Nur Sajat Kamaruzzaman Wiki
Nur Sajat Kamaruzzaman Biography
Who is Nur Sajat Kamaruzzaman ?
In September, news leaked that Thai immigration authorities had made an unusual arrest in Bangkok.
The detainee was Nur Sajat Kamaruzzaman, a 36-year-old glamorous Malaysian cosmetics businessman with a large following on social media.
The Malaysian authorities immediately requested his extradition on charges of insult to Islam, which had been brought against her in January and punishable by up to three years in prison.
Nur Sajat’s offense was to wear a baju kurung, the traditional long-sleeved dress worn by Malaysian women, in a private religious ceremony he held in 2018.
In the eyes of the Malaysian authorities, Nur Sajat is a man and, according to Islamic law, a man cannot dress as a woman.
Ella nur Sajat is a transgender woman and as such she was granted refugee status and Thailand allowed her to apply for asylum in Australia.
Speaking to the BBC from Sydney, she said she had no choice but to flee, after being assaulted by officers from JAIS, the department of religious affairs in Selangor state, who had brought charges against her.
“I had to run away. They treated me harshly, beat me, pushed me, handcuffed me, all in front of my parents and my family. I felt ashamed and sad. I gave them my cooperation, but they still did that to me.” she said.
“Maybe it was because they see me as a trans woman, so they didn’t care if they hugged me, hit me, stamped me. We trans women have feelings too. We deserve to live our lives as normal people.”
‘Gender confusion’
Nur Sajat is a successful and self-taught entrepreneur. Seven years ago, she says, she started promoting herself on social media. She developed hers of her own skin care and health supplements, and did particularly well with a corset bearing her brand name.
With an impeccably groomed appearance and fun social media posts, she gained hundreds of thousands of followers and became a national celebrity. Then the questions about her gender began.
Actually, it had never been a secret. Nur Sajat participated in a famous transgender beauty pageant in Thailand in 2013 and won an award for her dancing.
What drew attention in Malaysia was that she was also a practicing Muslim and she posted photos in the hijab, the Islamic veil for women.
She explained to those who asked that she was born with male and female genitalia, or intersex, a condition that in Islam is treated with more tolerance than those who change their birth gender.
In 2017, Nur Sajat announced that she physically now she was fully a woman and published a medical report to back it up.
Criminal Charges
The authorities decided to investigate. JAKIM, the Department of Islamic Development, said she would need proof that she was born intersex. He offered to help Nur Sajat with what he called “gender confusion.”
There was more controversy last year when images of Nur Sajat, dressed in women’s prayer robes, were posted with her family on a pilgrimage to Mecca, prompting criticism from conservative Muslims.
She later apologized for her being the cause of such an uproar, but within a year she was facing criminal charges.
We asked Mohammad Asri Zainul Abidin
“When I was on holy ground, I just wanted to ask myself … maybe there is a reason why I was born?” Nur Sajat said. “As a transgender and Muslim woman, I believe that I have the right to express my religion in my own way. There is no reason for them to punish me as if they are doing God’s work.”
The BBC asked Malaysia’s Department of Religious Affairs for comment on Nur Sajat’s case, but has received no response.
In September, the Minister of Religious Affairs, Idris Ahmad, said: “If you are willing to come to us, you admit to having done something wrong, if you are willing to return to your true nature, no problem. We do not want to punish you, I just want to educate you. “.
We asked Mohammad Asri Zainul Abidin, the mufti, or chief Islamic adviser in the state of Perlis, if it was possible for Malaysian Muslims to accept transgender people.
“For me, Sajat is an isolated case,” he said. “Sajat did many things that provoked the reaction of the religious authorities. Normally in Islam we do not interfere in personal matters. That is between you and God. But we will never recognize this sin. If you only feel like a woman and want to enter the baths of women, you can’t do that. ”
Malaysia has a two-track legal system, with Islamic Sharia law used in the country’s 13 states and three federal territories to regulate family and moral issues for the 60% of the population that is Muslim. This creates constant problems for the LGBTQI community.
“Sharia law specifically targets our community in every state,” said Nisha Ayub, a transgender activist who was once jailed for wearing women’s clothing.
“And due to the existence of Sharia Law we have politicians, leaders, religious authorities who give very negative statements about the community. And this creates a very unsafe and unfavorable environment for us.”
Moving towards ‘Islamization’
“Malaysia was once very tolerant and accepting of the transgender community,” said Rozana Isa, who founded Sisters in Islam, a group that works for women’s rights within Islam and has supported Nur Sajat.
“You saw them living very visibly among our families, in our communities, participating in public life. But for more than 30 years we have embarked on a policy of Islamization. So you have seen more laws and more interpretations of Islam, which are much narrower in terms of accepting diversity. ”
Islam is not only the official religion of the Malaysian federation, it is also defined as an essential attribute of being Malay, the largest of the various ethnic groups in the country.Political parties often try to attract voters in Malaysia with more conservative religious views.
To win the election, political parties know that they must do well in the so-called “Malaysian hearts,” where people tend to have a more conservative religious outlook. Parties often appeal to these areas with calls for a more strident defense of Islamic values.
With Malaysia’s politics in an unusually turbulent state recently, and the economy ravaged by Covid-19, some suspect that the heavy-handed persecution of Nur Sajat was driven more by a weak government in need of Muslim support than genuine religious concerns.
Read Also:Who is Zac Stacy?Former Jets running back Zac Stacy wanted by cops after allegedly
But Nisha Ayub argued that it was still the government’s responsibility to ensure the protection
But Nisha Ayub argued that it was still the government’s responsibility to ensure the protection of the rights of transgender people, regardless of different Islamic opinions. She noted that other Islamic countries like Pakistan and Iran have changed their laws to do this.
“If our leaders recognized minorities as part of our society, things would change,” she said. “It all starts with the laws that need to be reformed. As long as there are laws specifically aimed at our community, things will never change.”
Nur Sajat greatly misses her adopted son and daughter, who are being cared for by her family in Malaysia, but the opportunity to share her experience with other trans people in Australia encourages her.
Rozana Isa, founder of Sisters in Islam, called for Malaysians “to be more open and mature on social media.”
“Why do we blame Sajat so much? He wasn’t hurting anyone by posting him or by being in Mecca. Instead, we have to watch ourselves, instead of watching others.”
Source: wikisoon
