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| Muslims, Islam, and AIDS: Thoughts
on the 2nd International Muslim Religious Leaders Consultation on HIV/AIDS Amina Wadud The spread of HIV/AIDS within families
brings up an interesting concern with addressing inconsistencies between
intent and experience within the family: How do certain family structures
create greater vulnerability? The first part of this presentation will
look at an interesting paradox: the family, that institution through which
human beings expect and receive their greatest nurturing, is the same
institution that can create the greatest vulnerabilities in the spread of
HIV/AIDS for women and children. When the structure of family itself
causes vulnerability, critical examination is even more in order to
construct ways that civil society can empower family members to challenge
the abuses that occur within families. However, some see the very idea of
challenging “family” as a disruption in social well being. Ultimately
my question is: How can families empower all members equally despite
vulnerability due to age or gender. The first part of this presentation will
examine the terms and experiences of vulnerability to HIV/AIDS for women
and children as members of existing family structures in the context of
Islam and Muslims. My objective is to disentangle or demystify
“family” by focusing on both its supportive and destructive aspects.
Family as a construct must be subjected to a rigorous analysis as part of
any agenda that seeks to fight against the spread of AIDS. As such,
combating AIDS will also contribute to reforms in Muslim Personal Status
Laws. One goal of these reforms will be to help the family structure
function as a comfort and support for all its members equally. I will
review some of the underlying assumptions about family in Islamic law in
as much as these historically constructed assumptions are still
implemented in Muslim societies while allowing undue privilege for men and
male desires. This presentation uses the HIV/AIDS epidemic as evidence of
dangerous and untenable double standards in the face of modern social
change and experience. I will consider structural inconsistencies that
often go unchallenged when the word “family” is introduced. While
seeking to retain the family ideals of nurturance and support, I will also
focus on they way some family structures provide for particular
vulnerabilities. The second part of this presentation will
begin to think about theological implications of combating the spread of
AIDS, increasing public awareness, and empowering both direct and indirect
victims of HIV/AIDS. Some family members have directly contracted the
virus through abuses and misunderstandings of other members while some
family members find their life style and future indirectly affected by
members with HIV/AIDS. Thinking about HIV/AIDS gender and
family in an Islamic Perspective My experience at this WCRP meeting was important not only as a context for learning but also as it sparked my interest in the work needed in the context of Islam and Muslims with AIDS. On that occasion, African Religious leaders also gathered for a summit. The Muslim participants convened one morning to discuss the initiatives and Islam. One of the “Imams” dominated the first half of that 45-minute meeting by giving a khutbah (long speech) on the importance of avoiding zina (fornication). This khutbah was insignificant to our development of a clear “Islamic” position on the particular initiative regarding AIDS orphans. Indeed, the whole tenor of the speech was useless as a framework for developing an Islamic theological response to HIV/AIDS. Yet, such a response might be useful if developed in the future. During the time since that meeting, I have begun to think about an Islamic theological response and the problems that it might pose. HIV/AIDS and Vulnerability The other group that is of concern here are
monogamous wives. Especially in the context of Islam, where a Muslim wife
is not only expected to be, but defined in terms of her being
unconditionally sexually available to her husband. Properly fulfilling
this role of wife is fatal to some women, with estimates as high as 80%.
