Words matter. These are the best Shereen El Feki Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Where I work, in the Arab region, people are busy taking up Western innovations and changing them into things which are neither conventionally Western, nor are they traditionally Islamic.
HIV brings out the best and the worst in humanity, and the laws reflect these attitudes.
I’m half Egyptian, and I’m Muslim. But I grew up in Canada, far from my Arab roots. Like so many who straddle East and West, I’ve been drawn, over the years, to try to better understand my origins.
Civil society must be strengthened to help raise awareness among people living with HIV, and those at risk, of their rights, and to ensure they have access to legal services and redress through the courts.
Throughout its history, Islam has borrowed and adapted from other civilizations, both ancient and modern.
Although I was raised in Canada and the U.K., my roots are in Egypt through my father, in a family line that stretches back generations and runs along the Nile, from the concrete of Cairo to the coast of Alexandria.
Social change doesn’t happen in the Arab region through dramatic confrontation, beating, or indeed, baring of breasts, but rather through negotiation.
Laws that treat people living with HIV or those at greatest risk with respect start with the way that we treat them ourselves: as equals. If we are going to stop the spread of HIV in our lifetime, then that is the change we need to spread.
Where you criminalize people living with HIV or those at greatest risk, you fuel the epidemic.
I’m Egyptian and Muslim, but I grew up in the West, far from my Arab roots. I began ‘Sex and the Citadel’ to help outsiders – like myself – to better comprehend this pivotal part of the world, up-close and personal.
Now there are laws in many parts of the world which reflect the best of human nature. These laws treat people touched by HIV with compassion and acceptance. These laws respect universal human rights and they are grounded in evidence.
The patriarchy is alive and well in Egypt and the wider Arab world.
Some countries have good laws, laws which could stem the tide of HIV. The problem is that these laws are flouted. Because stigma gives unofficial license to treat people living with HIV or those at greatest risk unlike other citizens.
If you really want to know yourself, start by writing a book.
We were the outliers: my mother was the only Western woman (khawagayya, in Egyptian Arabic) to have married into the family, and during my childhood, we were the only members living outside of Egypt. So between my father’s prestige as the eldest son and my own exotic pedigree, I basked in the spotlight.
