1

The full version of this text with notes and references was published in Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen:

Defining Islam for the Egyptian State. Muftis and Fatwas of Dar al-Islam. Leiden: Brill, 1997, pp 319-34

NEVER CHANGE YOUR SEX IN CAIRO

ISLAMIC REACTIONS TO SOME MODERN SURGERY

Ṭālib ad-dunya mu’annath, ṭālib al-ākhira mukhannath,

ṭālib al-mawlā mudhakkar

"The seeker of the world is feminine, the seeker of the otherworld

is a hermaphrodite, and the seeker of the Lord is masculine"

Medieval Sufi saying.

The event

In 1982 Sayyid ʿAbd Allāh, a 19-year-old student of medicine at al-Azhar

university, contacted a psychologist complaining that he was suffering from

extreme depression, and asked for psychological treatment. The psychologist,

Salwā Jirjis Labīb, examined him and discovered that he suffered from a

disturbance of his sexual identity, or more precisely, psychological

hermaphroditism (al-khunūtha an-nafsīya). She treated him for three years,

making all possible effort to restore a male sexual identity to him, but

eventually she had to give up. She explained the failure as inevitable in cases

like this where treatment is begun after puberty. Salwā Jirjis then referred him

to the surgeon ʿIzzat ʿAsham Allāh Jibrāʿīl, to have sex-change surgery

2

performed.

Given the seriousness of the operation, Jibrāʿīl referred Sayyid ʿAbd Allāh

to another psychologist, Hānī Najīb. Najīb soon reached the same diagnosis

and agreed that surgery would be the best course. He therefore set out to

prepare the patient for it. For a year Sayyid ʿAbd Allāh was treated with female

hormones, while experimenting with dressing up like a woman and living with

the other sex. This stage lasted for about a year, whereupon Sayyid ʿAbd Allāh

signed a request to have the surgery performed.

This was done on January 29, 1988. The surgeon ʿIzzat ʿAsham Allāh

Jibrāʿīl removed the penis and created a new urinal orifice and an artificial

vagina. This is the standard procedure in sex-change operations. The

operation went well; Sayyid ʿAbd Allāh soon recovered. According to his

psychologist Salwā Jirjis, he took the name Sally and today lives happily and

satisfied with her female identity.

The case

The story could end here, but it does not. What Sally soon found out was that

this operation was not just a personal matter, but involved a number of

authorities, apart from arousing a huge interest in the media and the

population at large. It could be most interesting to interview Sally about her

childhood, the time at the al-Azhar, and so forth. This is not what I am going

to do. This study will focus on the reactions in the media and among religious

authorities, primarily the Mufti of the Republic, Sayyid Ṭanṭāwī.

The phenomenon of sex-change operations is a rather complex one, and I

must confess that I am myself at a loss as to what to think of it. This study,

then, is not trying to depict the ulamā as adverse to a beneficial and in any

event inevitable modernization. It assumes, however, that responses to a

3

sex-change operation are bound to be strong in a society which has

traditionally been characterized by a clear separation of the sexes, an issue

which is again at the top of the agenda due to the Islamic awakening taking

place in these years.

The first thing that happened after the operation was that the Dean of the

Medical Faculty refused to admit Sally for the final exams. At the same time,

he refused to transfer her to the Medical Faculty for girls (absolutely separated

from that of the boys, and situated in another part of town). Realizing that she

would need official recognition of her new sex and name, Sally applied to the

Administration of Civil Matters to have her name changed from Sayyid

Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh to Sally Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh.

News about the operation broke on April 4, 1988. In an interview with

al-Ahrām Sally talked about her difficulties at al-Azhar which dated back long

before the operation, "it is strange that they still want to punish me, now that I

have actually become a woman, - as if I committed a crime at the moment I

entered the operating room." Responding to this remark, al-Azhar issued a

declaration stating that it had set up a special committee for the investigation

of the case, and when a couple of months before the operation the committee

had examined Sayyid (performing among other things an ultra-sound

examination of the prostata) it had come to the conclusion that he was one

hundred percent male, both outwardly and inwardly. After the operation Sally

had refused to be examined by the committee again. Sally herself, who looked

sexily out to the reader holding a pair of sunglasses to her mouth, saw no

reason why she should suffer yet another examination: she confirmed that

although she had known about her female identity for long, it was only now

she had become "a cheerful girl", and she was planning to marry soon and

would wear the veil.

