Full Lecture Transcript (Cleaned)
Dysphoria, feelings, and Shari'ah — 0:00
the next question is a very difficult one and the brother has explicitly asked that he remain anonymous no names being mentioned here the brother writes that he has been self-diagnosed let's say with gender dysphoria since his childhood he says that even though he was born male that he never felt masculine and that he is being very clear that he does not want to do gender reassignment nor does he want to dress like the other gender and he does love allah and the religion of islam but he is worried because of two things number one because of the hadith of the prophet salallahu he said that there is on the uh that those men who act like women and those women who act like men and he is saying that he is a bit uh feminine by his appearance and by his manners and characteristics uh even though he does not uh try to do so and so he is worried that does this hadith apply to him and the second is that he has heard that it is haram for men and women to remain single to refrain from marriage so now he is worried that if he does not want to get married because he says he has no inclinations whatsoever for that deed with women he has zero desires and so he is now asking is it permissible for me to remain single and not get married this question is a very um sensitive one and reading this brother's email it really made me feel his faith and his struggle and i want to just reach out to you dear brother in islam that your your letter and your email and i'm summarizing obviously for the audience it was much longer than this your email really moved me and it made me genuinely uh feel your strength of faith that you explicitly said that i am struggling with these emotions even as i recognize you know islam has a different understanding and i'm not wanting to change or challenge the religion but i'm wanting to ask about these emotions that i have and so i really want to mention that i felt the sincerity in your email and i really felt that you are insha'allah strong believer i could sense that you are you are trying your best to be a good muslim and it really uh made me feel so happy uh to read your your email uh so i want to tell you point blank that never lose hope and do not feel guilty for things beyond your control never lose hope of allah's mercy allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala is the reformer which loves the creation and he has tested all of us in different ways and the reasons for that test or for our for our own good when we pass the test the rewards will be immense and the rewards are proportional to the struggles the rewards are proportional to the struggles and therefore it is very possible that in your struggle you will achieve a much higher position in the eyes of allah than the majority of mankind do not ever feel guilty for something beyond your control there's nothing wrong with you there's nothing wrong with the way that you desire or you feel and here's the key point of our faith it's so beautiful allah subhanahu wa ta'ala does not criminalize feelings and emotions there is nothing that is sinful in a desire it's beyond your control but what the sharia does come is that it tells us certain desires should not be acted upon certain desires should be controlled and other desires may be acted upon who gets to decide see here's another key difference and i know i'm going to a bit of a tangent here but you see we're living at a time and a place where there is another dominant ideology i mean you can call it humanism you can call it liberalism and of course humanism and liberalism they overlap there's an element of it together secularism these are all various ideologies humanism really it posits human beings as the center of the universe and therefore everything is about me myself and i everything is about what i want what are my desires what are my passions if i want to do something i should be able to do it that's the basic philosophy of humanism and the modern western cultures that we live in are basically manifestations of this philosophy where the dominant methodology of deriving ethics and of deriving what is right and wrong really goes down to your own desires and allah says in the quran if truth were contingent upon the desires of people then all that is in the heaven earth would become corrupt desires do not dictate ultimate truths i desire things some of them are good for me some of them are bad for me every human being desires things and some of those desires are permissible and and some of them are permissible with conditions and some are completely impermissible who gets to decide it's a broader topic here but obviously as people of faith we believe our religion decides what is right and what is wrong what is good and what is evil and if you believe alhamdulillah the truth of islam which alhamdulillah our questioner does but if you believe in the truth of islam then of the fundamentals of our religion without a shadow of a doubt it is explicit in in the whole philosophy of the sharia is that there are two default genders and these two genders are not the same wales the man is not like the woman the woman is not like the man and allah azzawajal created us from a man and a woman and allah created everything in pairs and allah created for each of us the spouse uh the the gender that is the others that he created from us for us spouses so that we can find tranquility there is a wisdom in the separate in the distinction of the two genders the two genders are not the same obviously we are now coming to a time frame for the first time in human history brothers and sisters this is the something unprecedented in any culture any society any era any civilization where the claim is being made that genders themselves are imaginary constructs that there is nothing different about the two genders and of course you know uh that is utterly nonsensical it goes against every single facet of biology of of anatomy uh of everything that makes a man and a woman our chromosomes are