This is part I of a 2-episode series with Sh. Mustafa Umar addressing Shar'i perspectives related to gender nonconformity, gender dysphoria and transgenderism.
Are the gender roles defined by Islam rigid or flexible compared to modern Western notions of gender roles? If gender roles are, to a degree, socially determined, what are the permissible limits of not conforming to such gender roles? Where do individuals who identify as gender-fluid or gender non-binary fit in the Islamic paradigm? For individuals who imitate the opposite gender, what does imitation involve and what would be considered blameworthy? These and other relevant questions are explored in this episode.
This is part I of a 2-episode series with Sh. Mustafa Umar addressing Shar'i perspectives related to gender nonconformity, gender dysphoria and transgenderism.
Are the gender roles defined by Islam rigid or flexible compared to modern Western notions of gender roles? If gender roles are, to a degree, socially determined, what are the permissible limits of not conforming to such gender roles? Where do individuals who identify as gender-fluid or gender non-binary fit in the Islamic paradigm? For individuals who imitate the opposite gender, what does imitation involve and what would be considered blameworthy? These and other relevant questions are explored in this episode.
Waheed 00:39
Assalamu alaikom warahmatullahi ta’ala wabaraktuh, and welcome to a new episode of “A Way Beyond the Rainbow”, this podcast series dedicated to Muslims experiencing same-sex attractions who want to live a life true to Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala and Islam. I'm your host, Waheed Jensen, and thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. As you guys know, so far we have been talking about gender nonconformity, intersex syndromes, disorders of sexual development, gender dysphoria and the transgender movement. And now we get to a part in our series where we talk about the fiqh and Shar’i perspectives on many of these issues. And joining me, again, is Sh. Mustafa Umar all the way from Orange County, California. As you remember, Sh. Mustafa Umar joined me previously in this season on two episodes where we talked about a lot of the Shar’i perspectives and contemporary issues, and he is joining me again in these two episodes, where we talk about a lot of relevant themes such as the gender roles and the limits set by Islam, gender nonconformity within Islam, as well as imitation of the opposite gender, the permissibility and the prohibition with regards to gender transitioning, in addition to contexts where we're expected to declare our pronouns or to deal with individuals who identify as gender fluid or non-binary, and so on. So let's get started with part one of this two-episode series, inshaAllah.
Waheed 02:14
Assalamu alaikom, Sh. Mustafa.
Sh. Mustafa 02:14
Wa alaikom assalam warahmatullah.
Waheed 02:19
Barak Allahu feek for joining me today. How are you doing?
Sh. Mustafa 02:23
Wa feekom. Alhamduillah, I'm doing fantastic, doing great!
Waheed 02:26
Alhamdulillah, I’m very happy to hear that. In this episode, we're going to be asking some tricky questions related to transgenderism or “non-gender” fiqh, given the contemporary understanding and the socio-political climate of today's time and age. Basically, I would like to ask you, and this is something that comes up frequently, that SSA alone, forget gender dysphoria and transgenderism, but same-sex attractions is not very well understood in our communities. And, as we know, people are just painted with the same brush and “You're all going to go to Hell”, and it's a very tricky discussion. With gender dysphoria transgenderism, it becomes even more difficult, because there are a lot of preconceived notions and it's immediately classified as haram and even among SSA support circles, for example, a lot of people don't understand that. So can you shed light on this issue, in particular, among the Muslim communities, what you have seen, what challenges you have perceived. How are you able to navigate these things? I know that you said that your personal experience with transgenderism is not as much as with SSA, and this is understood given the different prevalence between the two, but what can you share with us with regards to that?
Sh. Mustafa 03:44
Sure, sure. Bismillah. So I mean, you know, kind of like what you said, that same-sex attraction is not even very well understood by Muslims, in fact, even Muslim scholars - differentiating the attraction with the actual practice is difficult enough for people to understand the difference between the two. So when it comes to gender dysphoria, it just becomes exacerbated on a different level, because there's automatically this connection between sexuality/sexual desires and gender dysphoria, and the two of them are not even connected. But what ends up happening is because the whole LGBT acronym, somehow, you know, the LGBT movement has actually tried to connect the two on purpose. And there's obviously a political reason for that. So I think what people have just automatically assumed, most people, especially up until five years ago, did not know what transgender even means. They didn't even know what the “T” in LGBT actually stood for. And even if you told them what it stands for, “transgenderism”, they don't know what exactly that's supposed to mean, right? That's just like a new term, no one has really heard of that until like the last 10 years or something, along those lines.
So I remember I was at an AMJA conference, the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America, and someone, I mentioned this in a previous episode, but you know, one of the scholars asked me, “You know what, I know they don't want you to bring up the issue of transgenderism” because I had suggested it as a future topic for the following year, and they turned it down, and they said “No.” So one of the sheikhs said, “You know what, go ahead and mention it during the Q&A session anyways.” So I said, “Okay, fine, I'll do it.” And he said says, “You need to make the Imams around the country aware of this.” So I went to the microphone, and I took his advice, and I said, “Hey, my suggestion is to consider transgenderism for the next year seminar, and I have a feeling you're going to say, ‘No’, but let me explain why.” And I got like a good two minutes or three minutes to kind of explain why. I said I'm going to take my time, everyone was relaxed, it was like later in the day, near the end of the conference, I was like, “Hey, we've discussed all the issues, I have the microphone for a little while, no one is stopping me from speaking, let me give my little two- or three-minute spiel on this!” So I went ahead, and I explained, I said, “Most people don't understand what transgenderism is”, I explained what it is, I explained the difference. And I clarified, I said it has nothing to do with sexual inclinations or sexual desires, like homosexuality has, and a lot of people think that it does. And I wanted to really clarify that.
