Three Malaysian Muslim transgender people have won a landmark ruling after challenging a religious law banning them from cross-dressing; a decision activists are calling a victory for human rights in the conservative Muslim-majority country. A three-judge panel ruled that the Shariah law in Negeri Sembilan state that criminalizes any man who dresses or poses as a woman is unconstitutional. The judges said the law deprives transgenders of "the right to live with dignity." A lower court had dismissed the case, saying the three plaintiffs must adhere to Islamic law because they are Muslim and born male. The state's Islamic Religious Department can still appeal the ruling to the top federal court.
Organized religion (like Christianity and Islam) generally takes a black and white position on everything. It’s either black or white, no gray areas.
Dressing as per your designated gender is very big in Islam. You are either born a female or male. Hence, you should be dressed appropriately, according to your gender and also some customs/traditional values.
When what you are wearing becomes everybody’s business, then naturally people will desire to have guardians/enforcers of morality who could also act as fashion police, e.g Iran and Saudi Arabia. If you give batons/canes/whips and enough discretionary power to a group of people who would otherwise be unemployed/sit around doing pointless thing then you can put them to use serving higher powers.
It’s correct that we are technically designed to have a gender at the moment of conception. The information about our gender comes from xxorxy-chromosome.
However, nothing in creation is ever perfect. Imagine how boring life would be if everything works according to the blue-print. Wikipedia has a section about the possibility of having a chromosome arrangement that is contrary to the expectation
Humans, as well as some other organisms, can have a chromosomal arrangement that is contrary to their phenotypic sex, that is, XX males or XY females. See, for example, XX male syndrome and androgen insensitivity syndrome. Additionally, an abnormal number of sex chromosomes (aneuploidy) may be present, such as Turner's syndrome, in which a single X chromosome is present, and Klinefelter's syndrome, in which two X chromosomes and a Y chromosome are present, XYY syndrome and XXYY syndrome.[1] Other less common chromosomal arrangements include: triple X syndrome, 48, XXXX, and 49, XXXXX.
Very interesting science stuff.
In the past (based on my reading about Islamic history), when you had a situation where the gender of men or women were disputed, then they had a very crude mechanism using very low technology to resolve such matter. Yep, people were as inquisitive, curious and bothered back then as now especially when question of someone's gender is undecided (up in the air).
Since Islam is all about precedence (following an example from the past to guide future decision), then the Muslim are dealing with this issue in the same manner someone would deal with it over a thousand years ago (sometimes with very little regard to how the times and expectation have changed since then).
Many interesting scenarios are seen based on documented cases of people in real life that were confused about their gender due to various factors namely genetic, anatomical, physiology, mental, emotional, hormonal, environmental, societal etc.
References
http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2014/11/07/malaysia-muslims-win-right-to-cross-dress.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_sex-determination_system
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