"They won’t help to feed him. They will bring his medication but refuse to help him ingest it. They won’t touch him."
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One objection to importing the Western model of AIDS treatment into Islamic countries is that it focuses too much on costly drugs. For many Muslims, the new drug cocktails that AIDS patients consume in the West seem to be available only to citizens of wealthy industrialized nations. As the late Dr. Jonathan Mann, a WHO expert on AIDS, commented, “The cost of caring for an AIDS patient in the United States is greater than the entire budget of a large hospital in Sudan.” It is here, in the minds of many Muslim leaders, that the need for an indigenous solution to the AIDS crisis is painfully obvious.
To hear the rhetoric of WHO and UNAIDS prevention efforts, one would think that the Western model of AIDS prevention has been universally accepted. In fact, many Muslims are opposed to Western-style sex education and drug treatment. Anwar Ibrahim, Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia and a leading critic of the Western AIDS model, said that the Western model of AIDS prevention “became, so to speak, the officially endorsed ‘global’ strategy against AIDS and the scheme blessed by the ‘new world order.’ This, to my mind, is a very serious oversight because prevention depends primarily on attitude change, and attitudes do not change in any society unless the prevention campaigns originate from its indigenous culture and prevalent values.” In today’s jargon, cultural relativism remains a strong intellectual trend.
Disillusionment with the Western model of AIDS prevention – in both practical and moral terms – has led many clerics, political leaders, and other Muslims to seek alternative responses to AIDS, based on values and principles taught in the Quran. Faith or iman is a cornerstone of Islam and, according to many, is the key to the prevention of the AIDS epidemic. Muslims believe in the absolute power and mercy of Allah, who creates and controls everything with full knowledge of man’s thoughts, urges, desires, and secrets. It is this faith that many clerics credit with the relatively low AIDS incidence in Muslim countries. Mansur Hatta, a Pakistani cleric, said in a forum on South Asian HIV/AIDS prevention that “a successful AIDS prevention program should make use...of belief and should seek the assistance of influential Muslim preachers who know how to tap these beliefs in changing attitudes and sexual habits in order to avoid the spread of HIV infection.” Iman in Islam is profoundly ingrained in a Muslim’s heart and is verified by actions, including obligatory forms of worship and rituals such as prayer and fasting. The practice of praying five times each day helps Muslims to detach themselves from the world and become spiritually closer to God, so that they can consistently be reminded of Islamic ethical standards and moral responsibilities. The Quran states, “Recite what is revealed of the Book to you and establish regular prayer: for prayer restrains from shameful and unjust deeds.” Many clerics believe that this kind of prayer reinforces determination against unsanctioned temptations of the flesh, and, at least incidentally, therefore protects against AIDS.
Most Muslims believe that Allah scorns homosexuality and casual sex, pointing to the section of the Hadith – a holy text – in which the people of Sodom develop an illness as punishment for their immorality. They believe that the Prophet Muhammad speaks as though he is specifically forecasting and describing the AIDS epidemic: “If fornication and all kinds of sinful sexual intercourse become rampant and openly practiced without inhibition in any group or nation, Allah will punish them with new epidemics and new diseases which were not known to their forefathers and earlier generations.”
Stigmatization and intolerance often prevail. In Nigeria, the Agence France-Presse reported that Islamic clergy condemned an HIV/AIDS seminar designed to confront the lack of sex and health education in the country. Many of the religious leaders that were supposed to attend the conference protested, saying that it would only serve to increase promiscuity and immorality. Meanwhile, AIDS in Nigeria affects more than 5 percent of the sexually active population, and the infection rate is rising. Health campaigners blame a low level of public awareness for the escalation of cases, contrasting the severity of the epidemic in Nigeria with declining infection rates in Uganda and Senegal, where public awareness campaigns have succeeded.
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