And what was interesting was the comments in the audience, after I made my little speech, kept on going back to the same idea of “You know what, I don't care if the people are attracted to the same gender, and we don't care if their desires are making them inclined towards having homosexual relationships and all that.” And most of the comments from people in the audience, and these are Imams, these are scholars, they basically missed the entire point that I tried to summarize, I said that people don't understand the issue, and this is the confusion that they have, and then they just repeated the exact same confusion in their comments. So that was really eye opening for me, because, number one, I myself didn't really know that that well, this is about four or five years ago, maybe six years ago. I didn't know it that well until I actually started researching it myself, and we had a case of a brother who came to the masjid, and he was transgender, and he said, “I'm gonna dress like a woman and all that.” So I started doing more research on that, because I kind of had to. So I was intellectually interested in the issue, but I was forced to kind of go deeper, delve deeper, and look at some research and deal with this individual. And that got me realizing that, “Hey, even I didn't really understand what was going on!” But I had an open mind enough to try to want to understand.
And what I realized when I presented at this conference, even though I'm trying to explain, and I think many imams can empathize with me, because they go through situations and life experiences that they would have not been prepared for, we were not taught in a madrasa, in an Islamic University, in a seminary, how to deal with any of these issues. So I thought that, you know, they would be able to hear me, they'll be able to understand me, I put a lot of emotion into my little comment and everything like that. And it was mostly just kind of dismissed by the majority. They're like, “You know, we don't need to worry about these issues, or whatever it may be.” So I think that really shaped my understanding of how our Muslim community, including the scholars in our community, misunderstand the issue and really have a very shallow or superficial understanding of the issue. And, oftentimes, they don't want to try to get to the bottom of the issue. I think the reason is because it's very similar to same-sex attraction; they think that if you try to have a more nuanced understanding of this difference between same-sex attraction and homosexuality, between gender dysphoria and cross dressing/transvestitism, then somehow you are watering down the Islamic prescription on homosexuality being forbidden and cross dressing being forbidden. So I think that they have this misunderstanding, and that's why they're afraid. They're like, “Well, if we have any nuanced stance, what we're doing is we're watering down the religion.” And we need to get past that, because we're not watering down the religion. We're actually having a deeper understanding of the rationality, the wisdom behind the prohibitions in Islam, and there's confusion on that, and that needs to be brought to light.
Waheed 10:00
So the second theme that we're going to be talking about is the concept of gender roles. And the first question that I want to ask you is, a lot of us, you know, when we talk about gender roles, there's a lot of confusion when it comes to that. When we talk about gender roles from an Islamic perspective versus a contemporary perspective, and a lot of us have discovered that what the West perceives as gender roles has been something that is inherited from, you know, the Victorian era, and it was passed down from one generation to another. And it seems to be more rigid compared to the Islamic definition of gender roles. I mean, of course, there is a bifurcation of male and female, masculinity and femininity, this dichotomy is outlined in the Qur’an and the Sunnah. Men have a way of prayer, women have a different way of prayer, and the dress code is different. But when it comes to gender roles, there is a فسحة, an area of flexibility. First of all, is this a true statement when we say that Islam has given us more flexibility when it comes to gender roles, provided that there are red lines that we are not allowed to cross? And by the same token, to what extent are we allowed to say that gender roles are culturally pre-determined, as opposed to being biologically inclined, if that makes sense?
Sh. Mustafa 11:22
Yeah. So yeah, I mean, I definitely agree with the first statement, that there is a lot more flexibility in Islam than the typical or stereotypical Western conception of what is masculine and what is feminine – it’s quite narrow, oftentimes, depending on which social circle you kind of hang out with. So if you're watching James Bond films or Arnold Schwarzenegger films, like that's considered to be something that's masculine. And the idea of like Barbie dolls, and you know, what Barbie is supposed to represent is like the idea of something that's feminine. And what you find is that you don't find this kind of airtight division between the manifestation of masculinity and femininity in Islam. If you look at the Sahabah (Companions), you look at the Tabi’een (next-generation after companions), you just look at pious Muslims throughout history, actually, the ones who are considered to be role models for people, you'll find that they manifest masculinity and femininity in a much wider spectrum than you find in stereotypical Hollywood depictions of John Wayne or something like that. So those are our role models in Islam. So yeah, if you look at the depiction, in certain films and in certain aspects of culture, it definitely is a little bit too much.
So I’ll give you an example, it's like a personal life example. When I visited other countries, certain Muslim countries or even non-Muslim countries, you find men and men, like two men like holding hands, like crossing the street and walking around, like hand-in-hand, right? So like, that is very unmanly and the opposite of being masculine in America, it's something weird. When I saw that, I just thought it was strange, I thought it was very weird. Like, a guy holds another guy's two fingers or something like that, and they're like crossing the road. And then, you know, I didn't pay too much attention to him. Like that's kind of strange, but like, okay, fine. It's not a big deal. I thought it was a little bit weird, because that’s my American culture. This is the way I kind of grew up, until I had to actually live with it, where my co-imam, the religious director in our mosque, Sh. Muhammad Faqih, we were very good friends. So he used to sometimes grab me by the hand and start walking with me, and I just felt like very uncomfortable. You know, why is he doing this, this is weird! It just took me a while to just get over it. And then I realized that it's my conception, there's nothing… He's a very masculine man, not really a feminine person. So there's nothing unmasculine about this. It's just a different culture, it's a way of different way of manifesting it.
So, you know, that's when I personally even started to kind of look and say, “Oh, I see how some of these Western conceptions of what is masculine and what is feminine has impacted me, and I need to kind of undo that, I need to kind of zoom the camera out and realize that this is not a universalized notion of masculinity or universalized notion of femininity.” So, definitely, Islam is much wider than that. It doesn't try to restrict people to a particular culture. Like I said, even the companions differed in the way that they behave. Even the companion women, there were some women who were companions, Sahabiyyat, they would fight in battle. You know, one of them went and beheaded one of the guys who was coming in during the Battle of Khandaq (Battle of the Trench), she went out there dressed like a soldier and took one guy out completely. People would say, like, hey, that's not very feminine, but she was able to do that! And it's a good thing she did that, she actually ended up fighting off and protecting some of the men who were not able to fight, or some of the elders or whatever it may be who are not on the battlefield. There's nothing anti-feminine about that, and she was able to manifest something along those lines.
