Blindspot!
From Issue: 748 [Read full issue]
AIDS
AIDS is seen as a disease almost exlusively resulting from inadequate and/or deviant sexual behaviour (which is not true). Women, men, and children have been infected through mere blood transfusions, dirty hypodermic needles, or born with it because the mother herself was infected.
Reminding society and people at high risk about moral principles and their spiritual outcomes is necessary and helpful in terms of prevention, but it cannot resolve everyday situations. Once the disease has been diagnosed and one considers the actual day-to-day behaviour of women and men - leaving aside questions of guilt or blame - appropriate social, economic, and ethical measures must be taken to fight the disease. Above all, HIV-infected patients should not be the objects of accusations and made to feel guilty, so that they are compelled to become invisible, to constantly lie, to hide from their families, their society, and their community (or be rejected by them). Society must go further and dare to tackle the position of AIDS patients in contemporary societies: we cannot accept the employment, housing, and societal discriminations that stigmatize the sick and marginalize them all the more.
Compiled From:
"Radical Reform: Islamic Ethics and Liberation" - Tariq Ramadan, pp. 179, 180