• Transgender Media

  Iranian fatwa seen as victory for trans people

  Posted by Adrian on 23/08/2006 at 9:19 am

  URL: http://www.washblade.com/2006/8-18/news/religion/muslims.cfm
  Washington Blade

  Iranian fatwa seen as victory for trans people (Gay)
  But trans Muslims often face ostracism, violence

  By ELIZABETH A. PERRY

  The execution of two Iranian teens last year reportedly hanged for being gay served as a grim reminder of the Islamist regime’s policy that condones torture, even the death penalty, for gays. It might seem logical to assume that such harsh policies would also apply to transgender people, but, surprisingly, that is not necessarily the case.

  Faisal Alam founder of Al-Fatiha, a gay Muslim organization located in the United States, said many Quran scholars believe that transgender individuals are “biologically imperfect.” Alam, who is gay, said that in the early 1990s a fatwa, or religious decree, was issued to allow a university student to undergo an operation to transition from male to female.

  “The scholar argued that this was allowed in Islam because the operation would ‘change the outside body to become what was already inside,’” he said.

  Although sexual relations between members of the same sex are forbidden by almost all Islamic scholars and leaders, rules regarding transgender individuals are more vague.

  Research on the subject of Islamic attitudes toward trans people is scant, according to the Safra Project, a resource group for Muslim lesbian, bisexual and transgender women. But some Muslim scholars have written about a four-way division of gender in Islam into male, female, khunsa (intersex) and Mukhannis (transgendered or pre-op males). The khunsa and Mukhannis identities are not mentioned in the Quran, the Islamic holy book.

  “In most Muslim laws and societies, transgender people whose bodies have male and female characteristics [hermaphrodites or intersex people] are allowed or even encouraged to undergo surgery to make their bodies in line with the sex and gender division into male or female,” according to an article from the Safra Project.

  “However, for transgender people whose sex is female but whose gender identity is male (and vise versa) and for those who do not identify as either male or female or both, this is usually more complicated.”

  Khomeini issues trans fatwa

  One of the most dramatic personal testimonies to come from Iran’s transgender population is that of Maryam Molkara, who was living under Islamic law in Iran during the reign of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who toppled the shah in the 1979 Islamic revolution there. In an interview with the BBC, she talked about her letters to the ayatollah in which she said she had always felt she was a woman.

  “I wrote that my mother had told me that even at the age of 2, she had found me in front of the mirror putting chalk on my face the same way a woman puts on her makeup,” she said. “He wrote back, saying that I should follow the Islamic obligations of being a woman.”

  Molkara’s first attempt to see Khomeini to request a fatwa for a sex-change operation was in 1978. The Islamic revolution tightened religious restrictions against transgender individuals, and others who had traveled a similar path were imprisoned and killed, according to the BBC. Molkara was fired from her job, sent to a mental hospital and injected with male hormones.

  Undaunted, she set out again after she was released. She wore a man’s suit and sported a beard. She got as far as Khomeini’s compound in northern Tehran before she was attacked by guards, who beat her until the ayatollah’s brother, Hassan Pasandide, intervened, the BBC reported.

  “I was screaming, ‘I’m a woman, I’m a woman,’” she said.

  The guards thought the band Molkara was wearing around her chest might contain explosives and when she removed it, a pair of female breasts was exposed. She left the compound with her fatwa issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini, a decree for all who sought gender reassignment surgery.

  Sex change operations are legal in Iran for anyone who can afford the cost and meet the psychological criteria, according to a report in the Guardian newspaper.

  Despite Molkara’s eventual success, Alam said transgender individuals still face discrimination in Muslim societies.

  “It is pretty well known that transgender people in Muslim societies still face many barriers and are often ostracized from their families and communities,” he said. “They have very little access to employment, thus many become sex workers. There is virtually no access to health care and most Muslim societies are very poor.”

  Alam said he sees more tolerance for differences in general in the United States, where Muslims must adapt to new cultures and customs.

  Muslim mother of 3
  undergoes sex change

  Sister Jannah is a transgender Muslim and practitioner of Wicca living in Arlington, Va. She said she was raised Catholic and converted to Islam when she was 25.

  Now in her mid-40s, Jannah, who asked that her full name not be used because she fears her children would be ostracized, said she came to the realization that she was a woman in a man’s body two years ago.

  “I knew I had it in me for years,” she said. “It got stronger to where I couldn’t deny it any longer. It threw my entire existence into an upheaval.”

  She is still married to her wife and has three children, who do not support her decision to transition. She said she no longer attends her local mosque and has lost contact with the Muslim community because she does not want to embarrass her family, and because the mosque she attended has gender-based rules. Men sit in one area and women in another, which leaves Jannah in a quandary if she ever decides to return.

  “If I went back, I could not be in the men’s space anymore,” she said. “It was giving me anxiety attacks for years. I have to be with the sisters. That fear of being rejected kept me away. There is too much shaming and gossiping in the Muslim community if anyone is unconventional in their behavior.”

  Jannah found that conforming to Islam was difficult when she came out as transgender, so she went in search of a spirituality that would welcome her as a queer, transgender woman. She said the pagans offered her a warm welcome and encouraged her to be herself.

  “They don’t mind if I still identify as a woman and still pray the Salah, the regular Islamic daily prayer ritual,” she said. “I’ve been able to do two religions at once.”

  She credits Al-Fatiha with helping her remain, at least partially, in the Muslim faith and called the organization a “great help to people around the world.” She also said that when she prays as a woman she feels as though she is praying meaningfully and deeply, despite having been a Muslim for 20 years.

  “My spiritual life is the core to my existence,” she said. “It’s hard to exist as a transgendered person when I don’t get support. Sometimes it’s harder than I can bear. Something inside me won’t quit. Even when it hurts, Allah sustains me. That is the essence of faith. I experience praying to Allah as praying to the Great Mother. There is no difference.”

  Adrian replied 18 years, 5 months ago 1 Member · 0 Replies
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