Faghmeda Miller who comes from Cape Town was in Johannesburg during a photo shoot for the AIDS Consortium’€™s Heroes’€™ Campaign, an initiative aimed at reducing the stigma around AIDS through talks by high-profile South Africans who have courageously faced life with HIV and AIDS. The campaign has so far included people like Constitutional Court judge, Justice Edwin Cameron, Masi Makgalemele and Reverend Paul Mokgethi-Heath. They are viewed as role models by many. But Faghmeda is coy when I ask her if she considers herself one.

‘€œI don’€™t really see myself as a role model’€, she answers with a shy smile before she adds:

‘€œBut I made a promise to myself that no other Muslim person will have to go through what I’€™ve been through when they feel ready to come out and disclose their HIV status. A lot of people look up to me as a role model, but I don’€™t see myself as one. I just needed to sort of break that silence, to open the road for other people, and that is what I did and I’€™m still doing that, and I’€™m trying to do my best for people that are in denial, especially people that cannot speak out’€.

Before she could speak for others, Faghmeda had to find her own voice. But being a woman – and a Muslim at that – meant that that would be a struggle.

‘€œI was told by our religious leaders, our Imams, that as a Muslim woman I cannot stand in front of people and talk. I have to keep quiet’€, she remembers.

But it is the resistance she encountered that made her even more determined to speak out about her HIV own infection. And eventually, she did. Not surprisingly, the decision earned her many detractors.                    

‘€œA lot of religious leaders were totally against the fact that I have disclosed my HIV status. They said Muslims ‘€˜don’€™t get HIV’€™. Not just religious leaders, but the Muslims at large were very ignorant when it comes to HIV and AIDS’€ says Faghmeda.    

‘€œI always say ‘€˜the Muslim people were the last ones to accept people living with HIV’€™. When I discovered my own HIV status, I realized that my people were very, very ignorant to the disease itself. A lot of Muslim people already died and they were stigmatised because of their HIV status’€, she says of her community.

But that didn’€™t put her down.

‘€œThat made me very angry because you don’€™t ask for things like this. It can happen to anyone. Someone had to break that silence and I just thought I would be brave enough to do it.

It was a long, long journey, but a journey, which I do not regret at all. HIV doesn’€™t ask for any religion. It can happen to anyone. Being Muslim made me no different from anyone else’€, she says.

In 2000, almost five years after being diagnosed with HIV, Faghmeda formed Positive Muslims, a care, support and awareness group for Muslim people infected and affected by HIV in the Western Cape. Slowly, slowly, the organisation is changing attitudes among the community, especially religious leaders.  

Today, Positive Muslims is not exclusively for Muslims. Although attitudes have changed, Faghmeda says ‘€œa lot still needs to be done to end the discrimination that people living with HIV experience’€.

When asked if it concerns her much that religious leaders in the Muslim community haven’€™t come out to really pronounce themselves where HIV is concerned, Faghmeda answered:  

‘€œPersonally, I know of religious leaders that are also infected with HIV. But I don’€™t know of anyone that is really open about their HIV status and, personally, I do not think it will ever happen in our community because there are still a few people that do discriminate’€¦ I know that there are priests and rabbis in other faiths that are open about their HIV status and we are good friends. I hope, I really hope that one day my Muslim people will also find the courage to do what other people are doing ‘€“ to come out and say: ‘€˜I’€™m a Muslim Imam, a religious leader and I’€™m infected’€™. But, ja, I presume it’€™s going to take a long while’€.