So, yeah, there is definitely this idea, especially stereotypical notions of masculinity and femininity are oftentimes too narrow. And I think what happens is, people look at that, and they assume and say, “Well wait a minute, so Islam says that there are gender roles, that gender roles must be along that spectrum, along that divide… The Victorian era or just Western culture, in general, has defined these norms to be”, and they'll automatically equate the two. And that's conflating two things which are not, it's an incorrect conception of what Islam teaches.
As for your second question, is it grounded biologically? Yes, it has to be, gender roles have to have some grounding in biological sex. Because if they didn't, then Allah wouldn't have these different rules and guidelines, and different ways of addressing. So the Qur’an and the Sunnah oftentimes address يا أيها الذين آمنوا – “Oh you who believe”, an address to men and women both. And then sometimes it addresses men in particular, and sometimes it addresses women in particular. So you know, there is verses where it tells the men, you know, you are the protectors and maintainers and the ones who have to take care of women. So you have a certain responsibility that you have to engage in. For example, like financial responsibility, when a man and woman get married, there's a financial responsibility that the man has. So why is it that the man has a financial responsibility? Why isn't it flipped around? Was it arbitrarily chosen for like no reason whatsoever? No, there has to be some good wisdom behind it, right? And if we kind of reflect on it, we think about it, there's a social reason behind it, but the social reason has to be grounded in something that's universal of time and space, because the Shari’a is supposed to be applicable to all times and places. So the best grounding would be there's some type of biological grounding in the way that Allah created men. That's generally, for the most part, and obviously, there's going to be exceptions, but exceptions don't make the rule. But they're going to determine that men are somehow inclined towards doing something in their life, in society, and playing a certain role, where they're supposed to be financially responsible for taking care of the family, rather than vice versa.
And it's not something that's just simply outdated, like savage societies, hunter-gatherer civilizations, that men used to go hunting and the women would stay and take care of the home. When Islam came and when the Qur’an was revealed, they had already gone beyond hunter-gatherer society. So people who make the primitive argument and say “We've outgrown those things”, I don't think we had outgrown those things. There were metropolises that existed in the ancient world, in ancient Arabia, when the Qur’an came down. Now has our culture shifted that to some extent? Definitely, you know, with the advent of technology and people being able to work remotely, and all sorts of, you know, being a soldier on the front lines could potentially mean flying the artificial intelligence of some fighter jet or something like that. Yes, obviously, certain things have shifted, but does it completely remove the concept of gender roles being biologically determined and still having some relevancy to that? I don't think it's been outdated.
Waheed 19:21
It makes perfect sense. And so, in other words, if we want to kind of summarize this notion that there is a sanctity to the male and the female, and Islam comes to highlight the beauty that each gender offers. You know, we talked in the podcast about the Jalal and the Jamal aspects, that Allah has His Jalal and His Jamal qualities, and as humans we manifest some of those qualities; the Jalal more in males and the Jamal more in females. And Islam offers us some guidelines when it comes to, as you said, financial responsibilities, the different responsibilities that come when we deal with families, etc., or between men and women. But there is a huge flexibility as far as what men and women can do. So that is not very rigid compared to the Western understanding. There is no problem if a man does not like to play sports, or he wants to pursue arts, for example. Or a woman wants to pursue sports, let's say, or wants to work and be in charge of a business, and the man would like to stay at home and take care of the kids or vice versa, as long as everything is agreed upon. We see that this is not what people would expect from Islam, where they have a preconceived notion that Islam is very rigid when it comes to the definition of different gender roles, right?
Sh. Mustafa 20:46
Absolutely. Yeah.
Waheed 20:47
We have a question that's coming from a sister, and it's also pertaining to the gender roles, and she says, “In many cases, the gender roles are location-specific and culture-specific. So a female who experiences gender dysphoria or even same-sex attractions might act more masculine, and it would be viewed as normal in another culture. Some of them act more masculine without even trying to be that way, yet this would be considered really masculine elsewhere and considered haram, because it's seen as imitating the opposite gender. So how do we respect and adhere to gender roles when they are, to a particular degree, a “social construct” that differs by location? So is it allowed to be more masculine for a female if that's what comes naturally? What are the limits, and who decides on that?”
Sh. Mustafa 21:33
Yeah, that's a good question. It's a complex question as well. There's two aspects that people should always consider. One of them is niyyah, which is the intention of the person. So I think what she's asking is that, if this comes naturally, and the person is not trying to intentionally imitate the opposite gender, but this is something that they naturally feel this way, or they talk that way, or they walk that way, or whatever it may be, that's one consideration. But again, it's not the only consideration. The second consideration is the ‘urf, or the culture, or the society in which you live in, just the norms in which your society happens to be. And Islam takes culture into consideration. When you get into the Islamic scholarly discourse, in Shari’a, in jurisprudence, you find ‘Usuul al-Fiqh, it’s a science that tries to figure out what exactly Allah and His Messenger intended by this verse or by this hadith, or whatever it is. ‘Urf or custom or culture is taken into consideration as a factor to determine how you're supposed to manifest this rule, or how you’re supposed to behave or whatever it may be. Now, it's not the “be all and end all”, but it's taken into consideration.