different everything about us is is is different in terms of our looks our functionality everything is different the claim that there's no such thing as genders this is a claim that is not based on realities it is simply words that come out of uh somebody's mouth in our times now uh the claim also that gender roles are uh social constructs well gender roles are different than genders gender roles perhaps some elements of it are social constructs at the same time in every single society from the beginning of time there have been gender roles now those gender roles are society specific no no doubt about that but no society has taken genders to be absolutely equivalent in every single responsibility that is handed down to uh people so that's a more broader topic uh but inshallah one day we might get there the point that your question is very specific and uh we'll answer your question obviously because it is a much more uh much more broad topic here it this topic by the way is deserving a much longer treatment and inshallah one day i do plan to address this in a full lecture or maybe bits and pieces in various lectures to answer your question there are of course many different types of you know individuals we are not in this question dealing with a category that is called intersex and intersex individuals are individuals that are born with genders that are ambiguous or both genders or the doctors are basically having to do a surgery and that's a small percentage of mankind less than one percent they say is intersex we're not talking about those that are born at you know from birth they have uh permutations of the chromosomes that are not the typical xx and xy that's a separate category your question is not related to that that category we will answer perhaps in another lecture or question it is not the topic of your question what you're asking about comes under a type of uh transgender issue now of course the term transgender itself is an umbrella term it also embodies or incorporates many different categories you know you have um genders that are biologically born in one male or female and they want to act or imitate uh the other or they want to dress like the other this is known as drag let's say the drag dressing this takes place the cross-dressing that takes place you have those that are born in one gender and they want to change over to the other gender and they do so in our times by surgery or by hormones so they undertake actual changes where the man will take hormones to you know get you know the natural breasts if you like and also maybe even do the surgery to get rid of the male organ and implant a female organ in its place or the female might get to implant you know for the male organ and this is now um possible from a medical perspective so you have those that are undertaking this and then you have those that um they don't necessarily want to do the surgery operation but they want to take on the uh the appearance and the looks of of the other and by the way there are also those that have undertaken the surgery and then rediscovered islam or converted to islam and i've had cases myself where a person embraced islam and they were born of one biological gender they they did the surgeries they became the other gender and then they embraced islam and the fatwa was asked for me whether this person should be treated in terms of in terms of inheritance and in terms of where they they should pray whether they should be treated as as the birth gender or as the post-surgery gender so there are many questions insha'allah bit by bit you know over the course of the next few weeks or months we'll answer them bit by bit your question was very specific you are born biologically male you have no biological issue in terms of your chromosomes everything is normal you are fully functional male however you are saying that you are inclined to want to be a female and you feel like acting or dressing like one but you say that you understand that it is not something that should be done so you have curbed this emotion and you are absolutely correct dear brother that you uh that the sharia does not allow uh it does not encourage in fact there is an authentic hadith of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam that uh the curse uh is on lan the land is on the muhamnithin and the mutara jilat that the mohan are those uh amongst the men who imitate women who are acting like women dressing like women and the mother are those women who act like men or who dress like men or who try to appear like men so this is your specific question we're not going to go to the other questions right now and you are worried that you are saying some of the characteristics you have have been deemed to be effeminate and you're worried does this apply to you or not and i say to you not at all anything that is not in your control allah azzawajal has lifted the pen that there are certain people that they naturally have a certain pitch or a certain appearance or a certain way of walking that they are not trying to do it just happens that they are doing that or they have a high-pitched voice or they have very less facial hair or whatever it might be obviously there is no sin in that whatsoever imam and now he mentions when he mentions this hadith in sahih muslim muslim he then comments on this hadith he said there are two types or there are two categories of muhannath of this type of you know effeminacy the first of them is that which is natural and a person does not do anything extra but rather these characteristics are effeminate anyway and this type of characteristic there is no sin on it and there is no harm on it and in fact there is nothing that is problematic if a person is naturally you know maybe the the appearance or maybe the voice or maybe the natural thing that they're born in a certain manner this is allah's creation there's nothing that can be done about that some men's voices are much deeper than others and some men have a much higher pitched voice some men you know are much more you know however