No Namaz for Transexual

Re: No Namaz for Transexual

so as a society we are forcing this individual to not be able to pray in c ongregation, jammat ka sawaab hota hai.

plus it appears the namaz was for eid, last time I checked i was not sure if an individual can do eid namaz at home by himself.

and by goign elsewhere, you are saying that the islam 'else where' may be different than the islam of the mullahs in question?

all i am interested in is whether or not this person as a right to pray namaz at a masjid and ba jammat, and if so then the mullahs were wrong, and if not, explain how we deal with transexuals who become muslim, do we tell em hey thansk for becoming muslim btw u cant come to the masjid.

Re: No Namaz for Transexual

^X2 uncle, different people will get treated differently regardless of what you or I say. If I were there, you think I wouldn't have let him pray there? It's hard for most people to accept someone or something different. I don't want to bring in the whole discussion on how homosexuals were treated before in the west and now the society has developed tolerance towards them and very much accepts them as a part of the society. You and I might not have any problems with this guy praying where ever he wants to, but it's a HUGE problem to them because it's a challenge for them, a question that will shatter their image as MULLAHs or good muslims (yeah right!)..

In short, I don't care. As a human, he has as much right as any other muslim to pray there. When you bring in Islam and what it forbids, then you we all start questioning.. Why would God make anyone so different and allow people to strip him of his rights? I don't know..

Re: No Namaz for Transexual

i am not concerned about what u or i think. I am concerened about religious ruling, and no one in this thread has shown any ruling that answers the questions I posed. I am also not concerned about what the mullahs in question think. thats where I am approaching this from.

:)

Re: No Namaz for Transexual

^ lol. Looks like we are both concerned about different issues. :p

Re: No Namaz for Transexual

The issue is that it's not a "himself". It's a "herself", and she is bound by the regulations in Islam that apply for women's prayers. The reaction of the village elders and cleric, and the circumstances described in the story, suggest that she has lived in the village for several years and that she was known in the village as being a woman before.

Women are not allowed to pray whilst standing amongst men. The fault of the village mullahs was not providing a facility for women to pray in, much as many desi run mosques do not have facilities for women.

This person has no right to pray amongst men unless the surgical procedure was to fix hermaphrodite features - something that is not referred to at all in the news story. The article suggest that the the person changed gender out of choice - something that Sunni Islam does not permit (I challenge anyone who disagrees to find a Sunni scholar who supports transgendering out of choice rather than correcting deformity)

This person does, on the other hand, have a right to pray jamaat amongst the rest of the women in her community.

Re: No Namaz for Transexual

maddie frankly no one here has teh complete story on whether the person was a full female either.

and do u think that the ppl who did not allow him to pray with men would be comfy that this man would be hangign with wome in their families :) I think u and I both know the answer to this

Re: No Namaz for Transexual

THANK YOU!!!

P.S. I feel like saying ewww....a big one too EWWWWWWWWWWWW

Re: No Namaz for Transexual

Maddie

if a person changed gender out of chouce and then wants to become a muslim do we allow this person to become muslim, and if so, where does this person pray, with men or women?

PS: choice does not negate the presence of a need either.

Re: No Namaz for Transexual

Now you are making the assumption that these men (who quite clearly knew Rehan/Rehana as a woman before, since they are from the same village) still consider her to be a man.

To me it seems that their concern is that she is still a woman to them; and that she should not be treated as a man simply because of an operation.

Re: No Namaz for Transexual

That's a complex matter that requires years of study of the principles of Islamic law and of religious sources to answer. I'm too lazy to do that, as are most people, so the example you give would need a religious scholar to answer.

Given the policy of zero-tolerance except for hermaphrodites, I would expect that the convert would be required to act as appropriate for his/her genetic gender. Lifestyle changes are part of the process of becoming Muslim anyway.

Re: No Namaz for Transexual

as i said maddie i am not concerned with what those men think, or what their concern is. i am looking for a logical religious verdict on how such ppl are to be treated.

a post op transexual man..does he pray with the men or with the women, do we ask this person to observe hijab from men or do we ask women to observe hijab from him.

PS: they may think they 'clearly' know this person as a girl before while it is entirely possible that this personw as botn with both sets of genatalia or had some situation where tyhe person was raised as a girl for a while. discovery channel had a documentary about this not too logn ago.

Re: No Namaz for Transexual

thansk for the debate guys, just wanted to look at the situation from multiple angles, sommat of a mental gymnastics ya know.

Re: No Namaz for Transexual

we need mufti bin ladin to guide us on this issue. but Javed Ghamidi would do too...

Re: No Namaz for Transexual

Dealing with the PS first: Rehan/Rehana does not appear to have even tried to argue that there was a physical need for the change. Given that he/she will not use what could be the strongest reason for her case, once can only assume that he/she changed by choice and not need.

Dealing with the rest of it, here’s an extract from a fatwa.

http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?pagename=IslamOnline-English-Ask_Scholar/FatwaE/FatwaE&cid=1119503545898

My own belief is that what this shows is that when a post op transexual man becomes Muslim, like all Muslims he is obliged to submit to how Allah originally made him in the first place.