So, given that explanation and introduction there, it's not just the niyyah that should be taken into consideration, it is the culture as well. So, for example, let's say there's a culture where there's a certain way that men generally are expected to behave and women are expected to behave, let's just say, in the way in which they're going to have their hand movements, or the way that they're going to sit, for example. having one one leg over the other leg, in a certain culture, is viewed to be like a feminine way of sitting, and then the male sits in a different way. And you say, “Well, you know what, I’m naturally inclined towards the other one, because it's just a little bit more comfortable for me.” But if you live in a culture where the culture is already very clearly defined, and you're like, “But I’m naturally inclined towards that way”, if the inclination is like a minor discomfort for you, I think you should make the adjustment and say, “Okay, I'm going to take my culture into serious consideration, because I don't want to be trying to challenge the culture, just because I feel a little bit more comfortable that way.” Whereas if you have an injury, like, for example, “I have a martial arts injury, where it's much more comfortable for me to put one leg over the other, even if it’s, in some setting, considered to be like a feminine thing to do or something like that. I'm doing this because it's actually painful for me to sit in a different way”, then that's very different than saying that this comes naturally to me.
So, I think people should try to adjust to their culture without sitting there and questioning and saying, “Well, this culture is immoral. This culture has been defined that way.” You don't need to challenge the culture per se if it's not making a huge difference. So we should try to balance between understanding that if our niyyah is not to be going against our culture, and we're trying to accommodate the culture to an extent possible, we need to find the balance between the two, there's a balance between niyyah and ‘urf, between your intention (this just comes naturally to you) to trying to accommodate your own culture where you live, right?
So, let's take another example, I was just asked this by my friends like two weeks ago. So they said, “You know, what about when it comes to dress?” Dress is a good example of like, well, what if it comes naturally to you that you're a man, and you just feel more comfortable wearing high heels, for example, and in your society and in your culture, high heels is something that men don't wear high heels, this is something that women do, it's a women thing, it's a feminine thing. And you're like, “Well, I'm going to challenge that culture, I want to redefine it”, because it's possible that, in another culture, men are wearing high heels and women are not. It's very possible that there's other cultures like that. So the question then becomes, when do you challenge the culture? Or when do you wait until the culture shifts? Because you have people who are trendsetters, and they purposely try to challenge the culture to change it and to change fashion to be into something else.
So, basically, you shouldn't be like that rogue individual rebels and say, “I'm going to challenge the culture, I'm going to try to make this adjustment, saying that this culture is unjust and needs to be modified somehow.” Because culture changes naturally over time through so many different ways. And when the culture changes itself, then it's okay to go ahead and manifest that change. And the second thing they say, “Well, how can individuals influence culture?” So the only way that an individual can influence culture is if they can go ahead and pin their attempt to change that culture to something where they're bringing it from another culture where it's already normalized. So the example would be, for example, let's say in Africa (and this a theoretical example), let's say it's normal for someone to wear high heels, and you say, “Well, you know what, my relatives going back seven generations come from that country. And this is the type of dress that they used to wear, and I'm trying to bring back my original culture. Look, from these books and from this research that I've done, this is what my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather used to wear. So I'm trying to reconnect with my own culture.” Now you have a reason to bring that, your reason is not you're just trying to challenge the dominant culture that exists right now, and you're individually trying to redefine it. But you actually have a grounding, it's not based on your own desires, but it's based upon your intent to reconnect with your ancestors. Now your niyyah has changed, right? Your niyyah has manifested in a way where it's not just your personal desire to kind of imitate the opposite gender or just to change the culture, because you think it should be that way. I know it's a little bit philosophical, but I think these are questions that people do ask, and that's kind of like my response to it.
Waheed 28:34
But then that clashes with the ‘urf, because even if my niyyah was to reconnect with my great-great-grandfather's culture, but at the same time, it kind of clashes with the ‘urf or the culture that I'm living in. So how do you reconcile with that?
Sh. Mustafa 28:49
Yeah, so the difference is, you're actually bringing another ‘urf which normalizes this behavior, and you're trying to bring in that ‘urf into your own ‘urf that you live in, because you have multiple identities. So if you're saying that in Africa, in Nigeria, they wear very colorful clothing, the thobes that men wear are rainbow-colored, colors all over the place. And you're like, “Well, if I go into the wrong country or the wrong society, they'd be like, ‘What? Are you wearing all these weird rainbow colors, or you're wearing pink or something like that? That's kind of weird.” But you say, “Well, wait a minute. In Nigeria, it's not weird, and that's where my ancestors come from.” So I'm within my rights to try to bring that culture into this culture, because I'm not like an independent rebel just going against my own culture, right? I have a dual identity now. So I have a very good reason to import parts of that ‘urf into this ‘urf. And that's what I'm trying to do. I'm not trying to do it because I'm just like, “I don't care what people do in my own society, I'm going to go against all of them and redefine the culture by wearing rainbow colors” or something like that.
So, I think there's a difference between the niyyah and how you're bringing one ‘urf and trying to incorporate it into another ‘urf, rather than just you independently saying, “Well my niyyah is not to be feminine, my niyyah is to just say that this culture, the way it's been defined, I'm just going to go against it, I'm just going to start wearing pink thobes in Saudi Arabia, because these white thobes in Saudi Arabia just doesn't work for me. We need more colors!” So that's the wrong way of going about it. There is a better way of going about it by saying, “Hey, look, this works in Malaysia, or this works in Nigeria, and this is how people dress. And I'm trying to bring some of those styles in.” So it's kind of like a gradual modification of a particular culture, which may be very strict, like in Saudi Arabia, it's like white thobes for men and black hijabs and ‘abayas for women. People are like, “Well, we need some more color in this society!” Okay, there's ways to bring more color without necessarily just directly challenging the culture, but trying to supplement that culture with other cultures.
Waheed 31:01
Right. So if I have an ancestor from Scotland, does that give me the excuse to actually wear a kilt and say that I want to kind of reconnect with that culture?