That is 80% of the heterosexual women with AIDS are monogamous and have
only ever had sex with their husbands. What does a theological premise
“la taqrabuna ‘l-zina” avail these women? How has Islam in
particular assisted them towards living a life of dignity and how has it
prevented them from experiences of dignity and worth, un-stigmatized by
our ostrich theology and law? Ultimately the solutions to the problems of
AIDS will not be limited to victims in the two particular sub-groups of my
examination. However, I am interested in how these two groups demonstrate
how empty religious platitudes are in addressing the problem and how, even
when those responses are based on the Qur’an and Sunnah they are
ineffective to resolve the problem. HIV/AIDS and Sexuality in Islam Sexuality “A prime theoretical contribution of the
contemporary analysis of women’s oppression can be captured in the
slogan “the personal is political”. What this means is that the
subordination of women by men is pervasive, that it orders the
relationships of the sexes in every area of life, that a sexual politic of
domination is as much in evidence in the private spheres of the family,
ordinary social life, and sexuality as in the traditionally public spheres
of government and the economy. The belief that things we do in the bosom
of the family or in bed are either “natural” or else a function of
personal idiosyncrasies of private individual is held to be an
“ideological curtain that conceals the reality of women’s systematic
oppressions”. For the feminist, two things follow upon the discovery
that sexuality too belongs to the sphere of the political. The first is
that what ever pertains to sexuality—not only actual sexual behavior,
but sexual desire and sexual fantasy as well—will have to be understood
in relation to a larger system of subordination; the second, that the
deformed sexuality of patriarchal culture must be moved from the hidden
domain of “private life” into an arena of struggle, where a
“politically correct” sexuality of mutual respect will contend with an
“incorrect” sexuality of domination and submission”. (Sandra Lee
Bartky “Feminine Masochism and the Politics of Personal
Transformation” in Living With Contradictions: Controversies in Feminist
Social Ethics”, edited by Alison M. Jaggar, Westview Press, 1999; pg.
519.) According to the article “Sexuality,
Diversity, and Ethics in the Agenda of Progressive Muslims” by Scott
Siraj al-Haqq Kugle in a recent volume entitled 'Progressive Muslims' from
One World Publication, Muslim scholars apparently were already ahead of
the feminist here: “In comparison with many other religious
traditions, it has often been noted that Islam is a religion that has
evaluated sexual life positively. Articulating the integral relationship
between spirituality and sexuality is one way that the Prophet Muhammad
challenged his society. It remains for us, today, to continually struggle
with that challenge. The system of norms, rules, and laws created by
Muslims in the past (a collective body we call Shari’ah) does not
absolve us of this challenge. It may, in fact, create complexities that
drive us to reinvestigate the topic while presenting obstacles to a just
resolution of those complexities. Scholars in the contemporary period have
not lived up to the standards and frankness of pre-modern Islamic
scholars, and much work has yet to be done on the question of sexuality in
Islamic scripture, law, and society. Many scholars and Islamic leaders in
the present shy away from honest discussions of sex and sexuality, with
all its promise and problems. Muslims in pre-modern times certainly were
not shy about discussing matter of sex and sexuality, so why should we be
so prudish? The most basic goal of this essay is to return to us the
contemporary Muslims, the “awe and bewilderment” that al-Ghazali felt
when considering sexual pleasure. Sexuality is connected not just to
spirituality, but to politics as well. What is required of us in political
situations is an acute sense of justice, but we often ignore or obscure
justice when it comes to matter of sex and sexuality. We need to think
more clearly about “intimate citizenship”, how personal, emotional,
and sexual dimensions of our lives (which are often locked away as
“private”) actually have very public and often political
consequences.” (Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle ,“Sexuality, Diversity, and
Ethics in the Agenda of Progressive Muslims” in Progressive Muslims from
One World Publication, 2003, pg 191.) Coincidently this article takes a thorough
look at the issue of homosexuality and presents the reader with various
classical interpretations of the story of Lut from the Qur’an. Yet even
in the new territory being forged by this article, Siraj never manages to
disentangle his compliments of the past and critique of the present, from
the extent to which even his struggle to look more affirmatively at
sexuality is based primarily on male sexuality. What is considered here as
Islam’s lack of prudishness in the classical period was still on the
basis of the predominant notion of human being, i.e. the male human.
