Perhaps there ought to be a category for dangerous moonbattery, for I can think of no other way to describe Muslim leaders in Kenya throwing their weight behind the anti-condom campaign pioneered so disastrously by the Vatican.
“A lot of money is being wasted to poison our community … a huge amount of money is spent on buying condoms, buying immorality,” Sheikh Mohamud Ali, of Garissa district, told IRIN/PlusNews.
The Muslim leaders want to stop the provision of condoms and instead promote “observance of Islamic teachings such as fasting, regular prayer and shunning extramarital affairs.” They also advised men to “avoid looking at women”.
Of course, that will do the trick… but has absolutely no chance of succeeding.
Some might argue that the availability of condoms promotes the sexually permissive culture that encourages the spread of HIV. But this is a fallacy. Part of the problem is getting people to rubber up in the first place, especially since rumours that condoms are a creation of “The West” to disseminate the AIDS virus (in order to exterminate Africans and Muslims) are widespread.
The tragic irony is that by shunning safe-sex measures, the feared ‘genocide’ may become a self-fulfilling prophesy.
In December 2006, Peter Piot, director of UNAIDS, stressed that the biggest “drivers” of the epidemic were “especially gender inequality, stigma and discrimination, deprivation and the failure to protect and realise human rights”. These are the areas in which the contribution of religious leaders has been the worst. In every sense, the interference of religious leaders both causes the problem and frustrates rational and effective solutions to it.