Sh. Mustafa 31:10
Yes. So, you know, it's funny that you mention that, because I actually have been asked this twice recently. I was asked for a fatwa on this specifically. So, it really comes back down to niyyah and culture again. So, is your niyyah just to find something that kind of seems like a skirt because you actually want to wear a skirt which is feminine in your own culture? Or is it really a desire to reconnect with your own culture, or to bring this certain culture of a kilt, or whatever it may be, that may look effeminate in your culture, but not in the Scottish culture? So if your niyyah is good, and you're really trying to bring that ‘urf into some kind of a fashion line that you're launching, or something like that, and you're somehow reconnecting it to a culture where it is masculine, it's not effeminate, then it's perfectly fine. I think it would be fine if it's done correctly within the right way. There's no problem with that.
Waheed 32:16
OK. Beautifully said, jazak Allah khair . So going back to the question of the sister, if her niyyah is not to act masculine as in to embody male characteristics on purpose, but this is her own traits. And then she sees that in her own culture, “I should kind of dial that down a notch”, then it would be advisable for her to kind of find her own place, so to speak? And the same goes for let's say a man who has some feminine traits, and he has the capability to kind of adjust his behavior in line with his culture, that would be more advisable as long as their intention is, “I'm not trying to imitate the opposite gender, but I'm gonna try to acclimatize or adjust to my culture within my God-given capacity.” Would that be the answer in this case?
Sh. Mustafa 33:06
Yes, yes. It's not 100% to conform to everything, but try your best to conform to the extent possible and kind of find a balance between, “Okay, my culture is a little bit strict on this, but also I do need to take my culture into consideration.” So I think a middle path between the two is the right way to go.
Waheed 33:27
Okay, I want to be the devil's advocate at the moment, I can tell you “Well, Islam in a way is actually repressing people if you're telling them you need to conform, and you need to kind of repress those ‘urges’”. How do you respond to that? Because we hear this right and left. “Don't express your true self or needs, and just conform to the culture that you're staying at. This is what Islam says.” How would you respond to this?
Sh. Mustafa 33:53
Yes, I mean, the response to that is, the reason why people want to not conform is that there are natural desires within us. So this idea of “I find comfort in something” also overlaps with shahawat, i.e. your desires, your inclinations, which can be good and can be bad, right? Sometimes they're bad, and sometimes they're beneficial, like you're hungry, you need to eat some food, right? But you're hungry for more, and you eat too much food, and now it harms you. So, sometimes the inclinations that you have can lead to good results, and sometimes they can lead to harmful results. So, there's a gray area in between. The conception that Islam brings is, you don't follow everything that you feel like doing, just because you feel like doing it. That's not a way you live your life. Rather, you should take into consideration that yes, you're an individual, yes, you have the right to feel a certain way. Yes, to an extent, you have the right to act and behave a certain way. But you also live in a society, and for the good of society, for the good of your community, there should be some mutual understanding with everyone else.
So, Islam neither looks at people as purely individuals or looks at society as a whole and says, “We only care what's good for society, and we don't care what the individual thinks”, it’s kind of a balance between the two, it's neither extreme. So I think people who fall into this idea that like, “You know what, I'm gonna do whatever I feel like, Islam tells me that I'm an individual and Allah is going to judge me based on me, not what other people have to say. On the Day of Judgment, my family is going to run away from me, and I'm only going to care about myself.” But the difference is, you care about yourself, in the sense that you're doing something that's pleasing to Allah or avoiding something that’s displeasing to Allah. It's not about your own personal desires of like, “I like this color versus this type of food versus the way I eat”, you know. There's certain things that society tries to regulate to have some level of conformity in society. So, there’s a difference between saying, “I'm going to eat pizza with a knife and fork rather than with my hand, and I don't care what other people think”, versus “I'm going to walk into Pizza Hut dressed in my underwear, because technically I can, and no one should stop me from that.” There's a difference, there's certain rules in society that societies and communities decide to go ahead for their understanding of what is for the betterment and for the greater good. So that should not be given up, that should be taken into consideration, and we don't just completely go the opposite.
And what's going to happen is, and we're talking about this particular subject, if you focus too much on your psychological desires, it could get to the point where, what if you want to imitate the opposite gender, right? You're like, “I don't care what society says!” The solution is to try to find comfort in the way that Allah has created you, right? If you get to a point of like, “I'm not comfortable in my own skin”, or “I'm not comfortable with the race that I have”, or whatever it is. So there's a natural desire that says, “You know what, I want to imitate someone else that I'm not actually, so I'm going to go out and get a surgery that makes my skin white or something like that.” When you keep following your desires, and you don't care what anyone else says about you, it's actually easier to fall into or go down the path where your intention does begin to change. So that's why I would advise and caution people from falling into that extreme.
Waheed 37:46
Jazak Allah khair. Before we go into some transgender and non-binary questions, I would like to ask you this, how do we respond to the argument nowadays that Islam is seen as something that is backwards or restricting through the male and female dichotomy, such that there is no place for agender, non-binary or gender-fluid individuals, or those who identify as transgender?
Sh. Mustafa 38:11
I mean, when you say that Islam is backwards, or restrictive, or whatever it is, that's always in relation to something else, right? Because culture has all of a sudden changed in the last 20 years, or in the last 30 years, it really doesn't matter what people view Islam as. So Muslims should not worry about people saying Islam is backwards, because when they say it, when they're talking about, let's say, the idea of having relationships only through the institution of marriage. I mean, the overwhelming majority of relationships in Western society are not through the institution of marriage. So, from that sense, Islam is quite backwards, by backwards meaning it's the opposite of what is prevalent in society. Just because Islam is different, because society is completely changed to a different moral framework, does it mean that there's something wrong with Islam? That's what the word “backwards” genuinely means.
