Legal Status of the Transgender Community and Gender-Diverse Communities

• — Transgender people in Malaysia face widespread stigma and human rights violations. Muslim transgender people are subject to arrests, harassment and assault from federal, state, and local Islamic religious authorities, and often avoid reporting these incidents for fear that the police will not protect them.
• — The Federal Constitution prohibits discrimination based on gender, but gender identity is not included. So far it is unclear how transgender issues are interpreted in the context of gender equality.
• — For a Muslim transgender person, Sharia law prohibits cross-dressing. In 2014, the Court of Appeal of Malaysia ruled that the state’s Sharia cross-dressing laws are unconstitutional. However, the ruling was subsequently overturned on appeal by the Federal Court on a technicality, citing improper procedures used to challenge the Sharia law and without ruling on the substance of the constitutional challenge. Laws against cross-dressing remained in force in the rest of Malaysia’s 13 states and its Federal Territories and are used against transgender people. Non-Muslim transgender people are targeted under public decency acts, often for attending group events.
• — There is no legal procedure in Malaysia expressly allowing transgender people to change their names and gender markers on their identity cards. Amendment of gender on a person’s ID card is not allowed unless there is a mistake or clerical error. Transgender people who have approached the National Registration Department to request such changes have been rejected. In July 2016, a High Court ruled that a person who had undergone gender reassignment surgery be declared a man and that the National Registration Department amend the person’s ID card to reflect such change. But the National Registration Department successfully appealed the ruling in 2017. The Court of Appeals accepted the National Registration Department’s argument that physical condition only, without testimony on chromosomes, is insufficient for change of sex marker on the ID card.
• —  Previously, transgender individuals could undergo gender reassignment surgery. In 1983, the National Fatwa Council of Malaysia issued a fatwa (religious ruling) prohibiting sex-reassignment surgery (SRS) among the Muslim population in Malaysia, except for intersex people, after the introduction of a fatwa regarding sex changes. Since then, few surgeons are willing to offer this service.

Government Statements 

• —Negative portrayals of LGBT+ people by senior governmental officials and the mainstream media compound the vulnerability of the LGBT+ community. The Malaysian government’s increasing move towards a more conservative version of Islam has also made things more difficult for the LGBT+ community over the past few years.
• — On July 10, 2020, Religious Affairs Minister Dr Zulkifli Mohamad al-Bakri announced in a social media post that he had given the Jawi (Federal Territories Islamic Religious Department) authorities “full license to carry out its enforcement actions” against transgender persons in Malaysia. He elaborated that his order goes beyond arresting transgender persons, but also giving them “religious education” so that they will “return to the right path.”
• — In June 2019, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said in a speech that Malaysia cannot accept same-sex marriage or LGBT rights, saying “I don’t understand gay marriage. In Malaysia there are some things we cannot accept, even though it is seen as human rights in Western countries,” adding that same-sex marriage is a “regressive way of thinking” and that marriage was about having children, and he claimed that the institution of marriage has almost been discarded.
• — Ex-Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak made clear in a speech in August 2015, at an international Islamic moderation seminar in Selangor, that he believed Malaysia should not support LGBT rights. Razak stated that his administration would do its best to uphold human rights but only within the confines of Islam and that Malaysia cannot defend the more “extreme aspect of human rights,” such as gay, lesbian and transsexual rights.

Government Actions:

• — In March 2019, authorities questioned organizers of an International Women’s Day march because of what were deemed to be pro-LGBT speeches and slogans. The federal minister of religious affairs said that the march was a “misuse of democratic space” because of the participation by LGBT individuals. The Center for Independent Journalism criticized local media for disproportionately covering their reporting on LGBT issues and for “using negative words in their headlines claiming that it was culturally inappropriate to raise the issue of fundamental human rights for the LGBTQ-identifying community. In June 2019, the Islamic Development Department of Malaysia (Jakim) stated that a gender and sexuality conference to be held in Kuala Lumpur later in the year should be cancelled because it “clearly promotes LGBT in Malaysia and is against Islam and the Federal Constitution.
• — In August 2018, in a homophobic crackdown, police and government officials raided a small LGBT night club. Twenty people were arrested. A week before the raid, two lesbians were punished by caning for having sex in a car. After the raid, government minister Khalid Samad talked on the motivation behind the raid, “[H]opefully this initiative can mitigate the LGBT culture from spreading into our society”.
• — In 2017, the health ministry launched a contest for young people on how to “prevent” homosexuality, sparking protests from activists; and Malaysia’s Film Censorship Board tried to prevent the release of Beauty and the Beast over a “gay moment”, eventually caving in to pressure and allowing the movie to be shown.