it might be and others are that's the whole spectrum there as long as they're not going out of their way they're not conditioning themselves they're not forcing something and it is coming and the same goes for women some women might have a deeper voice than other and some women might have an appearance that is different than others all of this is beyond our control there is nothing as imam now he says he mentions four things there is no problem whatsoever and this person is forgiven and excused even no issue whatsoever the second category mama now we says is mania taka lefu the one who tries and goes out of his way to try to be the opposite gender and to dress like the opposite gender and to act like the opposite gender and to have the demeanor of the opposite gender that is the person who is castigated who is chastised that is the person upon whom this hadith will apply so this is something that imam and noah himself said and therefore you ask that are you sinful for your natural you know demeanor and what not the response is a resounding no there is no sin on you whatsoever how your you know your your natural way that you speak or you act or you talk that's beyond your control you are forgiven for doing that nonetheless you have to be careful that you stay within the the dress codes and the cultural manifestations of gender of your time in your place what is considered to be dignified which varies from culture to culture again that's an another important point and facet that is beyond the scope of this brief question but again different societies have different you know manifestations and what is to be considered masculine what is considered feminine and what is you know the proper dignified manner for each of the two genders this is something that does uh slightly vary but overall there are certain characteristics that are indeed considered to be masculine and others that are feminine you try your best to stick with the gender that you are you're born in as much as you can what is beyond your control you are forgiven for as for your second question about marriage then uh you have misheard this is simply not the case a person is not sinful for remaining single perhaps you misunderstood that a person who remains single thinking that it is religious to do so i.e he wants to get married or she wants to get married and they think that no not getting married will get me rewards by allah that is sinful that is a deviation that is a bidah that's the heresy we don't have monasticism in islam we do not have monasticism in islam and therefore we do not intentionally avoid marriage for the sake of allah no however if you don't have the inclination to get married and you want to live your life a single life there is no question that that is completely permissible why would it be problematic to remain single for the rest of your life you are saying you have no inclination to be married that is perfectly acceptable and you may remain single for the rest of your life and it's not going to be any sin upon you in fact in your case it might even be preferred and if you were to consider marriage you would have to explain to your spouse uh that you know you're not interested in any intimacy or whatever and you know i have heard of cases where two people have found of a similar nature meaning that maybe there are women as well that are just wanting companionship but not the intimacy part for example and they're just wanting to have a life partner because obviously you're going to live the rest of your life it's nice to have somebody you know to share that life with even if you don't have children together and i have actually heard of these cases where uh you know people that are not on the the same you know persuasions as most of mankind where they they have agreed to just come together for a civil union and it's a marriage like a man and a woman uh their inclinations are different they're not like the you know the the normative inclination and so they decide to just come together and they're aware of it there's no cheating going on because again you have to be very careful that it has happened to in to me that people have come to me that a man was feeling in a particular manner he's not attracted to women and whatnot but he got married and now the woman is now you know coming to me and saying he has never touched me or he's never approached me and you know he has told me that his desires are such and such and they knew this before marriage and this is wrong completely wrong you cannot get married uh knowing that you're not going to fulfill the obligations of your spouse without even telling your spouse this but my point to you is consider that there are people who do believe in the sharia alhamdulillah and they want to follow the sharia and they have inclinations that are not necessarily the normative inclinations and if two such people of the opposite gender were to find one another and get married just for the sake of companionship for the sake of whatever if they want to again there's no there's no obligation but perhaps that might be an option for you in the end of the day i just wanted to say that really your your question i found it very moving and i was very uh touched by it and asked allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to make your affairs easy for you and i want to say that in this struggle that you are undergoing that insha allah this is your agenda this is your salvation that this is uh the way that you will get your your rewards from allah and it is very possible you know you're feeling guilty for who you are no it is very possible you are better than all of us simply because you are struggling in a way that very few of us can relate to and understand and you are alhamdulillah it looks like you're conquering and you're winning in that struggle that's the sign of iman so keep up the good work turn to allah constantly may locks of dua to allah subhanahu wa ta'ala remain steadfast and firm and in that struggle and perseverance shall be your jannah foreign