If I'm speaking to a Muslim, I would say “You should be proud, and you should be happy that Islam is one of the dominant religions today that's actually keeping this moral framework alive, keeping family values actually intact, that actually values the institution of marriage and relationships through marriage”, which basically all it means is that you have a committed relationship, that's what marriage really is. I think a lot of people don't understand what the difference between a relationship outside of marriage and inside marriages is. In the Christian conception or the Hindu conception, you know, divorce is technically not allowed till death do us part. That's not the Islamic conception. So, you know, I think we should be proud as Muslims that we are different, right? Forget the words “backwards” and “outdated” and all of that stuff. The reality is, people are actually saying that society has changed and views things in a very different way, and Islam is very radically different from that. Alhamdulillah! That just means that we're sticking to something that is right, that is from Allah, and other people are changing down a path of destruction or moral anarchy, which is going to harm their society. We should be proud that we've kept this going.
Same thing applies to this gender divide, saying that, “You know what, there's no room for agender and people who don't identify within the male-female binary or spectrum” or whatever it is, this idea itself of removing the conception of gender, which is becoming now 32 genders, 64 genders, whatever the number’s at, this idea is recent, it's new, and just because it's becoming widely accepted doesn't mean it's the right course for humankind to go down. So just because Islam is different, we should be happy that we're different. It doesn't mean we're backwards, it doesn't mean we're outdated. It just means that we're radically different. And we should be happy and content that we're different, because what we're saying in Islam, as Muslims, is actually something that is good for humanity. So, people are going down a wrong path, and they're doing something incorrect, and they're like, “Oh, you're backwards! You need to catch up to us!” Actually, Alhamdulillah, we need to stay exactly where we are, because you're going down the wrong path. If someone's hiking on a trail, and someone's running down the wrong path, and you're like, “Wait a minute, we're supposed to go this way!” They're like, “No, I'm going this way. You're so behind, you better catch up to us!” Well, actually, you're on the wrong path! So, even though you think we're behind, we're actually going down the right path, we shouldn't be afraid of that.
Waheed 41:58
Alhamdulillah, barak Allah feek!
42:06
So, let's move to the next topic which is about imitating the opposite gender. And we know that there's a hadith from the Prophet (PBUH) who said that “Allah curses the one who imitates the opposite gender.” And in one episode with Br. Mobeen, we touched upon this and we talked about it in relation to intersex individuals/mukhannath. So it depends on whether they want to do it on purpose versus if it's part of their inherent predisposition and to what extent that manifests. But the question is, why the curse of Allah to begin with? That's a common question that people ask, like why would Allah curse someone who wants to imitate the opposite gender, even if that's on purpose? And the second question is, what if the person cannot really control this? We really want to hear this answer from you, inshaAllah.
Sh. Mustafa 42:57
Sure. So the first one is, why does Allah curse something like this? The Prophet (PBUH), the reason why he says that Allah curses these people, it’s the same reason when it comes to people who try to change something that's from the creation of Allah. So people who, for example, get permanent tattoos on their body, right? They're altering a part of their body that is different from the way that Allah created it. So the deliberate imitation falls into a similar category that, it's like, you are not happy with the way that Allah made you and you want to be something different. You want to change it to something else. And that's why there's the curse, the curse basically means that this is a grave sin. This is something that you should definitely not be doing. You need to avoid it. And rejecting the way that Allah made you, being discontent with it and wanting to be something different, it's like sitting there just being not pleased, like “Allah, why did You have to do this to me? I didn't want to be like this. I wanted to be of a different ethnicity”, or “I wanted to be of a different gender”, “I wanted to be taller, why do You have to make me so short?”
So it comes into that category of basically criticizing Allah and not being pleased with what Allah has given you. Not looking at the blessings, number one, that Allah has given you. It doesn't matter if you're short or you're tall, there's a blessing to each one, there’s pros and cons for each one. So, sitting there and focusing on the cons, and you’re like, “You know, I wish I would have been something different.” So that's why I think it's so strong, it's strong because it's connected with criticizing Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala. What was your second question again, can you just repeat that?
Waheed 44:55
Which is if someone cannot control this, so we said that a person does it on purpose and that’s blameworthy. But if the person cannot really control these mannerisms or imitation of the opposite gender?
Sh. Mustafa 45:06
Right. So that's where it comes to, that, really, whenever we read this hadith, or any hadith about imitation, I think we just need to repeat it over and over again, we should add the word “deliberate” imitation, okay? So, oftentimes we're like, “Don't imitate the opposite gender!” We should really put the tafseer (explanation) in there in our own minds, “Do not deliberately or intentionally imitate the opposite gender.” So, what ends up happening is that it solves the problem; the moment we add this little parenthetical statement, this word “deliberate” or the word “intentional”, it solves the problem. Because if you don't deliberately imitate the opposite gender, then that means you're unintentionally doing it, you're not in the condemned category, because you're not doing it deliberately.
So if it's something that comes naturally to you, the question now is, we addressed the idea of: Should you try to make some adjustment due to your culture, the society in which you live and all that? Yeah, you should try to make some adjustments. But do you fall in that category if you're just doing it naturally, if it comes naturally to you? The answer is no, you don't fall in that category.
Waheed 46:15
Okay. Beautifully said. The question is, what does imitation actually involve? Because people also get this confused. So is it just limited to dress or mannerisms, or does it involve other things?
Sh. Mustafa 46:26
So, it involves both dress and mannerisms. So let's take some examples. So dress and cross-dressing is a perfect example. In most societies, or perhaps in all societies, there is a difference between male and female dress. And there's usually some type of unisex clothing, as well, which is culturally defined. All of this is culturally defined, but there is some distinction between the way men dress and the way women dress, and there are certain types of clothing styles which are outside of maybe little subcultures, or, you know, revolutionary fashion brands which are trying to just challenge everything, like Dolce and Gabbana, or Gucci, or something like that. Outside of like these models on the runway, which are like trying to purposely redefine the way people dress, there's generally a men's department and a women's department of clothing, and there are different types of clothing and different styles, with some overlap between the two.
