Ivory Coast: Muslims seek to break down prejudice by speaking out on HIV/AIDS

In a town hall meeting room in the Ivorian capital earlier this month, women assembled on one side and men on the other, joined together in a prayer to Allah "to remove AIDS from humanity". The crowd of around 100 Muslim men and women had turned out at the Treichville town hall in Cote d'Ivoire's economic capital Abidjan for one of a series of conferences aimed at discussing Islam's position on HIV/AIDS.