Q: It has been reported that Your Eminence allows gender change; may we know more about the details of your opinion? What are the juristic...
Q: It has been reported that Your Eminence allows gender change; may we know more about the details of your opinion? What are the juristic justifications and foundations on which you based your judgment?A: There are many cases pertaining to this subject: One case, which has lately been common in western community, comprises a surgery in which the testes, penis and scrotum are totally removed. In addition, a cavity is made to look like a girl's vulva. Then administration of the hormone estrogen is prescribed, for the purpose of effecting somatic changes in order for the patient to look more closely in his physical appearance like the other sex. In such a case, man's anatomical formation is preserved, with the appearance of some feminine features like soft voice, prominence of breasts and hairless beard. Such a surgery makes no difference, for it doesn't enable the transsexual to have any sexual intercourse, as a woman, with other men, so it will be a male-male sexual relation; moreover, this surgery doesn't make him a female from the Shari'a point of view. It is just a fraudulent operation to justify the homosexuality, which is still rejected, and despised by the great majority of communities.
Disallowing such a surgery is quite logical, because this operation inflicts the body with damage-removing genital- in the absence of any benefit that outbalances the mentioned damage.
Some other common and known cases of changing one's sex like changing an epicene to a female. Such cases assume the possibility of changing a female to a male with all characteristics, such as having a penis, having the ability to have sex just like any other man, and acquiring masculine appearance, or the possibility of changing a male to a female by transplanting female gentile, where a transsexual will be just like any woman anatomically and medically, and where a transsexual has a normal vagina, through which sexual intercourse is performed and where the same feelings of the ordinary woman are aroused upon having sex with a man concerning the nature of lust and its secretion. Consequently, there will be no difference between the transsexual and any female except in casual attributes as when a woman has no uterus or she can't carry a baby since ordinary women may undergo such condition. Accordingly, the transsexual will turn to be an ordinary woman regarding the external features and the sexual characteristics.
If such surgeries were accomplished, the consequent outcome would be considered an ordinary woman having the same rights and duties. She should marry, give birth and inherit, for she would become a real woman.
As for the cause behind permitting this surgery, in the basis of legislation, if we don't have any evidence that necessitates prohibition and in the state of hesitation and suspicion whether something is permissible or not, it is deemed permissible in principle. It is worth mentioning that I am not the only one who adopts such a ruling, for both Imam Khoui in his book "Mounyat El Sail" (the wish of the one who asks) approved sex-change.
If some have deduced the impermissibility of sex-change through the Holy Aya {And most certainly I will bid them so that they shall alter Allah creation} (4:119) which tells about Satan and its tricks, considering it as an alteration of Allah's creation, we say: What is meant by Allah's creation here is not man, because "Allah's creation" is a general term including everything created by God, the most exalted. And if we adhere to the impermissibility of altering Allah's creation, as understood and construed by those religious scholars, then we will have to protect trees, plants, lands, mountains and rivers from change even though no one will comply to it, which is disapproved by rational people, knowing that, most jurists adhere to the permissibility of changing one's sex, in addition to man's beautification changes. Source