So, cross dressing would be intentionally deliberately trying to dress in the opposite gender, right? So, I think, for example, in our society, at least until now, I would still say that wearing the typical red high heels is something that is considered to be feminine, right? Generally wearing the suit and tie the way that a male wears it is generally considered to be masculine. So someone says, “You know what, I don't care, if that suit is in the men's section, I don't care, I’m gonna go in the men's section, I'm gonna buy that and I'm gonna go ahead and wear that, and I don't care if people think that, and almost everyone's gonna think that, hey, this is like a masculine type of suit. I know there's women's suits and all that stuff, but this is a masculine suit, I don’t care, I’m gonna wear it, because I’m comfortable, or because I want to!” That would be an example of something that's condemned, because you're deliberately trying to imitate that fashion, and your justification is, “Well, because I want to, because I desire to.” That's the problem.
Another example would be like changing your name. So, you know, there are masculine names and there are feminine names. There are male names and female names. John, for example, John Doe and Jane Doe, for example. There’s John and there’s Jane. If someone's like, “You know what, well, I'm John, but I want to change my name to Jane” or “I want to name my biological male child ‘Jane’, because I'm just going against the culture” or whatever it is, that's an example of deliberate imitation of trying to do the opposite, because these things are quite clearly defined within your society. Same thing when it comes to makeup. Makeup is pretty clear. Yes, there are men in Hollywood who put on makeup before they go on the big screen, and they do acting, and news reporters and stuff put on a little bit makeup and powder, whatever they put on. But when we're talking about certain types of makeup, like lipstick, for example, the lipstick in American and Western society is considered to be something that is feminine. Eyeliner, for now, is considered something that's feminine. You know, I had a friend of mine, just two weeks ago, we met for lunch, and you know, he's a practicing Muslim, he's not effeminate in any way. But he wore something that looked like eyeliner. And I'm like, “What are you wearing? Are you wearing eyeliner?” He's like “No, I'm wearing كحل/kuhl (antimony).” This is something that, for those of you who research it, the Sahabah (Companions) used to wear antimony, it’s not eyeliner, it's different, it’s antimony, but it's kind of like eyeliner. And he's like, “It's very different from eyeliner in its composition, a little bit different from the way that it looks.” But, in an American society, people will look at you and be like, “Are you wearing eyeliner?” And I used to wear this myself, you know, when I was younger.
When you have a foundation for that and you have a basis, you’re like, “Well, this is in Islamic culture, the Companions used to wear this regularly”, then there's no problem with me trying to import that culture into my culture and saying, “You know what, guys, sorry, this is not eyeliner, it may look like it to you, but it's actually not. Let me explain to you the difference.” So that's very different than someone coming along and saying, “Well, if you're gonna wear the antimony, I'm gonna wear eyeliner!” It's not, because I have a basis for this, you don't have a basis for that. So I guess we haven't really gotten to mannerisms, but in terms of dress, clothing, name, all of that is going to be there. When it comes to mannerisms, also, you know, sometimes mannerisms are a lot more flexible in terms of what's considered to be effeminate and what's considered to be masculine. So, I think there's probably a lot more leniency when it comes to mannerisms than it would be when it comes to like clothing, name or makeup, or something like that.
Waheed 51:43
And something that comes to mind also is nail polish. Nowadays, it's very fashionable for men to wear nail polish, right? But that is considered to be feminine. So that's kind of imitating the opposite gender, right?
Sh. Mustafa 51:54
Right. Right. So that's something where, if a culture changes enough – actually I was being asked by the same guy this question. So if the culture changes enough already, where now it's already become a unisex thing, then it wouldn't be a problem anymore. But should Muslims be part of that revolutionary cultural movement, where it may become normalized, and it may not become normalized? They should not. So if it already changes and starts to become part of that culture, then it would be fine for them to wear it. Or if they have another culture where, let's say, some random place in like, I don't know, Indonesia, it happens to be the case, and they've been wearing that for, you know, millennia or whatever it may be, bringing that culture, not to imitate or to modify the culture, but trying to import that culture back into your own particular culture, that would be very different than, you know, jumping on the rebel bandwagon and saying, “We're trying to go against this, and we want to redefine it!”
Waheed 52:59
Perfect. And talking about imitation of the opposite gender, this is a common concern, and I've actually spoken with individuals who struggle with gender dysphoria, and the way they described it is, “I'm not really imitating the opposite gender, I feel on the inside that I belong to the opposite gender”, like if we have a biological female, she tells me that “I am a man on the inside, I am not trying to imitate, I am a man/male on the inside. And so I am acting like what I feel on the inside. I'm not trying to be something that I'm not. I'm actually this.” So what we perceive as imitation is not imitation to this person, but rather it's a manifestation of what they perceive to be their “truth.” How do we navigate this territory? Because it becomes a very tricky.
Sh. Mustafa 53:48
Yeah, it does. And that's where we have to have a balance between sympathy, or you can call it empathy, or whatever you want, a balance between sympathizing with someone who has gender dysphoria, which is still classified, according to the DSM-5, as a mental illness. Sympathizing with that person, understanding the difficulties that they're going through, that is something that I think the Muslim community really needs to be more open to. And sympathizing with them doesn't necessarily mean that we're going against reality, or we're going against the Shari’a, or we're going to make some modifications in Shari’a.