4

Sally's provocative behaviour and the grave accusations of al-Azhar

together created a stir in the media which was to last for months. Clearly,

al-Azhar maintained that she had committed a crime, or rather, he had, for far

from changing a sex the doctor had in fact mutilated a man whose motives, it

was suggested, were of the basest sexual nature: by claiming himself a woman

Sayyid was trying to have legitimate sexual intercourse with another man.

Having received a number of complaints about the operation, the

representative of the Doctors' Syndicate (Niqābat al-Aṭbā) in Giza, Doctor

Ḥusām ad-Dīn Khaṭīb, examined the case and summoned the surgeon, Jabrā’īl,

the anaestetist, Ramzī Michel Jādd, and the psychologist to discuss the case

with three doctors appointed by the Syndicate. The Syndicate, it must be said,

has since 1984 been dominated by the Islamic movement. The three doctors

agreed that the surgeon had committed a serious medical error by not

confirming the presence of a disease before operating.

The Doctors' Syndicate found support in the declaration from the

committee of the Azhar University. Presumably aggrieved at the discovery that

such an operation had been performed on one of its students the Committee

handed over its findings to the Doctors' Syndicate in order that it examine the

case and hold the surgeon responsible. The Azhar Committee and the Doctor's

Syndicate were in agreement that a grave error had been committed; the right

procedure would have been to stop the hormonal treatment and continue with

a purely psychological cure.

On May 14, 1988 the Doctors' Syndicate sent a letter to the Mufti of the

Republic, Sayyid Ṭanṭāwī, asking him for a fatwa on the matter. His fatwa,

which is reproduced below, concluded that if the doctor testified that this was

the only cure against the disease, then this treatment was permissible. It

must, however, never be performed at the mere wish of a man to become a

woman, or vice versa. This fatwa was not quite to the point, since it evaded the

5

question of whether the diagnosis of psychological hermaphroditism was

acceptable from the point of view of Islamic law. Consequently, opponents of

the operation interpreted it as supporting their cause, because it condemned

sex-change operations performed simply at the wish of the patient. On the

other hand, Sally's party (and, eventually, the Public Prosecutor) saw it as

supportive to their position, because it placed the final decision with the

medical doctor.

On June 12, 1988, al-Azhar took the case to court, claiming that the

surgeon was liable to punishment for inflicting a permanent disease upon the

patient according to ʿ 240 in the penal code. The Public Prosecutor (an-Niyāba

al-ʿāmma) carried out an investigation.

The Public Prosecutor summoned Fakhrī Ṣāliā, the medical examiner.

Ṣāliā consulted the relevant scientific literature on the subject, as well as the

Medical Counselor for the Hospital Sector. They agreed that while from a

purely physical point of view Sayyid ʿAbd Allāh had been a man,

psychologically speaking he was not; the diagnosis of psychological

hermaphroditism had been accurate, and it was correct that after puberty this

disease is only curable by means of a surgical operation. The surgeon had

been following the rules of his profession, consulting relevant specialists, and

the operation had been performed properly. He had not inflicted any

permanent physical disablement on the patient. The patient could be regarded

(yuʿtabar) as a female, although lacking uterus, ovary and menstruation.

Finally, he examined Sally on September 12 and concluded that the anus had

not been recently nor continously used for sodomy (liwāṭan).

The Doctors' Syndicate did not accept the findings of the medical

examiner, but insisted that the surgeon had operated on a man who was as

much a man as any man. A meeting was held where they exchanged views on

the matter. Shortly before that, on November 11, the Doctors' Syndicate gave a

6

press conference where it stated that the operation was not a matter only for

specialists, but had been a case of public morals and therefore of public

interest. It was an assault on the principles, values, ethics and religion of

Egyptian society. Consequently, the Syndicate deleted ʿIzzat ʿAsham Allāh

Jibrāʿīl of its membership records, and the anaestetist Ramzī Jādd was fined

£E 300 for his participation in the operation.

On December 29, 1988, the Public Prosecutor acquitted the surgeon

ʿAsham Allāh Jibrāʿīl of the charge of inflicting a permanent disease. The final

report confirmed that the operation had been performed properly according to

the standards of these operations. Almost a year passed before he closed the

Sally case in October 1989, and in November Sally finally received the

certificate stating that she was a woman, almost two years after the operation.

