Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for other marginalised and minority groups, who are still struggling for formal recognition of their equal and dignified right to exist in the Islamic Republic. So how does such self-righteousness in the name of saving Islam translate into an injustice? Simply put, opposing the Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Act , isolating and campaigning against a weak community on the basis of their identity β religious, ethnic, sexual, secular or gendered β is to paint a target on their backs.
It is bigotry and majoritarianism under the guise of piety. These include non-binary, non-conforming sexual identities such as intersex, hermaphrodite, bi-sexual, transsexual, homosexual and so on. It is over non-intersex surgeries that differences or silence persists. However, nowhere across Muslim contexts is this some settled historical or legal principle or some clean cut, unambiguous or resolved practice. So, what does Maria B know that relevant Islamic scholars, academics, trans activists or researchers do not?
Not a trick question. This became a legal loophole for trans people to get certificates of transsexuality without hormonal or medical change. The gray areas for Muslim transsexuality is rooted in the discrepancy between fiqh and modern law. Sex reassignment is a painful, long series of surgical and hormonal procedures. At which stage then, is a trans person legally sex reassigned?
This is biopolitics β requiring bodily proof for the right to exist. The purpose of settling ambiguity was to claim western scientific superiority over indigenous praxis. But a caution here against the lazy and convenient rhetoric around colonial blame and indigenous alterity β all these endeavours at policing diversity were in collaboration with indigene men. Under Mughal India, while the khwaja sira enjoyed social and courtly status, these were not simply and rudely displaced by austere Victorian heteronormativity and homophobia during colonial rule.
Not only did Mughal nobility often openly disparage khwaja siras and third genders and manage castration, many rulers also denied them and their families legal, propertied and economic autonomy.
