UK: Charity enlists imams to fight AIDS

UK: Charity enlists imams to fight AIDS


Almost 30 years since HIV was first identified, the virus still carries a stigma that can prove deadly.


In the mid 1980s, uncompromising government television advertisements told people, "don't die of ignorance".


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Religions are often credited as the means by which moral values, such as care for others, are reinforced and passed on.


But some charities and anti-HIV groups claim religion is helping to breed the very stigma that the UN says has helped give the UK twice as many new cases of infection each year as any other country in western Europe.


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According to Dr Shima Tariq, who has studied the transmission of HIV, more than half of newly diagnosed patients caught HIV through heterosexual sex, and two-thirds of them are of black African origin or descent.


But most of this group are not Christian: six out of 10 are Muslim.


Ibrahim - who's a Muslim and came to Britain from Ivory Coast - is HIV positive.


"It's quite difficult for me because the thing is I can't tell anybody. Because my family...nobody knows. None of my friends know. Nobody.


"Because if I tell them they will leave me alone and I will have to live alone and it will be a hard life for me."


Along with a conservative African culture, religion has played a significant role in creating this taboo. Ismael is 40 and originally from Sudan.


"The imams don't talk too much about it, but they start off by saying 'this is a taboo, this is a sin, a punishment from Allah'.


"When you disclose it, straight away they think you are gay, or maybe you got it from a prostitute or you did something bad and Allah is punishing you. That is why it has to be kept secret."


So the African HIV Policy Network has asked imams to break the taboo by talking openly about HIV.


One of them, Mohamed Bashir of the North Brixton mosque in London, says imams need to acknowledge "that not everyone practices their religion to the letter".


"There are Muslims who go to the mosque, who pray. They do everything similarly nicely and they suffer moments of lapse in judgement.


"They have extra-marital relations that they will not speak about, and engage in risky behaviour. Some imams might not want to admit that."


Mohamed Bashir has agreed to train other imams on how to tackle the taboo.


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Source: BBC