Her grievances did not end here, however, for al-Azhar still would not recognize

her as a woman and admit her to the Medical Faculty for girls. It took another

charge and another one and a half year before the Administrative Court

repealed the Azhar decision of expelling Sally and allowed her to enter any

university she might wish in order to pass her final exams.

The press

This is the story of Sally. Let us now take a closer look at some of the themes

discussed in the Egyptian press. The first thing to be noted is that differences

in the press treatment did not strictly follow along political lines, and that I

have only come across one single comment on the case made by a woman.

Both governmental and oppositional newspapers made critical and supportive

comments; they were informative about the development of the case, but many

of them also became the vehicles of a heated debate between partisans and

opponents of the operation, even if the opponents were almost invariably in the

7

majority. I did not, however, find any positive evaluation of the operation in

any Islamic newspaper.

What we have seen in the debate and in the legal proceedings is a struggle over

Sally's sex. Everybody seems to agree that she cannot decide this on her own -

it is a public issue. The psychologists say that she is now a woman, but used

to suffer from psychological hermaphroditism, whereas al-Azhar and its

supporters maintain that she is a man, and has always been one. Al-Azhar

does not accept a psychological diagnosis and insists that the body cannot lie:

every individual has a true sex which can be discovered by close examination.

This is one of the basic dividing lines in the case, and it is by no means new;

from the Islamic camp, psychology is often suspected of being a Western

science bent on changing the mores of Egyptian society. As a professor of

psychology succinctly remarked, "the case is not a new one, but it highlights a

new concept [that of psychological hermaphroditism] and thus raises an

important issue: which should hold the primary position: the soul or the

body?"

To the Azhar professor of physiology it raises no such question, but

rather another, practical one: "which medical, moral or legal means may be

applied to prevent a repetition of a tragedy which has caused so much

confusion (balbala) in the population?" He goes on to state that there was

nothing 'transsexual' about the case, which was simply a question of

'sodomistic inclinations'. 'Transsexual' is the diagnosis used to legitimize

operations transforming men into artificial women in order to satisfy their

abominable sexual demands. Research has established, however, that their

mental state is due to failures in their upbringing, mainly caused by parents

who spoiled them too much and gave them little discipline, or even gave their

boy a girl's name, or their girl a boy's. This is all perverse, and will lead to

8

perverse results. The important thing, then, is to defend Egyptian values,

principles and religion against any deviation (inḥirāf) leading to perversity. To

sum up: Sayyid was a man and whatever inclinations he may have had were

not inborn, but acquired. By acquiescing in the operation, the doctors had

departed from medical grounds and had simply given in to Sayyid's

perversities.

According to the Azhar view, God has created mankind in pairs and His

Revelation makes it clear that the distinction between the sexes (as well as the

one between believer and unbeliever) is the fundamental distinction whereupon

society is founded. Their interaction may pose a threat to the social order, and

this threat (which mainly emanates from the woman) must be contained. In

this, the Azharis are to a large degree in accordance with earlier Muslim

societies, to whom the male-female distinction was so crucial that

hermaphrodites posed a dilemma of some seriousness, as can be witnessed

from the number of discussions on the status of the hermaphrodite found in

Medieval Muslim legal literature. Paula Sanders has recently analysed this

material and has dubbed the very elaborate legal prescriptions laid down for

the exact determination of a sex a form of gendering the ungendered body; that

is, attributing a sex to a body which did not possess only one sex, simply for

the sake of preserving a binary system:

If medieval Muslim jurists had an overriding anxiety, it was not any of

the particular concerns - incest taboos, modesty, segregation, or even

hierarchy - that organized their negotiation of gender, but maintaining

the gendered integrity of their world as a whole. Their received view of

the world was as a place with only two sexes, male and female...A person

with ambiguous genitalia or with no apparent sex might have been a

biological reality, but it had no gender and, therefore, no point of entry

into the social world: it was unsocialized.

