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In:The Complexity of Social-Cultural Emergence: Biosemiotics, semiotics and translation studies
Edited by Kobus Marais, Reine Meylaerts and Maud Gonne
[Benjamins Translation Library 164] 2024
► pp. 109–127

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Chapter 5
Sex and the stability of a legal gender system

Dilemmas of defining intersex in Islamic law

 | New York University Abu Dhabi
Published online: 3 May 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.164.05alm
Abstract
Islamic law’s gender system is based on a conception of humans as sexually dimorphic. The presence of nonbinary bodies, specifically the khunthā, posed a challenge to the gender system. Law practitioners, like ʿAbd al-Raḥīm al-Isnawī (d. 722/1322), attempted to redefine sex and intersexuality to stabilise the legal gender system. In an exploration of al-Isnawī’s writings, I argue that he engages in a form of object translation, following Marais’s typology of translation. Al-Isnawī incorporated the khunthā into the gender system by unravelling the challenge posed by their ambiguity onto Islamic law. This redefinition effectively defines them into impossibility by legal technicalities.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • The Khunthā
  • The law
  • From tracing historical trajectories to tracing conceptual trajectories
  • Three instances of translating gender variance
    • Event A: ʿĀmir Ibn al-Ẓarib al-ʿUdwānī
    • Event B: Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān
    • Event C: ʿAbd al-Raḥīm al-Isnawī
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (50)
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