Religious Leaders Expose Damning Attitudes Towards HIV/AIDS

reprinted from IRIN News

African religious leaders admitted that their own institutions were sometimes guilty of spreading the stigma attached to HIV/AIDS.

Christian and Muslim leaders attending the 13th International Conference on AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infections in Africa, being held on 21-26 September 2003 in Nairobi, Kenya, spoke of damning attitudes to the virus that were spread by their churches and mosques.

Sheikh Al Haj Yussuf Murigu, Vice-Chair of the Muslim Supreme Council of Kenya, said HIV was equated with "a curse", and those who livedwith it were viewed as "sinners". Bishop Otsile Osimilwe said the church tended to point a finger at people living with HIV, instead of adopting a caring and compassionate response. Father Peter Lwaminda, a Roman Catholic priest, said it was "a question of condemnation". "Many religious leaders I have met have inspired fearinto people," he said.

An Anglican priest living with HIV, Rev Jape Heath, linked the stigma and discrimination to what he described as his church's double standards when it came to the concept of 'sin'. Lying and cheating on tax returns were considered "socially acceptable", he said, while being HIV positive was equated with being caught in adultery.

"The church has been exceptionally good at judgmentalism," Heathsaid. "The role of the stigma has been to see an increase of the pandemic" because people were too scared to be tested for HIV. TheAnglican church looked upon those living with HIV as sinners who could be "written off", he said.

"That has been the church's major contribution to the stigma attached to HIV." Misogyny and lack of gender equality had also contributed to thespread of the virus, the conference heard, by not allowing women to make choices about their lives. "The church has been quite behind in dealing with gender injustice," said Dr Musa Dube, a Christiantheologian. "Every culture that is patriarchal exposes women to HIV."

UNAIDS estimates that 60 percent of HIV-positive women in Africa believed themselves to be in monogamous relationships and weretherefore infected by unfaithful partners.

Dube said it was imperative for religious leaders to educate themselves about HIV/AIDS and for their churches to give them training sessions and educational materials to do so. Theology alsoneeded to be developed that could support a compassionate attitude towards people living with HIV, and it needed to be explained in alanguage that they could understand, she added."We religious leaders are part of the problem," Dube said.