9

One is reminded of the Azhar reaction to Sally: she could not continue

with the male students, nor could she be transferred to the girls'

department. Like the hermaphrodite, she is "gendered", and as we

saw, she cannot understand what could be the problem now that she

is clearly a woman: the way she sees it she "went from the world of

men to the world of women." To al-Azhar, however, she had already

been gendered as a man, according to a mixture of the old juridical

techniques and modern medical ones, both focusing on the body and

denying the possibility of a psychological hermaphroditism. She had

been a man, and was still a man, but now less so, because she had

been bereft of her male sexual organs and been attributed with

artificial (and imperfect) female ones. She was not a full man,

definitely not a woman, and not a true hermaphrodite. What was she

then? One or two people argued that she had become a eunuch, an

interesting idea, considering that eunuchs were in Medieval Islamic

societies precisely the persons who were permitted to travel between

the men's and the women's spheres and often were in charge of the

Harem. Consequently, if Sally was a eunuch she would be allowed to

enter both the male and the female Medical Faculty. Eunuchs were,

however, not supposed to dress up like women. The Azhar took a

much more negative stand: Sally was fundamentally a khawal, that is

an effeminate man who is willing to play a passive, female role in

sexual intercourse with other men, a well-known term of abuse in

Egypt denoting the lowest and most despicable kind of manliness.

The operation had turned this khawal (who was still a man) into an

artificial woman. This was the opposite of gendering: the surgeon

had ungendered a gendered body, and this new ungendered body was

of a new type altogether, betwixt and between, equally unacceptable in

10

the girls' and in the boys' Medical Faculty, because it really had no

point of re-entry into social life. In an article in Rose al-Yussuf, ʿAbd

Allāh Mabrūk an-Najjār, teacher of Islamic law at al-Azhar, sets out to

do what a medieval Islamic legal scholar (faqīh) would have done:

discussing the rules for this new case in relation to engagement,

marriage and so forth. Moreover, an-Najjār lists a number of reasons

why Sally (or rather: Sayyid) is liable to punishment from the point of

view of Islamic law: firstly, he made himself a hermaphrodite (and

hermaphroditism is punishable, because it leads to the abominable

crime of homosexuality, which is "the worst crime in which a society

can become entangled"). Secondly, he made a doctor of the type who

is craving for fame mutilate him so that he became a deformed man, -

and mutilation of oneself is a crime according to Islamic law. Finally,

this deformation was made not in order that he could beget children,

which is the proper context of sexual desire, - but solely in order to

indulge in sexual acts, and such a marriage for sexual pleasure (zawāj

mutāʿa) is also illegal. There are thus plenty of reasons why he should

be punished from an Islamic point of view.

It is my impression that the Sally case provided an opportunity for

so-called "moderates" on the Islamic wing to enhance their Islamic

credentials by opposing the operation in an agitated fashion. This is

most characteristic of the comments made by these teachers at

al-Azhar who fought to defend Azhar's position and wanted Sally

punished. This, I believe, is the main reason why the Sally case

became such a hot issue compared to other sex-change operations.

Another reason is Sally's age: she was no longer a minor. As argued

by the Public Prosecutor, Sayyid had been a grown-up student who

had made a decision for himself after a considerable period of

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reflexion. To the Azhar conservatives, far from being an argument,

this was an aggravating circumstance: Sayyid had made a deliberate

choice on an issue where there ought to be no choice at all.

To the Islamic movement and its press, the case looked a little

different. First of all, there was nothing very surprising about it:

sex-change operations were bound to happen sooner or later, given

the direction in which Egyptian society was moving. The details of the

case were of relative minor interest, since there would be little point in

just blaming Sally or her doctor, blamable though they might be. To

the Islamists, Sally was but a symptom of all the evils of Egyptian

society today, a society which to the more radical Islamic wing is

simply anti-Islamic (jāhilī). The Islamic press was therefore much less

preoccupied with the Sally case as such, but occasionally it referred to

"the age of Sally" Why is Sally an apt symbol of the evils of society?

Because she literally embodies all its evils. Consider the case from an

Islamist point of view: a fundamental difference between Islamic

society and other, especially Western societies is the attitude to the

sexes. While Islamic society, in accordance with the Koran, maintains

the fundamental difference and complementarity of the sexes, this

natural difference is blurred and denied in the West. There, men have

become effeminate and women masculine, due to the mixing (ikhtilāṭ)

of the sexes in schools, work and society at large, not to mention in

the Western indulgence in illicit sex. By contrast, in the virtuous

Islamic society, men's and women's worlds are separate, and strict

rules regulate their co-existence. The most important contacts

between men and women take place inside the family, and the only

way of relating properly to a person of the other sex with whom one

12

does not share blood is through marriage. Outside these legal ways of

interrelation there are a number of illicit ways, the most grave of these

being fornication (zinā), a key concept of the Islamic movement's

diagnosis of Egyptian society, since it is not normally punished in

Egypt though being one of the five principal punishments (ḥudūd)

mentioned in the Koran.