Furthermore, the Qur’an itself, as well as the shari’ah is founded
upon male sexual experience. I have looked elsewhere at how the Qur’an
seems to affirm masculine pleasure and experience. In the Qur’an I point
to three specific incidents that give a cross section of male sexuality
and fantasies without ever responding in an equivalent manner to women and
women’s sexuality. Foremost however is the Qur’anic
affirmation of marriage in general, which can be said to be gender
neutral. The underlying assumption of an overwhelmingly heterosexual
social order is that women and men should be engaged in healthy sexual
exchanges. However, the first indication that there are some
disproportionate elements in this general gender neutral formula is in the
attention given to men’s “right to satisfaction” from the verse on
women as tilth, then the conditional permission to multiple wives and
concluding in the afterlife with meticulous details concerning the 'huris'
of paradise. Not only do no equivalent articulations exist in the Qur’an
about women’s sexual satisfaction, the Qur’an refers to
post-menopausal women as being “beyond want” despite ample evidence to
the contrary. Following closely upon this, the emphasis on sexuality in
the law is overwhelmingly on male heterosexual satisfaction. An HIV positive woman is not an indictment
of the promiscuity of the woman, since: “Men are qawwamun” (4:34) can
be seen as recognition of the unequal power dynamics of masculine and
feminine sexuality. It is not in the command form implying perhaps the
idea that it is an edict, to be fulfilled by the mere nature of being a
man. It is stated in the form of an active participle recognizing agency
and being. A man may fulfill 'qiwamah'. Therefore women must yield sexually
to this 'Qa’im', whether he is acting in a manner mustaqim (straight) or
crooked. An analogy could be made between the sexual moralities of an HIV
positive married Muslim woman and pregnancy in an unmarried Muslim woman.
Neither is proof of a woman’s indiscretion. With today’s fertilization
sciences, pregnancy is not even proof of intercourse. Surely evidence
shows that there are multiple causes of pregnancy other than a woman’s
consent. However, both cases lend themselves well to the idea that women
are more vulnerable in Muslim societies. Vulnerability and Gender The proportion of women living with
HIV/AIDS has risen steadily. Women are often affected at an earlier age
than men. Girls are five or six times more likely to be infected than
teenage boys. There is also growing evidence that a large share of new
cases of HIV infection is due to gender based violence in homes, schools,
the workplace and other social spheres, to say nothing of situations of
civil disorder and war where women and girls are systematically targeted
for abuse, including sexual abuse. HIV positive women are also
discriminated against when trying to access care and support. Meanwhile
the burden of caring for ill family members rests mainly with women.
Discrimination in care support and women’s own indispensable support
roles often mean that many will seek assistance for their own illness much
later than will positive men. Without women-specific programs being
integrated with other services such as ob-gyn, social support, substance
abuse, nutrition and the like, women’s particular needs and
vulnerabilities will not being formulated and will render any agenda said
to effectively assist in the reduction of the spread of AIDS hopelessly
problematic. The “la taqrabuna ‘l-zina” agenda is
one such problematic agenda. It does manage to increase the stigma of all
HIV positive cases. Muslim women who are described in the Qur’an in
terms particular to their sexual virtues especially feel the concern for
moral propriety. The significant role played by stigma in reducing the
gains of a battle against HIV/AIDS needs its own attention. Like rape,
women are more clearly the ones most victimized, but they are also the
ones more likely to be stigmatized by its occurrence and as such will more
than likely hide their experience in order to avoid the negative social
and spiritual consequences of such a confession. On the other hand, when a
woman stands forward to pronounce her opposition to those factors that
increase women’s vulnerability, she herself may be cast in a negative
light with suspicions about her morality being whispered behind her back.
In this force of stigma, it is no wonder that women are still among the
minority of those who have worked comprehensively to help construct a more
compassionate paradigm, including the “Islamic” religious paradigm, to
confront such an issue. Yet only with women’s full participation
and empowerment can the disease actually be arrested. In this regard, an
Islamic perspective on HIV/AIDS is impossible without simultaneously
addressing women’s empowerment, including their sexual empowerment in
the context of the patriarchal paradigm that still predominates our
notions about sexuality in Islam. A new paradigm that promotes women’s
rights to know (i.e. be informed) to say no (i.e. refuse) or otherwise
determine independently the exact nature of their own sexuality and their
responses to the predominance not only of heterosexuality, but to the
tyranny of it. How does “Islam” resolve this
problem? Likewise, we cannot blame a failure of
Islam as the cause for AIDS. If we address shortcomings within family law,
as conditional upon the safety and security of those whose lives suffer
from existing family structures, then we can help to reconstruct the law
to remove those factors which help the spread of AIDS. Although these
structural problems may be seen as secondary causes of the spread of the
virus, the process of reducing the spread of it has shown the need to
address all causes. Furthermore, these structural changes have other
positive results in formulating more egalitarian families and society. As a non-medical person, and one who does
not contribute to disease research, I am clear that I cannot propose a
solution to HIV/AIDS. My concern here is to address the ways that hollow
Islamic theological rhetoric is made hallow or sacred by authoritarian
means. Religious leaders, scholars and medical personnel cannot resort to
these empty platitudes to excuse them from dealing directly with a problem
of this catastrophic proportion. HIV/AIDS and Zina HIV and Sharî'ah “Even if the successful researcher makes
an explicit or direct statement that the work was accomplished as a result
of his or her being Muslim, it will be impossible to refer to a specific
Qur’anic verse or prophetic ahâdîth that can stand as the foundation of
the technical skills, medical know how or research methods that could
actually prove to bring about the solution. In a sense this gives us, as
Muslim, the greater freedom in participating fully and responsibly in the
search for a cure. If we fail, we cannot be indicted as bad Muslims. On
the other hand, if we are successful, we cannot associate our success
explicitly to Islam, even as we take inspiration from it.” Indeed, I see Islam as inspiration for
making my comments here as forceful and hard hitting as I could in order
perhaps to jolt my own soul out of any tendency towards what Faisal Abdul
Rauf calls the “ostrich approach” to Islamic theology in the face of
seemingly insurmountable odds that do find an explicit and simplistic
textually based solutions. In his book Islam: 'A Sacred Law: What every
Muslim Should Know About Sharî'ah', Abdul Rauf reminds us that Sharî'ah is the “operative formula by which the Muslim determines what is good
and ethical”. What is good conforms to divine intent. “The primary
focus of the sharî'ah is on humankind’s journey towards intimacy with
our Creator… It protects the religion from the vicissitudes of
history.” Furthermore he considers that “it is the law of Islam that
is arguably the most important element in the struggle waged between
traditionalism and modernism..” and recommends that we draw our temporal
into the eternal… and “think about the morality of issues that were
not posed to us before …” Indeed, if the “Islamic point of view”
has not yet been established,” he asserts there “ought to be”. Yet he refers to the three responses by
Muslims to modern dilemmas. Number one is the “ostrich approach”: bury
our heads in the sand and quoting ahâdîth and Qur’an, especially those
to imply Muslims are on a moral high ground and thus unaffected by these
new dilemma. The second is to build a Muslim society by establishing
standards adhering to divinely ordained values. The third is to develop a
methodology to integrate us into the society at large without losing our
religious integrity and identity. Clearly this third option will be the
most affirmative one in response to HIV/AIDS. The nuts and bolts of any affirmative
action on legal reforms will be drawn from a variety of sources of Islamic
law, textual and 'ijtihadic'. How they have been used and can be use vis-à-vis
HIV/AIDS is not fixed, yet using them is essential. Differences in their
usage need to be plainly spelled out, showing the ways of using the
various criteria and our own sense of moral imperative to achieve optimal
opportunities to benefit HIV/AIDS sufferers and to prevent further spread.
We must be honest, however, that this is a process. For something like
HIV/AIDS there is no simple precedent. AIDS is an indiscriminant, equal
opportunity killer: it matters little if you pray everyday or never pray
at all. Therefore we will not be able to resolve the problem by the
ostrich logic that pretends good Muslims don’t contract AIDS, let alone
die from it. With respect to legal reforms I am intentionally deferring to those experts on matters of jurisprudence with this one important caveat gleaned from my experiences addressing issues of Islam and gender for several decades. No interpretation, application or positive development can proceed without every effort to include the ones whose agency is most directly affected by the case presented. HIV positive persons and victims of AIDS from all sectors of society must be included in the process of resolving the problem if we hope to achieve effective results. In this respect it is the reality of the ones who experience it, which determine not only the nature of the experience, but the positive responses to it for the goals of education, curtailment and control.
Source: This
is the text of the presentation given at the 2nd International Muslim
Leaders Consultation on HIV and AIDS held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in May
2003. This is a draft of a paper in process, and the author does not wish
it to be quoted or further referenced. |