CHAPTER ONE The Quran: The Book of God

Improvement of Society, in which he set forth his famous theory on the growth of population. ‘Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence only increases in an arithmetical ratio.’ Simply stated, growth in population and growth in sustenance are not naturally equal. Human population grows geometrically, that is at a ratio of 1 - 2 - 4 - 8 - 1 6 - 32, while the growth of food supplies maintains an arithmetical ratio: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8. Sustenance, therefore, cannot keep up with the astronomical growth in human population. The only solution to this problem, according to Malthus, was for mankind to control its birth-rate. The population should not be allowed to exceed a certain limit, failing which the number of people on earth would become disproportionate to the amount of sustenance available, thereby ushering in an age of famine in which countless people would starve to death. Malthus’s book made a powerful impression, winning substantial support among writers and thinkers, and leading to the launching of birth control and family-planning schemes. Recently, however, researchers have come to the conclusion that Malthus was quite wrong in his calculations. Gwynne Dwyer has summarized this research in an article, provocatively entitled ‘Malthus: The False Prophet,’ which appeared in The Hindustan Times (New Delhi) on December 28, 1984: It is the 150th anniversary of Malthus’ death, and his grim predictions have not yet come true. The world’s population has doubled and redoubled in a geometrical progression as he foresaw, only slightly checked by wars and other catastrophes, and now stands at about eight times the total when he wrote. But food production has more than kept pace, and the present generation of humanity, is on average the best fed in history. Malthus was born in an age of ‘traditional agriculture.’ He was unable to envisage the approach of an age of ‘scientific agriculture,’ in which amazing advances in production would become possible. Over the 150 years since Malthus’s death, methods of cultivation have been radically altered. Crops under cultivation are chosen for their particularly high yield. Cattle are able to produce a far higher amount of dairy food than before. New methods have been discovered to increase the fertility of land. Modern machinery has brought vast new areas under cultivation. In technologically advanced countries of the world there has been a 90% fall in the number of farmers: yet at the same time a tenfold increase in agricultural produce has taken place. As far as the third world is concerned, 3 billion people inhabit these under-developed countries, but