She got the chance to thank the doctor that saved her life…
Karl sits with Waheedah Shabazz-El to discuss faith, HIV, and how both intersect.
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WAHEEDAH
HIV is a social condition as much as it is a medical condition.
KARL
Hello, there, welcome to +TALK on Plus Life, where we’re all about turning positive into a plus, and today, I am talking to one fierce advocate for women living with HIV. Her name is Waheedah Shabazz-El. Good to see, Waheedah.
WAHEEDAH
My pleasure to be here.
KARL
Tell me about your situation and your HIV diagnosis.
WAHEEDAH
Well, I’ve been living with an AIDS diagnosis for over 20 years, and my first time I got tested for HIV, I already had AIDS, so it was devastating. And, of course, I went to my faith community, some women I shared my status with, and I didn’t get the response I expected. They didn’t think that I should enter the mosque. They thought that maybe, you know, I would contaminate the rug. And the more I tell this story, the easier it gets because I would usually, like, tear up when I say this, because it really was devastating for me to have that separation just come just like that.
KARL
You are a Muslim.
WAHEEDAH
Yes.
KARL
And, you know, to just set it up a bit, you were in prison at the time of your diagnosis.
WAHEEDAH
Yes.
KARL
You had a history of addiction, and there’s a shame that comes within the Muslim community of that alone. How do you reconcile all of that and then you get this HIV diagnosis? How does a person of your faith deal with all of that, because your faith is very clear about these kinds of things?
WAHEEDAH
Yes, as is everybody’s faith.
KARL
Yeah.
WAHEEDAH
I’ll say that first of all.
KARL
A hundred percent.
WAHEEDAH
It’s called the Hadith, which is sayings of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. I lived in that, and it made me feel as though I had another shot, I had another chance, some sins had been expiated from me, and so I could start again, you know, but it was a process. This didn’t happen overnight, it was a process. I think it took maybe 10 years later before I talked to another Muslim, and she says, “I love what you’re doing.” She said, “I knew something was special about you when you walked in the door.” So, 10 years later, I had a different response, and, yeah, and so I’ve, like, reengaged with my faith. Even before I went into that new mosque, I just said I will go into that new mosque and not talk about activism. I will just go there just to pray, you know? But I’ve met other Muslims living with HIV, and I have a network of Muslims now who support one another who live with HIV, and who live outwardly with HIV. I have people in this country and I have people, a whole group of Muslims, in South Africa, Positive Muslims of South Africa, that I’ve been invited over there to meet and spend two weeks with them. So, I have loads of support. I have support from Muslims in Canada. I have support from Muslims here in the United States who are openly living with HIV, just as I am. So, it takes a community, it takes a village, it takes some reading, it takes some faith, and they say, I think they say faith is holding onto something that you can’t see. But I was able to hold on, and I need to say this, the LGBT community, I need to say this, the LGBT community held this Muslim together when I couldn’t even depend on my own Muslim community, and it was through watching them face stigma and watching them face discrimination that I learned to live in my own truth.
KARL
Yeah, and you’re right to say, you know, whether you’re Muslim or Christian, you know, we constantly hear in most faith, in pretty much every faith, that HIV is a curse from God, and this has been repeated over and over and over. Whether you go to the mosque, whether you go to the church, whether you go to the temple, this is something that those of us living with HIV have drilled into us, that this is some curse, that you did something wrong, and that can make a lot of people turn away from their faith and say, “Well, if you think of me like that, then I’ve gotta go elsewhere,” and that’s a really tough thing. You talk about your relationship with the LGBT community there. Was that part of what helped you keep your faith and be able to keep that belief and that passion that you have for your faith?
WAHEEDAH
There are a lot of LGBT ministries. People who are LGBT have just as much faith as anybody else. That’s what I’ve learned, and I also learned about the root cause analysis of HIV, not where HIV comes from, but I learned that HIV is a social condition as much as it is a medical condition. And so, what that did for me was I didn’t have to carry the weight of the world of contracting HIV on my shoulders. I’ve always heard people say to me, “HIV is preventable, HIV is preventable,” but what the root cause analysis taught me was that HIV is only preventable in an ideal world, and I didn’t live in an ideal world. I faced homelessness, I faced poverty. I faced survival mode. That’s not an ideal world, where people’s human rights are implemented. We live in a world where people’s human rights are disregarded and ignored, and that’s why we have this pandemic on our hands.
KARL
When did you find your voice? When did it become clear to you that it was okay to stand up and say, “I am a woman, I am HIV positive, I am Muslim, and you are not going to throw me down in the gutter?”
WAHEEDAH
In the beginning, I said I would never say it. Let me be very, very clear. I said I would never say it, I would never do it. We were at an event, we were at a prison summit, and I had a friend who was going to share her status to the world, and I said, “Oh, my goodness, you shouldn’t be alone. I’ll stand with you on the stage while you do this thing.” Now, I had been writing stories under an assumed name or under an anonymous name. I had been writing stories about my experience in prison, contracting AIDS, you know, being diagnosed with HIV and living through that, but I would never sign my name to anything. So, I stood on the stage in a room of about 300 people with this friend of mine, and as I was on the stage with her, when I looked in the audience, I actually saw the doctor from the prison who gave me my first regimen, and I said, “Oh, my goodness, that’s the doctor. We were at a prison summit, right, and I was new to all this. I said, “Oh, my.” I was thinking to myself, “I will never see her again. I’m going to have to thank her because this is my chance to thank her,” and that was the day that I decided that I would disclose my status because I wanted to thank the doctor that had saved my life.
KARL
What is that, what do you feel?
WAHEEDAH
I felt freedom. I felt a freedom that I had, and I’m still living in that freedom. I felt free to be who I was. I felt free to live on. Right, me thanking her, showing gratitude that she had saved my life, it gave me another chance now, and what am I gonna do with that life? I turned my pain into my purpose. I was able to turn my pain into my purpose, so I know my purpose in life now is to serve. God wants me to be of service to mankind any way, and so this is the walk that I walk now. I’m obedient to what I feel is my cause, and that is to let other Muslims know that this is a social condition, it can happen to anybody, it doesn’t discriminate, and that you’re no less Muslim, you’re no less a person of faith than anyone else. There are people who have died with HIV in silence and alone, right? And so, we can do this in community. This is something that we can all get better with when we work in community, and the HIV community is the bomb.com, I need to say that. We have a very supportive community, and it transcends race. It transcends sexual identity and gender. It transcends all of that, you know, because we just want to just live out our lives and make the world a better place.
KARL
Waheedah Shabazz-El, thank you so much for your time, your advocacy, your voice, and your passion.
WAHEEDAH
Thank you, and God knows best. Thank you.
KARL
That’s gonna do it for this episode of +TALK, thanks for watching. If you want more information, go to the website, pluslifemedia.com, and remember, you can follow us across social media platforms. We are @PlusLifeMedia. Until next time, be kind to one another. It’s not that difficult. We’ll see you soon, bye.
he following is a transcript of the conversation between Karl and Waheedah.