Sally's body, then, becomes the perfect symbol of what is wrong in

our age, or even of what has happened to the body of believers, the

umma: here we have a Muslim youth studying at the venerable

Islamic Azhar university, who consults specialists of Western

psychology (one of them being a woman) and is told to follow his

perverse inclinations towards becoming a woman. Significantly, the

names of the psychologist, the surgeon and the anaestecist reveal that

they are Christians. The surgery (a technique imported from the

West) is performed, and Sayyid changes his Muslim male name into a

non-Muslim female one. And what comes out is neither male nor

female, but something in between the two, a mix. Indeed, we live in

"the age of Sally" (fī āṣr Sālī) where men and women are mixed in all

sorts of ways, due to the Western corruption of Egypt: Sally is the

literal embodiment of the Western castration of Muslim society and

culture. The "age of Sally"-reaction considers Sally less of a criminal

and more of a victim than does the Azhar reaction.

The fatwa

Immediately after news had broken about the operation, Egypt's

muftis were asked for fatwas on the question. As we know, apart from

the Mufti of the Republic there are the president of al-Azhar's Fatwa

13

Council (Lajnat al-Fatwā) and the mufti of the High Council for Islamic

Affairs (al-Majlis al-Aʿlā li 'sh-Shu'ūn al-Islāmīya), who publish their

fatwas in the periodicals of these two institutions. The two former

were immediately consulted by the journalists, at a time when few

details about Sally were known, and both answered that sex-change

surgery could be performed if the medical experts assured that this

was the only way whereby the patient might obtain his true sex. The

mufti of the High Council, however, did not publish a fatwa until

October 1988, when he denounced the operation because it had

transformed a man into something neither man nor woman, but much

akin to a hermaphrodite, which was ironic since this was precisely the

disease the doctor had purported to cure.

As mentioned above, the Mufti of the Republic was consulted by the

Doctors' Syndicate in May 1988 for a fatwa on the subject. Given the

official inquiry, this fatwa is much longer and better argued. It is

reproduced below from the records of the Mufti's Administration, the

Dar al-Ifta:

FATWA ON SEX-CHANGE OPERATION, JUNE 8, 1988

To the honoured general secretary of the Doctors' General Syndicate.

This is an answer to the Syndicate's letter number 483 of May 14, 1988,

asking for the opinion of religion on the matter of a student of medicine

at the al-Azhar university, who has been subjected to a surgical

operation (removing his male organs) in order to turn him into a girl.

We find

that it is transmitted from ʿUsāma ibn Shārik: "A bedouin came to the

Prophet and said, 'O, Messenger of God, can you cure?' And He said,

'Yes, for God did not send a disease without sending a cure for it,

knowing it from His knowledge... This [Hadith] is told by Aḥmad [ibn

14

Ḥanbal]. There is another version: "Some bedouins said, 'O, Messenger

of God, can you cure?' And He said, 'Yes, God's servants can cure

themselves, for God never gave a disease without providing a cure or a

medicine for it, except for one disease.' They asked, 'O, Prophet of God,

what disease is that?' He said, 'old age.' This version is related by ibn

Mājā, abū Dā’ūd, at-Tirmīdhī, and others. (Muntaqā 'l-Akhbār wa

Sharāuhu nayl al-Awṭār, v. 8, p. 200, and Fatḥ al-Bārī bi Sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ

al-Bukhārī, by al-ʿAsqalānī, v. 9, p. 273, in the chapter on those who

imitate women).

As for the condemnation of those who by word and deed resemble

women, it must be confined to one who does it deliberately (tashahhada

dhalika), while one who is like this out of a natural disposition must be

ordered to abandon it, even if this can only be achieved step by step.

Should he then not comply, but persist [in his manners], the blame shall

include him, as well - especially if he displays any pleasure in doing so.

The person who is by nature a hermaphrodite (mukhannath khalqī) is

not to be blamed. This is based on [the consideration that] if he is not

capable of abandoning the female, swinging his hips in walking and

speaking in a feminine way, after having been subjected to treatment

against it, [he is at least willing to accept that] it is still possible for him

to abandon it, if only gradually. But if he gives up the cure with no good

excuse, then he deserves blame.

