The following are some points shared by Imam Earl Abdulmalik Mohammed, Leader of the People of W. Deen Mohammed, in a conversation with a prominent and respected Imam who visited him on March 5, 2017. Imam Mohammed was asked his opinion of the issue of 'transgender identity' and the manner in which Islam addresses that issue and the way he thought Imam W. Deen Mohammed would have addressed the issue. This is not a transcript but the advice given as modified for this website and public view:
IMAM EARL ABDULMALIK MOHAMMED: We witness that Allah is One. We worship Him alone and associate no partners with Him in that worship. The worship is due to Him only. We witness that Muhammed is His Messenger, upon him be Allah's choicest blessings and the peace.
We further witness that we are Muslims following Muhammed's tradition and we accept those who maintained and defended the truth of that tradition through the ages as our Imams. Not least among them is the Imam of al-Islam, Warithuddin Mohammed, who himself asked Allah to guide him to see the religion clearly and correctly, and thus he led a people to al-Islam and assisted many to free themselves from the oppression of misconceptions in religion and introduced to them the Guidance, and as a result established a method and pathway for al-Islam to be seen properly and respectably, and in its true report and image, in America.
May Allah be pleased with the companions of the Prophet, and the first teachers of al-Islam, and may He grant mercy to His righteous servants, all of them. We witness to all of this with certain knowledge and sincerity.
Muslims are first identified as a religious community guided by revealed knowledge -and Allah has revealed: "We have heard a caller, calling us to faith: Believe you in your Lord, and we have believed." Respecting the integrity of that implicit discipline and its influence, we obligate ourselves to follow its teachings with exact and certain knowledge, sincerity, truthfulness, and love for all that it invites us to. This is what is meant to be a Muslim and this is the open and free choice we make. Therefore, we do not define Islam. It is defined for us as revealed in the Qur'an and brought to life in Muhammed's teachings and example.
When we make the choice to be Muslims we acknowledge that we have not created ourselves, but that we are in fact created with a definite design and purpose, and that our Creator's design and plan exceeds and informs our own life-plan. And Allah has revealed: "His vision encompasses and extends over all vision." It is of the Mercy of Allah on His creation that we have been given Guidance, and that guidance comes from both revealed knowledge and nature, as Allah constructed the nature. The enduring miracle of the Guidance is that it seamlessly works in conjunction with our own created nature. It appeals to that nature. It complements that nature. It respects that nature. It builds on the credibility of that original nature.
In his innocent nature and perfect obedience to it and the Guidance, Muhammed is the completed and approved human type. He is completed in his nature and perfected in his embrace of Guidance. So we follow Muhammed as the model personality because he is firstly a human being, and secondly because he sought, accepted, and called to G’d's Guidance. Islamic teaching rejects any notion of a divine human, but it champions the idea of a perfect human. The direction for the perfect human is not without the experience of many mistakes and blemishes, but it is to hold to the human nature and seek the Creator for Guidance.
It is reported that when Prophet Muhammed's wife was asked about his character she replied, "His character was the Qur'an." Muhammed's choices and plans for his own life -his public life, fix him permanently in the community of humans. He was not a god nor an angel, and he established the appeal of his message upon this fact. The issues of human beings in human communities were Muhammed's issues. He had friends, wives, children, and grandchildren that knew him and touched him in his lifetime, and he cared about the quality of their lives in this world.
So, in addressing this difficult emotional and moral concern of gender identity or transgender identity, we must ask, and it would be Imam W. Deen Mohammed's habit to ask, how would Muhammed the Prophet address this issue and what would he reference? To be clear and succinct when we are addressing confusing language such as this, that is created by the modern world, we have to define it so we know what we are looking at and speaking of. I understand this to be a question of where a human soul in a physiologically male or female body declares absolutely that they are in fact the opposite gender in all respects except physiology. Pondering the issue can shake you in bewilderment. However, Allah has made it so that maleness and femaleness does not compel us as strongly as humanness.
Allah has revealed:
"O mankind, reverence your Lord who created you all from a single human personality, and from it created its mate, and from them created countless men and women. Reverence your Lord, without whom the rights you ask (of Him and each other would not have been created), and reverence the merciful wombs which (by the Lord's design) nourished and evolved you. And Allah is always watching over you."
This verse from the Qur'an describes the pattern of the nature as Allah constructed it, and it makes clear that the human person is due the respect of inherent rights, but also must respect the created pattern. In this is the answer to this difficult question.
Where man has poisoned his environment either by corruptions in the natural world (pollutions causing human illness), or by corruptions in the world of moral conscience (materialism which invites to anti-social attitudes and behaviors), it is these corruptions, as instigated by the enemies of human life posing as friends and protectors, that warp and confuse the nature. If sinister forces are freed to challenge the beauty and purpose of the human moral and physical form without a learned opposition, eventually, by way of influence, human society will accommodate that force and its logic -and the human form will bear the punishment of the corruption, or the illness of the poison.
Muhammed the Prophet would respect what an individual claimed for himself or herself, and that individual would be held responsible for those claims. If you are a Christian, then the Islamic expectation is to obey that life and behave according to Christian teachings. If you are a husband or a wife, or a man or woman, then the respect due each role and identity according to that which feeds the good health of society and respect for its stability as a human community would be the obligation. Allah revealed that "the female and the male are unalike," therefore the physiology of males and females are an important but subsidiary matter to respect for the original and whole human identity.
Further, Allah revealed that He "has made your forms and made them all beautiful," and He has "created you all from a male and a female." When asked about some men who were attending to women and acting in a feminine manner, it is reported that the Prophet said that they were not women and therefore did not deserve the rights of women.
As Muslims we are interested only in that identity which is known publicly. Be the individual male or female, if we know and respect what a human being is, how it is fashioned and for what purpose it has been created and evolved, then genders and their roles take their proper places, and society will respect the individual's right to dignity.
We pray for the help of Allah, and that He strengthen those among us to be examples of Islamic womanhood and manhood so as to promote the best picture of human community. And we pray that He save us from the confusion of society, and preserve for us the best understanding of His Guidance.