In 1981 and 1983, Shaykh al-Azhar ‘Ali Jad al-Haqq issued fatwas in which he advised that sex-change operations were permitted for intersexuals. In 1990, Saudi Arabia’s Scientific Committee for Research and Ifta’ ruled that sex-changes were permitted with the recommendation of a doctor. In 1999, Ayatollah Khamina’i issued a fatwa permitting the same for intersexuals and MTF transsexuals. Previous scholarship on the legal treatment of intersexuals in Islamic societies (Bouhdiba 1975, Sanders 1991) suggests that these rulings protect the dominance of men within a legal system that demands absolute binary sex identities. My paper analyzes rulings and descriptions of the khuntha (hermaphroditic intersexual) in medieval and early modern legal manuals, dictionaries, and medical texts, including but not limited to al-Khalil ibn Ahmad’s 8th century Kitab al-‘ayn, Ibn Sina’s 11th-century Qanun fi al-tibb, an 11th-century Shi‘i legal text by al-Tusi, an 11th-century Hanafi commentary from the Transoxianian jurist al-Sarakhsi, an 11th-century Hanafi manual from al-Quduri of Baghdad, al-Marghinani’s 12th-century legal manual al-Hidaya, Ibn Qudama’s 13th-century Hanbali legal manual, Ibn Manzur’s 14th-century dictionary from Mamluk North Africa, al-Halabi’s 16th-century legal manual from Syria, and al-Muhibbi’s 17th-century history of the Ottoman empire. Read within a legal discourse of compassion for believers, rather than the twentieth-century discourse of gender hierarchy, these diverse texts display consistent rhetoric: concern for intersexuals’ physical and emotional comfort, sexual satisfaction, and ability to obey gendered rules governing prayer and social behavior. In stark contrast to Europe, where hermaphrodites were subject to arbitrary medical examination, juridical assignment of gonadal sex contrary to gender identity, and dissolution of marriage (Dreger 1998), Muslim authors respected the hermaphrodite’s human dignity and equality in submission to God’s law. This study thus provides a historical context with which to frame contemporary discussions of gender ambiguity and so-called “Islamic intolerance.”

The central claim of this paper is that contemporary art by women and queers -exemplified in this text by the installation “Hamra Hamra” (2013) from feminist artist Sonia Kallel and new digital works from queer artist Khalil Ayari- responds to the Tunisian state’s manufactured progressive identity through engagement with themes such as the entanglement of queer and female bodies with politics in visual representation. Ironically, the state’s modernist identity is based primarily on the regulation of sexuality through procreative marriage. The artworks addressed use sexuality to make claims that undermine state power through subtle evocations of sexuality, sensuality, and the erotic. This paper therefore elucidates the unique relationship between Tunisian liberalism as premised on sexual repression and artworks with themes of sexuality that touch the fundamental meanings of human social relations. As in many Middle Eastern regions, the heteronormative family is the basic unit of social organization (Hasso 2010), but unlike in other countries, Tunisia’s self-presentation as a supporter of personal liberty and defender of women’s rights is at odds with the reality of its social conservatism and the selective enforcement of its penal code. The fundamental issue to be addressed in Tunisian sexual politics is that the maintenance of strict gender roles also maintains the state. The compulsory heterosexuality (Rich 1978) of Tunisian women remains structured around the presentation of a certain type of modern woman whose liberation is codified always on state terms. LGBT individuals, on the other hand, experience oppression from a society that openly rejects their sexual identity yet delights in non-normative sexual relationships behind closed doors. Meanwhile, the Tunisian state itself is openly homophobic, but covertly sexist. The tension between the presentation of a forward-thinking democracy and the reality of Tunisian sexual expression is evident when various forms of the Tunisian Constitution and Penal Code are held alongside artworks that have clear sexual undertones but that also strongly evoke contemporary governmental politics and state bureaucracy. Artistic engagement with these conditions elucidates the particular relationship of the Tunisian state to its citizens and of the citizens to one another regarding sexuality, cultural freedom, and political contribution. These works provide invaluable evidence for an analysis of the inextricable workings of art and politics in the Tunisian context.

Drawing from Pierre Bourdieu’s work on masculine domination, this paper analyzes the central role played by the discourse about sexuality in building the hierarchy between women and men in Morocco. Focusing on the issues of virginity, rape and reproductive rights, it conducts an examination of the construction of sexuality in social practices, cultural productions and legal texts. In addition, this examination is corroborated with strategic testimonies from biographies and auto-fictions. In the 1970s, Fatima Mernissi analyzed the impact of the construction of female sexuality on women’s rights within Islamic jurisprudences. A few years later, Soumaya Naamane-Guessous conducted a major sociological research study on the taboos associated with the female body, and their impact on female sexuality. Abdessamad Diamly has devoted several research papers to investigating sexuality in Morocco. His research includes exploring sex education for youth, the female body within the patriarchal paradigm, and the relationship between religious fundamentalism and sexual taboos in Morocco. Like Mernissi, Naamane-Guessous and Dialmy, I argue that sexuality plays a major role in women’s marginalization. However, my study goes beyond this kind of research. It identifies social and political mechanisms working to transform women’s biological bodies into feminine bodies belonging to the collective. An inevitable devaluation of women’s human potential accompanies this transformation. Structured in three parts, this paper exposes the impact of the construction of sexuality on the appropriation of women’s bodies, the dismissal of their intellectual capabilities as inferior, and the denial of their personal autonomy which by extension leads to the subjugation of their wills to their spouses and relatives. The conclusion explores strategies pursued by scholars and women’s groups who aim to re-appropriate their bodies.

This paper examines how the Libyan state forcibly disappeared political dissidents and how Libyan citizens contested this form of violence. While forced disappearance is generally studied as a domestic event, I offer a sociological approach to forced disappearance that demonstrates the importance of globalization and transnational forces in determining who was forcibly disappeared and how this method of repression influences social movement repertoires of contention. Firstly, I find that, in the Libyan case, certain expressions of piety, including bodily comportment or attendance at early morning religious services, became indistinguishable from presumed fundamentalism due in part to politics associated with the Cold War. I argue that globalization and transnationalism, especially during the Cold War, are very important factors to consider when analyzing the politics surrounding disappearance, especially in the Middle East and North Africa. In the Libyan context, the association between piety and fundamentalism resulted in a widespread policing of what I term a “pious masculinity” that led to the forced disappearance of thousands of men in the late 1980s. In Libya, this pious disposition was reflected in the personal grooming habits, such as donning a long beard, and dress styles, including as short trousers, of young men. Secondly, I illustrate how family members contest disappearance through engaging in protest tactics that sought to humanize their disappeared relatives and renegotiate the meaning of piety. Among the key claims made by protestors who organize on behalf of disappeared relatives in Libya is that the government is at fault for the disappearances and that the piety of their relatives was a quality of their innocence rather than their guilt. The analysis draws on historical sources, interviews, and films of family members who contested the disappearances of their loved ones. This study contributes to our understandings of forced disappearance as a tactic of state repression and social movement repertoires of contention.