Forgotten Malaysians

We believe that God created everything, and I assume, besides Dalits (or Harijans, as Mahatma Gandhi called them) that would include transsexuals ..... all God’s children.

I first read this article about the marginalization, harassment and persecution of Malaysian Muslim transsexuals yesterday in the Sydney Morning Herald, and am glad that Malaysiakini has picked it up, publishing the sad article as Life in the twilight for Muslim transsexuals.

Some extracts are as follows:

Like many transsexuals in Malaysia, a conservative and mostly Muslim country, the clash between ID card and appearance means Tasha is shunned by employers, and forced to make her living as a sex worker.

"It's a hard life, people don't like us, they're always making fun of us," she says as she prepares for another night in the grimy alleyways of Chow Kit, the red light district of Kuala Lumpur.

Tasha endures drunken clients, violent pimps, and aggressive competition from other transsexual prostitutes, but what really frightens her are the raids mounted by police and religious authorities.

Enforcement officials from the Islamic Affairs Department (Jawi) - notorious for swooping on nightclubs and motels in search of Muslims drinking or having extramarital sex - regularly descend on the streets of Chow Kit.

Sex workers are sent scattering on their high heels, and those who are caught and hauled off face jail or intensive "counselling" sessions like a two-week interrogation Tasha once endured.

"They asked me why I didn't want to be a man, how I became like this and why I behave like this. But it didn't change my mind!" she says as she layers on make-up before hitting the streets where she has worked since she was 15.

Tasha puts on a brave face, but the the pain is clear when she relates how she has struggled for acceptance from her family, her religion and her country.

Although she is on the margins of society, she continues to perform the Muslim prayers, fasts during the holy month of Ramadan, and respected her mother's wish that she not undergo sex-change surgery.

"Why can't Islam accept us? We are human beings as well. I am also one of God's creations."

Teh Yik Koon from the National Defence University has written a book on the transsexual locally referred to as mak nyahs.

He said prior to 1983, Malaysians were fairly tolerant of the mak nyahs, stating:

"Until the early 1980s transsexuals were usually accepted in Malaysia, they could go for a sex change and amend their identity card."

"At that time quite a few had sex changes, some became happily married and even adopted children."

And we know of someone like that, someone whom we (except for some assh*les) love dearly, and who has recently returned to the bosom of Allah swt.

Then one day in 1983 a mufti from a state helped establish a fatwa that prohibited gender-reassignment surgery. As part of this fatwa, cross-dressing was prohibited.

Teh lamented that since the 1983 fatwa, that erstwhile Malaysian tolerance has gone, much to the distress of at least 20,000 mak nyahs in the country.

Teh said: "So now they're not accepted, there's no such thing as transsexuals according to Islam in Malaysia."

Malaysiakini has titled this article appropriately for these marginalized mak nyaks are living in the twilight zone that men have cruelly consigned them to.