Aṭ-Ṭabārī took it as an example that the Prophet (God bless him and

grant him salvation) did not forbid the hermaphrodite from entering the

women's quarters until he heard him giving a description of the woman

in great detail. Then he prohibited it. This proves that no blame is on

the hermaphrodite for simply being created that way.

That being so, the rulings derived from these and other noble hadiths

on treatment grant permission to perform an operation changing a man

into a woman, or vice versa, as long as a reliable doctor concludes that

there are innate causes in the body itself, indicating a buried (maṭmūra)

female nature, or a covered (maghmūra) male nature, because the

operation will disclose these buried or covered organs, thereby curing a

corporal disease which cannot be removed, except by this operation.

This is also dealt with in a hadith about cutting a vein, which is

15

related through Jābir: "The Messenger of God sent a physician to abū

ibn Kaʿb. The physician cut a vein and burned it." This Hadith is

related by Aḥmad [ibn Ḥanbal] and Muslim. What supports this view is

what al-Qasṭallānī and al-ʿAsqalānī say in their commentaries on it:

"This means that it is incumbent upon the hermaphrodite to remove the

symptoms of femininity."

And this is further sustained by the author of Fatḥ al-Bārī who says

"..having given him treatment in order to abandon it..." This is a clear

proof that the duty prescribed for the hermaphrodite can take the form

of a treatment. The operation is such a treatment, perhaps even the best

treatment.

This operation cannot be granted at the mere wish to change sex with no

clear and convincing corporal motives. In that case it would fall under

that noble Hadith which al-Bukhārī relates through Anas: "The

Messenger of God cursed the hermaphrodites among the men and the

over-masculine women, saying 'expel them from their houses',

whereupon the Prophet himself (God bless him and grant him salvation)

expelled one, and ʿUmar expelled another one." This Hadith is related by

Aḥmad and al-Bukhārī.

To sum up: It is permissible to perform the operation in order to

reveal what was hidden of male or female organs. Indeed, it is obligatory

to do so on the grounds that it must be considered a treatment, when a

trustworthy doctor advises it. It is, however, not permissible to do it at

the mere wish to change sex from woman to man, or vice versa.

Praise be to He who created, who is mighty and guiding. From what

has been said, the answer to what was in the question will be known.

Praise be to God the most High.

This is a rather difficult fatwa, and so vague that both parties cited it

in support of their position, as we have seen. In order to make sense

of it, we shall divide it into sections.

The first part consists of various versions of a Hadith the meaning of

which amounts to the observation that there is a cure for every

16

disease, and consequently also for hermaphroditism. This is a

standard introduction in Ṭanṭāwī's medical fatwas; thus, for instance

in the fatwa from 1989 on organ transplantation. It reveals his

eagerness to support medical progress as long as it does not infringe

on Islamic moral principles.

Next, Ṭanṭāwī discusses those men who resemble women, that is

hermaphrodites. Here he has consulted the various Hadiths on the

subject, as they have been recorded and commented upon by the

famous Egyptian Hadith scholar ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī (d. 1448). One

particular Hadith is commented upon; it tells how a hermaphrodite at

the conquest of Ta'if promised to lead one of the warriors to a lady

who had four tyres of fat under her stomach and eight over her hips.

When the Prophet heard about this offer, he forbade his wives ever to

let a hermaphrodite into their chambers. Following al-ʿAsqalānī and

aṭ-Ṭabārī (d. 923), Ṭanṭāwī deduces that since there was nothing

wrong with the hermaphrodite until it was discovered that he had

been spying on the women, a hermaphrodite cannot be blamed for

being created as such. There are two different types of

hermaphrodites, those who are so by birth, and those who have

acquired their manners. Both must be told to strive to free

themselves from the hermaphroditism, even if this will be a slow

process. They must not indulge in it.

Third, Ṭanṭāwī concludes that hermaphroditism is something which

must be cured, if possible, and if a doctor asserts that a surgical

operation is the only way to do it, then he must go ahead and perform

one, be it from man to woman, or vice versa. Here he makes an

interesting remark: what the doctor should be looking for are a

buried female or a covered male nature, which can then be brought to

17

light by means of the surgery. This amounts to saying that every

human being has one true sex which may be covered by limbs or

organs belonging to the other sex. The truth, however, is always

underneath. Ṭanṭāwā thus makes a distinction between an outward

appearance (ẓāhir), which may be deceptive, and an inward essence

(bāṭin), which is always true - a well-known and important theme in

Muslim culture.

