JAWI claims to have “cured” almost 2,000 Muslim LGBTs

By Coconuts KL

Nov 12, 2014 | 4:43pm KL time

In what will most likely stir up a hornet’s nest of responses from the Malaysian LGBT community, the Federal Territories Islamic Relgious Department (JAWI) has come out claiming it has “cured” almost 2,000 Muslims practicing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender lifestyles through its various rehabilitation programmes since 2005.

JAWI director-general Paimuzi Yahya told Maisarah Sheikh Rahim of Utusan Malaysia that among the 2,000 or so Muslim LGBTs his department has enticed into signing up for its programmes, a vast majority have been successfully “cured” and are now leading “normal” Muslim lifestyles.

In fact, the positive impact of JAWI’s programmes have spurred many of these rehabilitated LGBTs to go on to contribute to the department’s initiatives themselves, and to conduct outreach to friends leading similarly alternative lifestyles.

“Since 2005, we’ve been organising programmes such as Qur’anic and religious practice classes, consultation services, morality seminars, motivational talks and on-the-ground Islamic outreach, as well as utilising social media as a tool to share knowledge,” he said.

“These programmes have helped them (LGBTs) to better know themselves, and to guide them back to their fitrah (true nature).”

He added that in 2011 JAWI set up the Islamic Consultative Council on Human Rights, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity to foster better understanding on “gender confusion”, attended by various agencies and medical experts.

Paimuzi explained that the council concluded only transgenders certified by Syariah and medical experts could be accepted as suffering from a “legitimate medical condition”.

“JAWI cordially invites cooperation and participation from agencies and individuals in handling the issue of gender confusion, and we are prepared to provide continuing guidance to the LGBT community,” he said.

Those seeking more information on JAWI’s initiatives can contact its Outreach Management Division at 03-227 49333.

While the Malaysian online community is an unpredictable beast, we can more or less guess that the general rebuttal to this would go along the lines of: