Islamic Model for Control of AIDS (Part 4)
Qur’anic (Dynamic) Paradigm of Health: — 20
One of the most important steps in the fight against AIDS will be to popularise the concept of total sexual hygiene. Thanks to the globalisation, while other forms of hygiene like oral hygiene and body hygiene gained substantial popularity, a term like sexual hygiene has not even been proposed. How can it be when total sexual hygiene would signal serious consequences for the whole idea of free and commercial sex? Total sexual hygiene comprises physical, mental and social sexual hygiene. Physical sexual hygiene includes proper washing of private parts and mouth after intercourse, avoidance of anal coitus and avoidance of intercourse during menses. Circumcision may also be included, as it has a preventive role in several diseases. Mental sexual hygiene includes conscious attempts to keep the mind free of polluting thoughts by avoiding provocative images, literature and talks. Social sexual hygiene means avoiding of casual liaisons of all kinds and restricting oneself to one’s spouse only.
Outlines of Comprehensive Programme for Control of AIDS
(Using Islamic teachings and their application)
Sex only inside marriage (male-female)
No anal sex; oral coitus (ejaculation inside mouth) to be avoided
No sex during menstruation periods and postnatal period
Use of condoms whenever suspicion of catching infection
Washing of private parts after intercourse
Avoidance of corrupting influences
II. Strengthening of Family System
Marriages (only male-female) to be promoted; laws to be suitably amended
Premarital and extramarital sex to be actively discouraged and punished
Late marriages to be discouraged
Promiscuity to be suppressed
Moral and family values to be strengthened
III. Concerted and effective campaign against commercialisation of sex
Total ban on prostitution and rehabilitation of prostitutes
Total ban on all forms of pornography
Campaign against nudity and obscenity in public
Effective and concerted campaign against alcohol and drugs
IV. Medical measures: Sexual quarantine
(These measures are already there in the AIDS control programmes, and should be followed, as they are not contrary to the Islamic injunctions and spirit of safeguarding human beings against death and diseases and use of all preventive and curative methods against diseases. The same is true of legal measures.)
Proper screening of blood
Sterilisation of syringes
Effective sexual (not social) isolation of HIV positive persons: HIV status of a person to be informed to marriage-partners (present and future), boy/girlfriends, clients
Right to divorce if one’s spouse tests positive
Right to refuse intercourse if her husband does not take adequate measures to safeguard her from the threat of AIDS
Active measures (including sterilisation) to avoid pregnancy in an HIV positive woman
Right to know each other’s HIV status before or at the time of marriage
Condoms: limited use only
The nonsense of “safe sex” being promoted as the mainstay of the strategy to control AIDS cannot be tolerated any more. As has been elaborated earlier, safe sex is only a ploy to perpetuate commercial sex and the free sex it promotes. Safe sex is not safe enough. The effectiveness of condoms in preventing sex transmitted diseases and AIDS, if used properly and constantly, is hardly 50–60%. The failure rate of condoms as contraceptives is as high as 12%. The size of the HIV is much smaller than sperms, and their probability of crossing the barrier is quite high. Furthermore, it is used by less than half of the men even in those countries where the level of awareness is substantially high. Sex workers cannot insist on the use of condom, as they risk losing business. The promotion of safe sex is in fact counterproductive. It often tends to ensure a false sense of guarantee against HIV. Adolescents feel inclined to explore sexual liaisons thinking that by using condom they would protect themselves. Condom promotion can however be continued as an additional measure and can be aggressively promoted in specific areas:
Where a person is already promiscuous, and before he gives it up, he may use condom;
Where one of the spouses suspects the other to be involved in extramarital relations; and
Where one of the partners has already tested positive and the other partner does not want to severe relations.
The above measures are particularly applicable in places where Islamic legal system is not in force. In a Muslim majority country, legislations in accordance with the Islamic Law should be applied.
There is hardly any justification in defending the on-going strategy on the basis of reports that the situation has stabilised in many countries. The stabilisation does not mean a drastic downfall in the seroprevalence rate. Even till now, about 20,000 people die of AIDS in the US annually. That is no small figure in a country where infections other than STDs have been on the decline for several decades. The strategy to control AIDS has to be multi-pronged, multidisciplinary and multi-sector. Only a comprehensive approach can help. We will discuss some of the issues involved in the strategy in a little more detail later.
AIDS is killing people all over the world. But the devastation it has already caused and is causing in Africa is unparalleled in history. People are dying in such huge numbers that it is difficult to find their replacements in employment. A large number of children die before their first or second birthdays. And the cruelty, which is man-made, is that the kids have to suffer for no sin of theirs. Surviving children have to live under the scourge of orphanage. There are villages where the demon of sex has left no parents to look after their children. Only grandparents and grandchildren are visible. Describing the plight of children, a report, “African AIDS Orphans’ Lives Focus on Basic Survival” by Linda Green12 says:
“There were households throughout the township headed by children who were looking out for their siblings the best way they knew how. The children, especially those orphaned because their parents died of AIDS, needed to be fed, school fees paid and part of their medical bills met.”….. During a United Methodist News Service visit, the children of the trust perform a variety of skits and songs that give a realistic and poignant look into their daily lives. They sing about death and the scourge of AIDS while asking the Holy Spirit to enter and comfort their souls “I survive through the help of those who are merciful,” says 16-year-old Naomi. “I also believe that I am here because of God’s grace.”….. Asked to provide a glimpse of what her life is like, she becomes sombre and tries to choke back her emotions. “My life is very hard to describe because my parents passed away and the most difficult part is that my mother died before I had time to get to know her.” Namo lived with her father but grew up under the guidance of aunts. When her father died, she and a younger brother were on their own….”…She and her brother do what they can to eke out a daily living. Sometimes they have little or no food. “But,” she says, “Through God’s grace and people’s mercy, we survive.”…Twelve-year-old Delia describes her life as the Cinderella story without the happy ending. Instead, she says, it is filled with pain. She and a sister live with an aunt and her family. “I ask for soap; there is none for me but there is soap for the others,” she says. “There is nothing for me, no money to go to school, but there is for the others. It is painful, but there is nothing that I can do about it. There is no love in the way I’ve been treated. I feel unwanted.” …Another girl describes having to fight off a father who “drinks heavily and when he is drinking, he comes into my room, wakes me up and wants to get in the same bed with me.” Her mother died last December, and “my father does not provide.” She stopped attending school in the seventh grade to help care for herself and her sister’s 2-year-old son. ..Trust, 14, lost both parents in 1999 from AIDS, and he tries to earn a living by making and repairing watches. He and his three siblings live with an elderly grandmother. “We have to do everything on our own,” he says. “Each one of us looks for food and money to pay our fees to go to school.”
The irony is that the world powers have hardly any sympathy with theses poor Africans. They are being ignored perhaps in the hope AIDS will remove the “unwanted” people from the earth. This may be a cruel statement and can invite strong reactions. But the truth remains that the forces of globalisation have no concern for the masses in general and for the people who are not going to help their business, in particular. The world has neither the medicines to save the African AIDS patients nor the will to enforce social and moral laws to save them from the clutches of unhealthy sex. Under such devastating conditions, the Islamic Model for control of AIDS would provide an ideal solution to the problem. The emphasis has to be on:
Eradicating promiscuity and drug addiction, even if severest punishments are to be given for the offenders. There has to be a total and effective ban on sex outside marriage and homosexuality;
Total ban on all kinds of prostitution. severest punishment to those who are forcing and luring women and children into prostitution and rehabilitation of prostitutes who joined this trade under force;
Compulsory screening of both spouses at the time of marriage;
Immediate separation of a couple if one is found to be HIV positive;
Drive for sterilisation of HIV positive males and females;
Drive at the international level to supply anti-viral regimes to African people.
One of the most important steps in the fight against AIDS will be to popularise the concept of total sexual hygiene. Thanks to the globalisation, while other forms of hygiene like oral hygiene and body hygiene gained substantial popularity, a term like sexual hygiene has not even been proposed. How can it be when total sexual hygiene would signal serious consequences for the whole idea of free and commercial sex? Total sexual hygiene comprises physical, mental and social sexual hygiene. Physical sexual hygiene includes proper washing of private parts and mouth after intercourse, avoidance of anal coitus and avoidance of intercourse during menses. Circumcision may also be included, as it has a preventive role in several diseases. Mental sexual hygiene includes conscious attempts to keep the mind free of polluting thoughts by avoiding provocative images, literature and talks. Social sexual hygiene means avoiding of casual liaisons of all kinds and restricting oneself to one’s spouse only.
