{"id":748,"date":"2012-11-07T13:06:09","date_gmt":"2012-11-07T13:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/sti\/?p=748"},"modified":"2012-11-06T13:22:38","modified_gmt":"2012-11-06T13:22:38","slug":"does-muslim-religion-have-an-impact-on-hiv-transmission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/sti\/2012\/11\/07\/does-muslim-religion-have-an-impact-on-hiv-transmission\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Muslim religion have an impact on HIV transmission?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>How is it that the nations of the Middle East and North Africa appear to have relatively low rates of HIV (see <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/sti\/2011\/09\/19\/bringing-to-light-the-hiv-epidemiology-of-%E2%80%9Chidden%E2%80%9D-msm-populations-in-the-middle-east\/\">https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/sti\/2011\/09\/19\/bringing-to-light-the-hiv-epidemiology-of-%E2%80%9Chidden%E2%80%9D-msm-populations-in-the-middle-east\/<\/a>)? A recent paper in the American Sociological Review \u2013 Adamczyk &amp; Hayes\u00a0 \u2013 seeks to demonstrate that the predominance of the Muslim religion in a country may have a <em>macro-level, cultural<\/em> impact on the sexual behaviour (pre- and extra-marital sex) of its residents.\u00a0 What do they mean by qualifying religious impact as, to some extent, <em>macro-level <\/em>and<em> cultural?\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0They are claiming\u00a0that the impact of religion is not reducible either to individual affiliation, or to formal restrictions.\u00a0 In their words,\u00a0it is, in their words <em>sui generis &#8211; <\/em>unique of its kind.\u00a0 Behind this is a Durkheimian understanding of the religious group as something more than the sum of its parts (<a href=\"http:\/\/asr.sagepub.com.libproxy.ucl.ac.uk\/content\/77\/5\/723.abstract\">http:\/\/asr.sagepub.com.libproxy.ucl.ac.uk\/content\/77\/5\/723.abstract<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>To test their hypothesis the authors use data from the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS).\u00a0 Their most interesting findings relate to pre-marital sex.\u00a0 Muslims are far less likely to report pre-marital sex than Christians\/Jews (0.61: 0.77).\u00a0 This effect is\u00a0not explained wholly by age of first marriage.\u00a0 As the proportion of Muslims in a nation increases likelihood of all residents (including non-Muslims) reporting pre-marital sex decreases substantially.\u00a0\u00a0So, for a non-working rural woman, likelihood of premarital sex\u00a0 is 0.71 where 1% residents are Muslim, 0.61 where 23% are Muslim, 0.28 where 90% are Muslim.\u00a0 Muslims, however, are not more likely to report pre-marital sex as the proportion of Muslims decreases.\u00a0 Interestingly the relationship between likelihood of pre-marital sex and percentage Muslim does not seem to be mediated by formal restrictions (exemplified here by restrictions on women\u2019s mobility).<\/p>\n<p>The tentative conclusion of the study is, therefore, that the striking relationship of pre-marital sex and percentage Muslim may not be a matter of individual affiliation (or Muslims would be more likely to report pre-marital sex where percentage Muslim decreases).\u00a0 It may also not\u00a0be a matter of formal restriction, for in that case the\u00a0relationship of\u00a0pre-maritcal sex to percentage Muslim would be mediated by women\u2019s mobility).\u00a0 Hence the relationship is likely to be explained by\u00a0something other than\u00a0individual affiliation, nor formal restriction \u2013 i.e. probably macro-level cultural effect.<\/p>\n<p>To non-sociologists\u00a0this argument from premises to conclusion might seem tenuous.\u00a0 However\u00a0hypothesis of a relationship between religion and behaviour is interesting, and the authors claim that this is the first serious attempt to test such a hypothesis on the basis of international data. The interest of the paper for STI journal readers may go beyond the intriguing question of why certain populations should be less susceptible to HIV epidemics than others. From the angle of sexual health policy, the claims of Adamczyk &amp; Hayes\u00a0matter because they suggest the existence of other potentially refractory cultural factors (i.e. religion in the sense of Adamczyk &amp; Hayes ) \u2013 a \u201cblack box\u201d, if you like \u2013 that, depending on the policy, could turn out to have negative as well as positive effects. On the face of it, this seems at least plausible, and, if it is the case, would certainly be important for health policy. To the extent it militates against \u201cone-size-fits-all\u201d approaches to health policy, the argument of\u00a0Adamczyk &amp; Hayes may be additional ammunition in the \u201carmentarium\u201d of\u00a0the \u201cprogramme science\u201d based approach\u00a0 that is a topic of ongoing comment in this journal (see for example Aral &amp; Blanchard: <a href=\"http:\/\/sti.bmj.com\/content\/88\/3\/157.abstract?sid=a6dd8144-b34c-4bcd-a4b2-0f997ae60fd0\">http:\/\/sti.bmj.com\/content\/88\/3\/157.abstract?sid=a6dd8144-b34c-4bcd-a4b2-0f997ae60fd0<\/a>). STI journal readers will be interested to know that STI journal continues to run a series on Programme Science, edited by Dr Sevgi Aral.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How is it that the nations of the Middle East and North Africa appear to have relatively low rates of HIV (see https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/sti\/2011\/09\/19\/bringing-to-light-the-hiv-epidemiology-of-%E2%80%9Chidden%E2%80%9D-msm-populations-in-the-middle-east\/)? A recent paper in the American Sociological Review \u2013 Adamczyk &amp; Hayes\u00a0 \u2013 seeks to demonstrate that the predominance of the Muslim religion in a country may have a macro-level, cultural impact [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/sti\/2012\/11\/07\/does-muslim-religion-have-an-impact-on-hiv-transmission\/\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":152,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2043],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-behaviour"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Does Muslim religion have an impact on HIV transmission? - Sexually Transmitted Infections<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/sti\/2012\/11\/07\/does-muslim-religion-have-an-impact-on-hiv-transmission\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Does Muslim religion have an impact on HIV transmission? - Sexually Transmitted Infections\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"How is it that the nations of the Middle East and North Africa appear to have relatively low rates of HIV (see https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/sti\/2011\/09\/19\/bringing-to-light-the-hiv-epidemiology-of-%E2%80%9Chidden%E2%80%9D-msm-populations-in-the-middle-east\/)? 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