Free Republic

<p>Few Islamic countries have taken steps to tackle the pandemic as the death toll continues to mount.</p> <p>''I just pray that God ends my life before more symptoms show. I don't want to create problems for my family.''</p> <p>Before his HIV-positive diagnosis in 2001, the Egyptian engineer who spoke these words thought that AIDS was a faraway disease that afflicted only foreigners. He had no idea that the global AIDS pandemic had reached his country. Now he says he would rather kill himself than be rejected along with his family by neighbors and friends, who regard HIV as synonymous with sin and shame.</p>

Something aggressive about veils, says Chirac Jon Henley in Paris Saturday December 6, 2003 The Guardian (UK) Jacques Chirac hinted strongly yesterday that France will soon introduce legislation banning Muslim girls from wearing headscarves to school, saying most French people saw "something aggressive" in the veil and that the secular state could not tolerate "ostentatious signs of religious proselytism". The French president's comments to secondary school students in Tunis followed a petition published yesterday by 60 prominent French women, including the actors Isabelle Adjani and Emmanuelle Beart and the designer Sonia Rykiel, calling for an outright ban on "this visible...