• DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114650
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0277-9536

Abstract

Abstract: In the past two decades, religious leaders have garnered increased interest from health ministries and NGOs as promoters, educators, and implementers of sensitive health programs such as family planning in several African countries. While religious leaders' role as public health actors has been well-documented, there are few ethnographic accounts of how religious leaders engage with public health programs, especially family planning. Informed by twelve months of ethnographic study in three rural and peri-urban locations in Kilombero district in 2014–2016, this article examines how Muslim religious leaders experienced and negotiated their role as implementers of family planning services. Governments and NGOs seek religious leaders' social capital to increase community's knowledge of and demand for family planning as well as to diffuse the community's moral anxieties surrounding its use. Participant observation and interviews, however, show that religious leaders selectively engage with family planning projects, balancing project demands, their own interests and the existing norms and perceptions in the community. Religious leaders stood beside other team members promoting condoms, but they remained silent themselves on condom promotion selecting instead to speak on the dangers of teenage pregnancy. Tensions, power differentials and a mélange of interests, existing and emergent, set the stage for religious leaders to selectively engage with the family planning project. Selective engagement was beneficial for both parties. Religious leaders received training on modern family planning, gained symbolic capital by associating with a powerful NGO, and expanded their social networks while government officials and NGOs received indirect support for family planning programs. Highlights: Religious leaders use selective engagement to build coalitions with NGO projects. NGOs need religious leaders on controversial issues like family planning. Religious leaders are part of the health intermediaries' convention in Tanzania. NGOs overstate religious leaders' authority and power in rural Tanzania. Religious leaders and NGOs can work together even with opposing beliefs.