Exploring Gender & Islam: A Muslim Transgender Journey w/ Leyla Jagiella

In this episode, we're honored to learn from Leyla Jagiella about her transgender journey as a Muslim woman – and finding belonging among the third-gender communities in South East Asia.

It’s the topic of her brave and insightful new book entitled “Among the Eunuchs: A Muslim Transgender Journey” which helps us understand some of the unique struggles faced by Muslim transgender woman – but also how she found affirmation and support in Islam. You can get her new book here:

https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/among-the-eunuchs/

Leyla Jagiella is a cultural anthropologist and scholar of religion, working on orthodoxy and heterodoxy in Islam and gender and sexuality in Muslim societies. As a Muslim trans woman, she has also been a community activist for several decades and works as a social worker with LGBTQI refugees in Germany

In the podcast, she talks with us about:

• The beauty and diversity in Muslim life (and how that drew her to Islam)


• Ways she struggled with her gender identity and sexuality as a young Muslim


• How the third-gender communities in Islam helped her find affirmation and recogntion


• What life was like as a Hijra in South East Asia – and navigating gendered spaces


• She discusses trans-affirming ideas and scriptures in the Quran and New Testament

At the end of the podcast, she talks about what Jesus says about eunuchs (Matthew 19:12) – and the application for transgender and gender nonconforming people.