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“Islam has a cure for people suffering from this problem. If they want to change their gender, the path is open,” says Hojatol Islam Muhammad Mehdi Kariminia, the religious cleric responsible for gender reassignment.
In Iran homosexuality is a crime befitting death. Since 1979 sex change operations have been legal when Ayatollah Khomeini passed a fatwa authorising them for “diagnosed transsexuals.” Today only Thailand has as many sex change operations taking place.
Once the operation has been completed the change of gender is recognised on birth certificates. The government even provides up to half of the cost for the surgery. Muhammad Mehdi Kariminia likens the process to “changing wheat to flour to bread” making it not a sin. Karminia says that homosexuality disrupts the social order and that transsexuals are separate from homosexuals.
Dr. Mir-Jalali is a Paris trained surgeon. His is also the leading specialist in sex change operations in Iran with claims of over 450 operations in the last 12 years. He says that many of his patients struggle to figure out what to do as they do not fit within their society.
“Transsexuals feel that their body doesn’t match how they feel,” he says. “Whatever you do, psychiatrists, pills, prison, punishment, nothing helps”.
Being diagnosed as a transsexual changes everything in Iran. The diagnose makes the feminine tendencies that some homosexuals have become a medical condition instead of a “sin” against nature. After the initial diagnosis and the operation is scheduled a person is allowed to begin cross dressing.
Although it is legal many families are against the operations going as far as disowning their children.
