Transgressing gender with religious sanction: The case of the Jogappas (original) (raw)

Following the divine: an ethnographic study of structural violence among transgender jogappas in South India

Culture, Health & Sexuality

Newly proposed legislation that aims to protect the well-being of transgender people in India offers hope of greater recognition of human rights and improved access to entitlements for these marginalised groups. However, social welfare and health institutions have a long way to go in translating proposed legislation into policies that can concretely address the social suffering of transgender people. Drawing on ethnographic field research in northern Karnataka among a highly understudied transgender group known as the jogappas, we describe the effects of overlapping forms of structural violence surrounding education, subsistence, family life and attempts to access social and health services. Findings reveal how social inequities are implicated in the emergence of transgender subjectivities along the road to becoming a jogappa. Our findings alert policy makers to the diverse needs of transgender people in India, which continually evolve while rooted in moral histories of religiosity.

An Obscure Perception of Transgender in Islam: A Case of Hijra in Bangladesh

Global Journal of Human-Social Science

Religion-related stigma and discrimination towards transgender are common phenomena in the current world. Despite the legal recognition of hijra, those people were denied basic civil and human rights such as marriage or inherent property rights. Like many colonized countries, Bangladesh legal system has its roots in British colonial legacy. But, in case of marriage or inherent property law, Bangladesh follows the religious law of Islam. The Quran or Hadith do not have a specific guideline concerning transgender, and the Muslim countries do not follow any homogenous law due to the contextual cultural construction. This paper argues, without addressing the cultural practices of Islam, the proper conceptualization of transgender identity is not possible. Although it is also the case, only the Islamic perspective, will give us a narrow understanding of hijras who are one of the transgender communities in Bangladesh. To do so, this paper will analyze the dynamic relation between Islam an...

Negotiation and Contestation of Islamic Religious Practices of the Transvestites in Yogyakarta

Cakrawala: Jurnal Studi Islam, 2018

This paper analyzes the forms of negotiation and contestation of religious practices Transvestites in Yogyakarta. The issue of Transvestites has become a hot conversation in the Indonesian public space and has led to multiple interpretations of the Transvestites identity’s position in the eyes of the law, religion, and society. So, it becomes significant to see how the negotiation and contestation of the Islamic religious practices among Transvestites. This study was conducted through field studies by conducting in-depth interviews and relevant literature search both online and offline. The results indicate that the Contestation of Islamic practices among Transvestites occurs in the form of interpretation of the Quranic texts, families and community organizations. To strengthen its existence, transvestites carried out many negotiations mainly related to the Islamic practice. Negotiations are carried out through various activities such as holding regular recitations, engaging in disc...

GENDER IDENTITIES IN ISLAM

2017

The start of the 20th century was marked by increasing religious fundamentalism and in the same century we saw movements for the recognition of LGBQT rights all around the world. This paper traces the gender identity of the marginalized third gender in the religion followed by 1.5 billion people, Islamic view of the third gender which has been referred to as Mukkhanathuns in some of its religious texts and literature. There is considerable evidence for the existence of a form of publicly recognized and institutionalized effeminacy or transvestism among males in pre-Islamic and early Islamic Arabian society. Unlike other men, these effeminates or mukhannathan were permitted to associate freely with women, on the assumption that they had no sexual interest in them, and often acted as marriage brokers, or, less legitimately, as go-betweens, Although they were subject to periodic persecution by the state, such measures were not based on any conclusions about their own sexual status-they were not assumed to be homosexual always a few were. To trace the gender identity of the third gender in Islam this article studies the Mukkhnathuns in Islamic history and the verses of Hadith and Quran to understand Homosexuality (Bi-sexuality has not been viewed as their identity has been forbidden by this religion) and comes to the present day position of Mukkhanathuns which has been absorbed by the queer society within gay, lesbian, eunuch and transgender. These identities determined their role in middle ages and laws based on them which vary in various Islamic majority counties today like in Indonesia with the coming of Dutch colonialism there is a major shift in the position of the popular third gender known as Waria. A comparative study is done on the position of the gender and laws based on homosexuality and transgender rights in Saudi Arab and Albania which leads us to understand the reasons of change in position and rights of the third genders in Islam and Islamic societies which have prominently changed since the reign of caliph Sulayman and with the start of Islamic fundamentalism.

(g) Transgenderism, Transsexuality and SexReassignment Surgery in Contemporary Sunni Fatwas

Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies

This paper analyses the contemporary Sunni discourse on transgenderism, transsexuality and sexreassignment surgery (SRS), looking at contemporary fatwas by traditionalist jurists. After a terminological introduction to the semantic field of transsexuality and transgenderism in the international discourse and in the Arab world, the paper analyses the verses in the Quran and the relevant hadiths that are mentioned in the contemporary discussion, before examining what jurists say on the topic. The paper shows that sexreassignment surgery is mostly regarded by Muslim jurists as permitted in cases of intersexuality, as it is considered a treatment to determine the sex of the person, but is usually considered forbidden in cases of transgenderism, as it is considered a change in God’s creation. The paper finally argues that the discussion on SRS by Muslim traditionalist scholars is driven by an essentialised perception of the sex/gender binary and the roles assigned to men and women that i...

Trans Terrains: Gendered Embodiments and Religious Landscapes in Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Transgender Indonesians live in the fourth most populated nation in the world with more Muslims than any other country. This thesis summarizes an ethnography conducted on one religiously oriented male-to-female transgender community known in the city of Yogyakarta as the waria. This study analyzes the waria’s gender and religious identities from an emic and etic perspective, focusing on how individuals comport themselves inside the world’s first transgender mosque-like institution called a pesantren waria. The waria take their name from the Indonesian words “wanita” (woman) and “pria” (man). I will chart how this male-to-female population create spaces of spiritual belonging and physical security within a territory that has experienced geo-religio-political insecurity: natural disasters, fundamentalist movements, and toppling dictatorships. This work illuminates how gender is conceptualized in a Javanese milieu which is different from the West, and how the waria contextualize their gender in surprising and complex ways. The pesantren waria offers a lens for how one can coherently engender a queer embodiment within an Islamic landscape.

Book Review: Vanja. Hamzić, Sexual and Gender Diversity in the Muslim World: History, Law and Vernacular Knowledge

TLI Think! A Dickson Poon Transnational Law Institute, King's College London Research Paper Series, 2017

This short book review reflects on the failures and subsequent successes to redress LGBTI, specifically transgender, discrimination in Pakistan. Although socio-legal commotion has warped the societal status of hijras (gender-variant minorities) within the fabric of South Asian culture, the book under review investigates the legal, social and religious implications and complexities of human, sexual and gender diversity within Pakistan. The author compares these pluralities with a short ethnographic account of gender-variant Muslims in contemporary Pakistan, where Islamic law and human rights law remain in a cultural-relativist deadlock. This book seeks to explain that Muslim gender-variant subjectivities are not only the inactive subjects of the prevailing discourses of global human rights law and Islamic law, but also members of a glocalised South Asian contestation which challenges the perverse ideology of hegemonic masculinity.