Saudis transfixed over transsexual inheritance feud

[kengr]

(from a mailing list I'm on)

If you are on the Venus Envy Yahoo group, you've seen this.

Saudis transfixed over transsexual inheritance feud
By Colin Freeman
London
December 6, 2004

A judge in Saudi Arabia has provoked controversy within the strictly Islamic kingdom by ruling in favour of a transsexual, whose scandalised family tried to strip him of half his inheritance after he became a woman.

In a case that has sparked frenzied interest in the kingdom, the son of a Saudi millionaire was sued by his relatives after they discovered that he had secretly spent part of his father's estate on an operation to change his sex. Furious at the perceived disgrace he had brought on their family, his sisters pointed out that under the country's inheritance laws he was entitled to only half as much money as when he was a man.

Now, however, the action has been dropped after a judge in Jeddah ruled that since he was male when he received the inheritance, he was entitled to keep it in full. In future, however, he will be treated under inheritance law as a woman.

Although the ruling does not challenge Saudi men's superior status in law, the spectacle of the conservative judiciary grappling with legal issues of transsexuality has caused a furore in a country where sex is still a taboo subject.

Ever since "Ahmad", as he is known, first confided anonymously to a popular Saudi women's magazine, his story has dominated talk in the coffee shops of Jeddah and the capital, Riyadh.

Some of the country's most eminent religious scholars have also weighed in, some vexed merely by the concept of gender ambiguity. "There is no mention in the Koran of a 'she-male'," Sheikh Ahmad Abdul Qadir al-Maabi, a specialist in inheritance law, said.

Bullied at secondary school and fed up with persistent parental advice to "toughen up", Ahmad persuaded his father to send him abroad for education.

After American doctors told him, "You're a female, not a male," he considered a sex-change operation. When he asked his father for the necessary money, however, the outraged patriarch said that he would not recognise him as his daughter - and would cut him out of his inheritance altogether.

His father died soon afterwards and, after receiving his full inheritance, Ahmad returned to America where he pressed on with the operation.

As a woman, he got a job with an American computer company and was planning further studies when the September 11 attacks made him feel that he was in the wrong place. He cut his hair short, wiped off his make-up and returned to Saudi Arabia as a man.

The trauma caused by the death of his mother not long after his arrival prompted him to confess all at a specially convened family meeting.

His sister and her husband applied for the family estate - thought to total
millions of dollars - to be redivided, with his share cut by half.

Ahmad's family would not comment but his lawyer, Ashraf al-Saraj, said that they dropped the case at a preliminary hearing when the judge made it clear that the court was likely to rule against them.

- Telegraph

All things considered sounds like the courts there are being far more sensible than the US courts have been...

Comments

[cleverthylacine]

Have you been reading the fic set in Rome in the 20's? I think you'd like it.

[gentlemaitresse.livejournal.com]

since he was male when he received the inheritance, he was entitled to keep it in full...

After American doctors told him, "You're a female, not a male," he considered a sex-change operation

It seems to me that if he really wanted to be treated as a woman he'd agree to the inheritance cut. <shrug>

Some of the country's most eminent religious scholars have also weighed in, some vexed merely by the concept of gender ambiguity. "There is no mention in the Koran of a 'she-male',"

Sounds like a problem with the religion to me, not the individuals who are "she-male" or whatever other "ambiguous genders" they may be.

Furious at the perceived disgrace he had brought on their family

"Perceived" seems to be the operative word here. Maybe humans need to quit perceiving disgrace and offense where there is none.

Interesting story. Thanks for posting it.

[cleverthylacine]

Are you seriously saying that if a person wants to be treated as a woman they should not object to any injustices that are done to women?

Especially to the point of having something that was given to them taken away retroactively?

[gentlemaitresse.livejournal.com]

He didn't object to the injustices done to women. He didn't offer to give his sisters a larger portion of the inheritance, for example.