I read an article in The Star o­nline entitled 'Recent meet showed true Muslim spirit' concerning the recent international Islamic conference o­n an Islamic approach to combating AIDS/HIV.

Marina Mahathir, whom I respect a great deal, found the overall outcome to be quite positive, but my concern comes from the withdrawal of the paper by Dr Amina Wadud, associate professor in Islamic studies at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Apparently Dr Wadud made some controversial statements concerning what she felt was Islam's failure to combat AIDS/HIV and that women were sex objects in Islam. This comes right from The Star's report. It seems that she withdrew her paper o­n the subject after being accused of blasphemy over these statements.

Now, I wasn't at the conference, nor did I read her paper, but how exactly did this reflect "true Muslim spirit"? I understand that the title of the report refers to Dr Wadud's willingness to humble herself and withdraw the paper, but was this woman silenced or was her paper so outrageous as to be condemned so?

And, as a person of science myself, if her paper was out of line, why was it not countered with correct facts rather than charge it with blasphemy and have it voluntarily withdrawn?

This incident perplexes me and I would welcome input from more knowledgeable members of malaysiakini's readership particularly from those who attended the conference.

For as it stands, this does not give me hope that meetings of this nature can seriously deal with controversial issues that come up at such conferences. And I would also like to know how much played up o­n the fact that Dr Wadud is a female academic based in a Western university?

Editor's note: Salbiah Ahmad, who attended the conference, wrote about this issue in her MALAYA! column this week.