Description
Book SynopsisIn the capital city of Nairobi, Kenya, African Catholic and Sunni Muslim leaders addressing HIV and AIDS are faced with a unique challenge. On the one hand, they are called to attend to the spiritual wellbeing of the infected individual; on the other hand, they are increasingly charged with serving as the stewards of the physical bodies of those negatively affected by such a physiologically debilitating and social stigmatized disease through certain identifiable interreligious traditions common to both faiths. This book explores this development firsthand. While conducting fieldwork in Nairobi, Carey interviewed Muslim and Catholic leaders working in three areasHIV and AIDS prevention, education, and destigmatization. These recorded observations and accounts help to illustrate that religious officials from within African Catholicism and Sunni Islam are attempting to provide the common inter-religious traditions of mercy, hospitality, and justice in a holistic manner for those living wi
Trade ReviewIn this careful study of the intersection of Islam and Roman Catholicism in Nairobi during the time of AIDS, Timothy James Carey expands considerably our understanding of the role of religion in public health in general and HIV/AIDS in particular. In light of his findings from each tradition, Carey brilliantly synthesizes their positions on prevention, education, and destigmatization through the language of virtue, an idiom commonly used in religious traditions. Mining the virtues of mercy, hospitality, and justice, Carey advances the work of local religious leaders responding positively to the pandemic but leaves us and them with further questions regarding religion and sexuality and gender. A work of great integrity and compassion. -- James F. Keenan S.J., Boston College
An insightful, carefully researched, and nuanced account of the complex responses to Kenya’s ongoing HIV/AIDS crisis among lay populations, religious leaders, and medical professionals from both Catholic and Muslim communities, often echoing familiar public reactions during the initial AIDS crisis in the United States. Dr. Carey’s work is particularly helpful in emphasizing the deeper human social, ethical, and spiritual ramifications and challenges of this epidemic, too often hidden behind the familiar journalistic rhetoric of public health and policy discussions. -- James Morris, Boston College
Table of ContentsResponses to HIV and AIDS in Kenya 1. “I was sick and you took care of me”: Catholic Responses to HIV and AIDS in Nairobi, Kenya 2. “Did you not know that one of my servants was sick, and you did not visit him? Did you not know that if you had visited him, you would have found Me with him?”: Muslim Responses to HIV and AIDS in Nairobi, Kenya 3. “Mercy triumphs over judgment”: Comparative Theological Notions of Mercy, Hospitality, and Justice in the Lived Muslim and Catholic Response to HIV and AIDS in Kenya 4. “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her”: Lingering Questions of Sexuality and Areas of Unaddressed Concern Conclusion: “Therefore, the Lord waits to be gracious to you; therefore He will rise up to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of Justice; blessed are those who wait for Him.”