So what I would say to that person, on an individual level, is that we understand, we understand the challenge and difficulty of what you're going through and definitely sympathize with that. And we're not going to judge you for the feelings that you have, because these are not feelings that you may have chosen. We don't have any evidence to prove that somehow you made certain decisions, or even if certain things happened to you in the past, we can't sit there and say, “Well, you were actively choosing to do this every single time you have that feeling.” That's not the case. I don't think there's any evidence to prove that. And I think many Muslims need to understand that too. So, because they're not actively choosing that in the time, we can definitely sympathize with their feelings. But also, at the same time, that is not going to alter your choice to act in a certain way. There's a difference between your feelings and your actions, very similar to, you know, the whole SSA versus acting on your impulses with homosexuality. So that's what people need to understand, that for someone with gender dysphoria, we say that you have those feelings, we understand you have those feelings, we understand that your intention is not to deliberately imitate. At the same time, you may feel that you're mentally a different gender, but biologically, you are a certain sex - whether you might differentiate between sex and gender, that's a whole different issue - but this is what you are biologically. This is the way Allah has created you. And you should try to find comfort in the way that Allah has created you.
And I think people who have gender dysphoria, they should have an outlet, they should have an avenue to be able to get help to work through their feelings of thinking that they're the opposite gender. And that's where the real dilemma comes. The dilemma is, rather, the community of psychologists, pretty much, especially in the West, they would dominate the discourse, rather than helping people with gender dysphoria come to terms with their feelings and kind of explain to them that this is the reality, they try to do the opposite and say, “Well, you know what, however you feel, we're going to support you in your feelings, we're going to help your actions be in line with your feelings.” And that is the exact opposite of what they do for other mental illnesses or any other challenges that people have, right?
So if somebody has, for example, an alcohol addiction, and they say “I feel inclined to just drink and it makes me feel good”, are psychologists like “Well, because you feel that way, we're going to help you to drink more, because that's going to make you feel good”? They don't do that. When it comes to zina (fornication/adultery), for example, if someone comes to us and says like “You know, I have an inclination to sleep with multiple partners”, would we say, “Well, you know what, if that's your feeling and that's how you identify yourself, and that's how you feel, we're going to help you follow your feelings”? No, you don't do that. You don't engage in that. Same thing when it comes to suicide, for example, and this is kind of in the whole euthanasia argument. If someone has an inclination towards suicide, and they have a feeling and say, “You know, I don't want to live, it's painful.” It's like gender dysphoria, I'm sure it's extremely painful for the person on the inside what they're going through. So the argument of euthanasia comes in, if someone says like, “I'm tired of life, my dying is better than my living, help me commit suicide.” Many people are very pro-euthanasia on very flimsy grounds and say, “Well, if the person doesn't want to live anymore, you know, go to Dr. Kevorkian” or whoever the modern version of that is now, there's so many of them now, you don't even need to call it one anymore, “Go do that!” And Islam says no. Islam says and the Prophet (PBUH) taught that, yes, you're going through a lot of pain, but you should not ask Allah of take your life. You should ask Allah and make du’aa, “O Allah, if living is better for me, then let me live, and if dying is better for me, then take my life.” But it is Allah who is going to take your life, you're not taking your own life.
I think this is the problem, there's really not real support for people with gender dysphoria to lean in the right direction, they're actually pushing them down the wrong path. And that makes it even more difficult. That's where the Muslim community [should be] understanding this issue, when they understand this issue, they'll be able to provide support to people with gender dysphoria and give them the right solution, rather than the wrong solution that's being pushed down their throat and pushed down everyone's throat today.
Waheed 59:38
Amen, jazak Allah khair. And there are some “progressive Muslims” who try to appropriate trans ideas in Islamic terms and say something like, “A trans woman is a female soul that is stuck inside a male body.” So how do we deal with this? I think it's in line with what you said previously, but when they use such terminology, how can we respond to that?
Sh. Mustafa 59:59
I mean, the first thing is the verse of the Qur’an (قُلْ هَاتُوا بُرْهَانَكُمْ إِن كُنتُمْ صَادِقِينَ) – “Bring your proof if you are telling the truth” (Qur’an, 2:111). What evidence do you have for this? It sounds really nice, because it happens to align with the dominant paradigm that's being pushed down our throats, the LGBT agenda. Outside of that, what daleel and evidence do you have for any of this? They have nothing, they pretty much have nothing, right? Which is why they don't really tend to engage in much scholarly discourse at any deep level, maybe with a few exceptions. But their scholarly discourse is just trying to justify their own progressive agenda.
So, first, I don't think there's evidence for it. And number two, if they bring some evidence, whatever they say, we say, “Well, how do you reconcile that with all of the prescriptions in the Qur’an and Sunnah that talk about this male-female divide? Why does Allah speak to men differently and women differently? And why is there a difference in dress code? And why is there a difference in financial responsibility?” You have to harmonize all the teachings of Islam so that you're consistent throughout your conception of what Islam is. And I think the biggest problem with progressives is that they're inconsistent. They want to be Muslim, they want to say “Hey, we accept Islam”, but then “We kind of like accept Islam and modify it in certain places”, but then why not modify it all the way across the board? You don't really have much Islam left. So anyone who wants to try to have a holistic understanding of Islam needs to at least be consistent in their way of viewing what Islam is. And I think the inconsistency is the biggest problem for the progressive movement, especially when they try to tackle issues like this.
Waheed 1:02:00
And with this, we have come to the end of today's episode, I hope that you guys enjoyed it and learned from it, inshaAllah. And this episode is part one of our discussion with Sh. Mustafa Umar on Shar’i perspectives and fiqhi rulings surrounding gender nonconformity, gender dysphoria and transgenderism. In the next episode, inshaAllah, we will continue this discussion and talk more about the fiqh and the Shar’i perspectives regarding gender transitioning, as well as how to deal with particular contexts where we are supposed to declare our pronouns, for example, and how to deal with individuals who identify as non-binary, gender fluid and so on. Until then, stay safe and healthy. This has been Waheed Jensen in “A Way Beyond the Rainbow”, assalamu alaikom warahmatullahi ta’ala wabaraktuh.