Arab Clergy Tackle an AIDS Taboo

With infection growth rates second only to Eastern Europe, the pandemic poses a mortal threat in the Arab world. But an effective response seems years away.

Arab countries have some of the world's fastest growing rates of HIV infection, but their governments and religious authorities have been slow to address the problem. That was the message last week from a Cairo conference organized by the Arab League and the UN Development Program, which drew together more than 300 leading religious figures from 20 Arab countries, and was jointly led by Sheikh Mohamed Sayed Tantawi, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Mosque — which is influential throughout the Sunni Muslim world — and Pope Shenouda III, head of the Coptic Orthodox Church and President of the Middle East Council of Churches.