Fourth, a Hadith about the Prophet sending a physician to a man to

cut a vein is taken as evidence that removing parts of the body

through surgery is permitted. Combining this with ibn Ḥajar

al-ʿAsqalānī's remark that the hermaphrodite must strive to abandon

his state, Ṭanṭāwī deduces that it is permissible to perform surgery to

remove limbs or organs which do not belong to the hermaphrodite's

true sex.

As the fifth point, Ṭanṭāwī finally relates the Hadith which seems to

be most to the point and according to which the Prophet cursed

hermaphrodites and overly masculine women and expelled one of

them from his house. This Hadith, however, is taken not to signify a

general curse on hermaphrodites, but rather a prohibition against

performing a sex-change operation for the fun of it. It must be a

treatment, curing hermaphrodites by revealing their true sex.

What is Ṭanṭāwī doing in this fatwa? Basically he is quoting a former

Mufti of the Republic, Jādd al-Ḥaqq ʿAlā Jādd al-Ḥaqq, who issued a

fatwa on sex-change operations in response to an enquiry from the

Malaysian Center for Islamic Research in 1981. What, then, are they

doing? They are not referring to the elaborate fiqh discussions of

hermaphrodites and the like, but they discuss some of the Hadiths of

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the Prophet on the issue in order to come up with a new ruling to this

new phenomenon, which means in legal terms that they are practicing

ijtihād. There are around a handful of Hadiths dealing with

hermaphroditism and transvestitism, all apparently quite hostile

towards them; in several of them the Prophet expells the

hermaphrodite to the desert. One of the first things to decide is which

of the Hadith gives the most general rule. Ṭanṭāwī and Jādd al-Ḥaqq

both focus on the one where a hermaphrodite is expelled as a

punishment for having revealed the secrets of the harem and conclude

that, inversely, if he had not done this he would not have been

expelled. From this they conclude that those who are hermaphrodites

by nature cannot be blamed for it, as long as they strive to rid

themselves of this ambiguity and move towards increased sexual

unambiguity. If they move in the other direction - that is towards

ambiguity, indulging in their hermaphroditism - then they are to

blame and must be banished from the social world.

Ṭanṭāwī thus stresses that the correct position for a hermaphrodite is

to be on the move away from the hermaphroditic state, that is under

treatment. Surgery is such a treatment. In order to sustain the idea

of the hermaphrodite being on the way either further into or out of his

state, - that is, hermaphroditism as a process - Ṭanṭāwī maintains the

dogma that every human being has only one sex, which is its true sex.

In this way, hermaphroditism is reduced to being corporal and

psychological movements and manifestations denying this true sex.

Consequently, the task of the doctor will be to identify which of the

ambivalent outward forms corresponds to the true inner sex, which he

describes as hidden, or covered. As mentioned, the task of identifying

the true, inward (bāṭin) essence behind misleading, outward (ẓāhir)

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manifestations, is well-known to the Islamic tradition; that is also the

concern of the mystic, the philosopher, and possibly even the

theologian. It is called ta’wīl, a key concept in the Islamic

understanding of the search for truth. The search for the true sex is a

search for the truth about a human being. This idea is not altogether

alien to western thought, either. In the preface to the book Herculine

Barbin dite Alexina B., Michel Foucault describes the shift in mentality

when, with the break-through of the medical sciences in the 18th

century, the possibility of a body having two sexes was abandoned

and the idea of a true sex gained ground. One of the casualties in this

new and more rigid understanding of the true sex - and indeed of an

intimate relationship between sex (or gender) and truth - were the

hermaphrodites who were now all taken to be "pseudo

hermaphrodites".

Mufti Ṭanṭāwī seems to be squarely on the side of medicine in this

matter. Defending a binary sexual system, he maintains that every

human being has one sex and only one. While to medieval Muslim

jurists gendering was a way of eliminating ungendered bodies, to

Ṭanṭāwī they simply cannot exist in the first place: the surgery

performed on Sayyid ʿAbd Allāh was no 'gendering of an ungendered

body', for such a thing as an ungendered body does not exist. Rather,

the surgery was a re-gendering of a body whose sex had been socially

and physically disguised but was nevertheless not changed in the

least by the operation: far from legalizing a sex-change operation,

Ṭanṭāwī's fatwa denied the possibility of performing one altogether.