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The article compares how Catholic and Shia Islamic ethics treat transsexuality and sexual reassignment surgery (SRS). It shows that the Vatican generally rejects SRS — viewing sex as fixed at birth and not changed by surgery — while leading Shia clerics in Iran permit and even support SRS, sometimes seeing it as necessary to reveal a person’s “true” gender. The author argues these differences stem from distinct religious understandings of sex, gender, and the body, making transsexuality a useful case for exploring broader moral and theological distinctions between the two traditions.
The article compares how Catholic and Shia Islamic ethics treat transsexuality and sexual reassignment surgery (SRS). It shows that the Vatican generally rejects SRS — viewing sex as fixed at birth and not changed by surgery — while leading Shia clerics in Iran permit and even support SRS, sometimes seeing it as necessary to reveal a person’s “true” gender. The author argues these differences stem from distinct religious understandings of sex, gender, and the body, making transsexuality a useful case for exploring broader moral and theological distinctions between the two traditions.