Positive Muslims is an organisation dedicated to raising awareness, conducting research and providing support to people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHAs) among South Africa's Muslim population. Positive Muslims has taken up the challenge of leading South African Muslims in a quest for humanity in the face of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, based on what we refer to as a "theology of compassion": reading the Qur'an and understanding the Sunnah (prophetic writings) in a way that focuses on Allah (God) as a compassionate being.

Understanding our role as leaders

Our understanding of leadership has changed significantly since we formed the organisation in June 2000. We have moved from a narrow understanding of leadership to a new vision, which requires accepting the importance of one's self, together with an appreciation of the greater importance of others over oneself. Ultimately, leadership entails responsibility for those you are leading. In the context of the AIDS pandemic, our responsibility in leading the Muslim community has been exceptionally challenging. We have had to deal with judgmental attitudes towards PLWHAs and have confronted ignorant and misguided beliefs that AIDS is a curse from Allah. Our experience of leadership is therefore situated in an environment of prejudice and ignorance, often resulting in a rejection of Positive Muslims and its leaders.

Providing leadership to those who do not want to be led

One of the difficulties Positive Muslims faces is convincing the Muslim community that AIDS is something that also affects them. Many Muslims believe that AIDS is a homosexual disease or a disease that affects black people only. This attitude stems from the belief that the Islamic way of life protects people from contracting HIV and, second, that most Muslims believe they have not seen or touched a fellow Muslim living with HIV/AIDS.
Islam, like many other religious traditions, advocates abstinence from any sexual activity before marriage. The reality is that many Muslims have sex before marriage and engage in extra-marital affairs. The belief that the Islamic way of life protects Muslims is therefore unrealistic and leads to a false sense of security in the Muslim community.

Being able to see and touch something often makes it more real for people. Since most Muslims believe that they have not touched or seen a fellow Muslim who is HIV-positive, they conclude that AIDS does not affect them. The reality is that one cannot see who is HIV-positive or negative, and so many Muslims have come across someone who is HIV-positive. Due to the secrecy surrounding HIV/AIDS, Muslims are unwilling to reveal their status while alive and families are afraid to say how their loved ones died.
The denial and taboos surrounding HIV/AIDS result in people questioning Positive Muslims' leadership in this field. People challenge our legitimacy and purpose as an organisation, questioning the type of leadership we provide and asking whether Muslim leadership on HIV/AIDS is required in the first place. Probably, one of our greatest challenges has been to establish ourselves and our ability to lead in a community that believes it does not require leadership in the face of the AIDS pandemic. We continue to grapple with this, hoping that through our awareness and education campaigns, Muslims will realise the importance of HIV prevention, before they are able to see and touch fellow Muslims whom they know are HIV-positive.

Through our experience and activism, we have come to realise that Muslim women and children, particularly the girl-children, are the most vulnerable in terms of contracting HIV. We have focused our awareness campaigns on women because of their continual marginalisation through Islamic and cultural practices. During August 2001, six Positive Muslim volunteers ran eight workshops for women from various socio-economic backgrounds on AIDS, Islam and women. We designed the workshops to educate women about HIV/AIDS and to empower them to be able to negotiate their sexuality within the dominant culture of patriarchy.

Women leaders and activists within Positive Muslims developed a programme that took into account religious and cultural sensitivities. By targeting existing women's groups, the women attending the workshops could avoid drawing attention to themselves and being labelled in any way. In turn, they could empower other women within their women's groups. The response from the workshop participants was overwhelming. Many of them became volunteers and underwent further HIV/AIDS training. In one month, our female volunteers empowered hundreds of women, the most marginalised members of Muslim society, to be leaders themselves.

Re-evaluating our role as leaders

The AIDS pandemic has forced us to re-evaluate our approach to leadership. We have had to question constantly and critically our understanding of leadership, our sense of responsibility to the Muslim community and our own ability as leaders. Throughout this time, we have had moments of self-doubt, punctuated by uncertainty and frustration. Despite the criticism we have received for our selective membership recruitment policy, we firmly believe that choosing members carefully has been the primary reason for our success as an organisation. All our members are leaders – not necessarily in the traditional sense – but more so because they are searching for "greatness of spirit, consistency, and strength." Throughout our journey, we have become more human. We have come closer to understanding what it means to be non-judgmental and compassionate. At Positive Muslims, we have come to realise that people who are HIV-positive are of us, and we are of them.