Re: No Namaz for Transexual

namaz is a state of connecting one selves with ALLAH SWT.
so the first strange thing is how any mufti or any villager can stop him to do so. and what they have to do if he/she is also praying there in the mosque (even in Masjid-ul-Har'm we see men-women praying side by side)

second aspect is we really dont know under what circumstances this man (formerly woman) changed his/her gender? even if we do, still he has passed this limit. (dont forget there are many ppl who commit suicide even knowing that it is utterly HARAM). so these aspects actually comes with the intensity of realization that one attained.

bottom line is these kind of ppl are actually crack. they need some special attention n support otherwise environment will be more disturbed then ever b4.

Re: No Namaz for Transexual

That much is emotionally charged, my friend. Suck it up because here is the truth: Saudia arab routinely pay for its citizens' gender reassignment surgery on RELIGIOUS basis.

However, I suppose it could be an issue if it was "just for kicks" or if he didn't "feel like woman." Also...dam i forgot what other point I was going to make.

Shia clerics are the same way in Iran, a country where this also happens on the basis of religion.

In conclusion, while I am not against this type of surgery, I would definately feel a bit awkward while praying next to someone like that...not because they were a woman before or a man...but just the mental picture will break my wuzu like every five seconds eww.

Re: No Namaz for Transexual

so by that token a dude who used to be a girl should be free to hang otu with women and no issue with hijab and all? does that sound reasonable to you?

I dont know how many ppl would say that is okay..

Re: No Namaz for Transexual

Few interesting comments:

[quote]

1- (I challenge anyone who disagrees to find a Sunni scholar who supports transgendering out of choice rather than correcting deformity)

2- That's a complex matter that requires years of study of the principles of Islamic law and of religious sources to answer. I'm too lazy to do that, as are most people, so the example you give would need a religious scholar to answer.

[/quote]

Has anyone here ever stopped for a minute to think how much complicated they have made religion out to be? Have you ever thought that may be it's those ****cho mullahs/scholars who have made the religion so complicated that mainstream idiots don't look at the spirit of the religion for guidance but instead waste their time in semantics? It's exactly the kind of people like maddy here who are responsible for making a simple thing complicated and due to whom the world of Islam is backward, insecure, and ignorant.

Last I checked, an act of worship is between God and his creation, the banda or bandi, or Rahana or Rahan in this case. When I checked that last time, I also stumbled upon the fact that a mosque is also "house of God". These are the facts first and foremost. Anything else comes later and can never negate the spirit of these facts. Once you understand that you understand religion and why God created us to begin with.

Given those facts, where the f**** did these scholars come from to decide who can pray there or not? Mullah who gets paid for being the Imam is basically responsible for the up keep of the building and Imamat. All the rest of the matters that are private in nature between God and a man (or a man who was a woman previously) is none of his business.

BTW, THERE IS NO UNIFORM BODY whether Sunni or Shia or whatever else that decides one thing and everyone else follows it. For every given fatwa there is another fatwa from someone that contradicts it. So THERE IS NO OFFICIAL decree. e.g. While many people say non-zabiha is haram even if done by christians, many scholars claim that any meat cooked by christians or people of book is "totally cool". There is also no official criteria for one to be a scholar. I mean, there is no exam that you've to pass to be officially a scholar. I'm a scholar myself and I decree hereby that Rehan or Rehana can pray whenever his/her little hear pleases regardless of what's dangling or not in his/her pants. There. Maddy, you just found a sunni scholar who supports "transgendering out of choice" and going by the strength of the balls on you I suggest you undergo it yourself to find your place in this kayanaat.

If a scholar looks at the principles of tolerance, privacy, nature of act of worship (and you don't have to be a scholar to make sense out of it, btw) he/she can easily see how anyone who wants to pray in mosque can sooooo totally do it regardless of the fact that the penis dangling on him used to be a vagina.

Lastly, it only takes the idiots not to try to understand the nature of circumstances in favor of their outdated, orthodox, paranoid beliefs -- Does one gets up one day and decides to undergo an operation to change one's sex? If someone is telling me that someone goes through a sex change out of a mere choice or inkling of the heart then he is crazy. People don't get up one day and go through sex changes. There ought to be COMPELLING reasons, including harmonic imbalance, psychology, day to day living conditions, so on and so forth that eventually make people CROSS that boundary. And I truly believe that if anyone of us will ever be in that situation he/she will do the same thing. In other words, sex change operation is not friggin' hobby or a newly adopted fad, you idiots so Don't Assume.

Re: No Namaz for Transexual

What I don't understand is that even if from the great scholors point of view the sex change is wrong, how is it related to him/her being able to say prayers in the house of Allah?

If someone believes his or her prayers will not be accepted, so be it. Why in the hell you want to stop him from saying prayers in the first place??

Re: No Namaz for Transexual

By Rehans's own admittance, the mosque authorities were not preventing her from praying in the mosque - her exact words were that they"decided against allowing me to offer namaz along with men."

Given that most small desi mosques I've been to, either in Pakistan or in the West, do not have any facilities for women's prayers, it seems evident to me that the mosque authorities were preventing Rehan from praying in the men's prayer facilities.

It strikes me that they don't want to stop Rehan from praying - they just want to stop Rehan, who from a Sunni religious perspective is still a woman (and indeed genetically is still a woman), from praying amongst men because in Sunni Islam women are not permitted to pray amongst men.