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Among the Eunuchs: A Muslim Transgender Journey
From an early age, Leyla Jagiella knew that her life would be defined by two things: being Muslim and being trans. Struggling to negotiate these identities in her conservative, small German hometown, she travelled to India and Pakistan, where her life was changed by her time among third gender communities.
Known today as hijras in India and khwajasaras in Pakistan, these predominantly Muslim communities once held important political, social and spiritual positions. They were respected as agents of the supernatural, with powers to bless or curse, and often worked as eunuchs in the harems and palaces of the Muslim aristocracy. But under British colonialism the hijras were criminalized and persecuted, entrenching long-lasting taboos that these communities continue to fight against today.
Among the Eunuchs reveals a vast variety of interpretations of religion, gender and sexuality, illuminating how deeply culture informs our lifestyles and experiences. In a world where identity is an ideological battlefield, Jagiella complicates binaries and dogma with a rich and reflective analysis of gender across the world. Her fascinating journey speaks to all who draw from multiple cultural roots, have relations across borders, or find themselves juggling more than one identity.
Known today as hijras in India and khwajasaras in Pakistan, these predominantly Muslim communities once held important political, social and spiritual positions. They were respected as agents of the supernatural, with powers to bless or curse, and often worked as eunuchs in the harems and palaces of the Muslim aristocracy. But under British colonialism the hijras were criminalized and persecuted, entrenching long-lasting taboos that these communities continue to fight against today.
Among the Eunuchs reveals a vast variety of interpretations of religion, gender and sexuality, illuminating how deeply culture informs our lifestyles and experiences. In a world where identity is an ideological battlefield, Jagiella complicates binaries and dogma with a rich and reflective analysis of gender across the world. Her fascinating journey speaks to all who draw from multiple cultural roots, have relations across borders, or find themselves juggling more than one identity.
304 pages, Hardcover
Published February 15, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 6, 2022
Leyla Jagiella's Among the Eunuchs ignores its title to memorialize its author's journey.
Jagiella was a young German girl when she made the decision to convert to Islam. As a white person in a young boys body who felt trapped in her body, she began to study herself and her world for answers. As she grew up she transitioned and then began to spend time with the hijra communities of India and Pakistan. These communities of people from across the gender spectrum left a great impact on Jagiella, inspiring this book.
In many parts, Among the Eunuchs is a beautiful reflection on the complexities of being both Muslim and transgender. But unfortunately as the book progresses the focus becomes less on understanding this complexity and more on soapboxing about any number of personal, political musings. These little rabbit trails took away from the broad picture of complex religious and gender identity Jagiella tried to paint and made this book worse off for it.
Jagiella was a young German girl when she made the decision to convert to Islam. As a white person in a young boys body who felt trapped in her body, she began to study herself and her world for answers. As she grew up she transitioned and then began to spend time with the hijra communities of India and Pakistan. These communities of people from across the gender spectrum left a great impact on Jagiella, inspiring this book.
In many parts, Among the Eunuchs is a beautiful reflection on the complexities of being both Muslim and transgender. But unfortunately as the book progresses the focus becomes less on understanding this complexity and more on soapboxing about any number of personal, political musings. These little rabbit trails took away from the broad picture of complex religious and gender identity Jagiella tried to paint and made this book worse off for it.
March 28, 2024
A pretty clear book about gender complexity in South Asia. It goes into histories and live the experiences of people who are outside of the gender binary. I do have my qualms about white anthropologist and sociologist in general. She seems to unfortunately confirm my beliefs about white people and social justice activism.
November 8, 2023
This was a pretty interesting book, if not exactly what I expected. Leyla Jagiella is a Polish-German trans woman who converted to Islam as a teenager who lived in hijra communities in Delhi for several years. It is part autobiography, part description of the communities she was part of and their role in north-Indian society, and partly a manifesto of her ideas about the role of gender and third-gender identities. It also felt like it was a bit of a straight trans woman's rant about feeling like she isn't fully accepted as a woman by men in the West: something which, I gather, is a common problem, but fairly alien to my experience as a trans woman who mostly only dates other women.
Among the Eunuchs: A Muslim Transgender Journey gave me a lot of complicated feelings about the interconnection between gender identity and society, and the degree to which one's possible gender options are strongly tied to what one's society assumes with, in most traditional societies, an expectation that marriage and childbearing is essential to counting as a full person, even if roles exist for non-childbearing adults as well. (Having just read Making the Mark: Gender, Identity, and Genital Cutting may have influenced my feelings here.) Leyla Jagiella repeatedly mentions, but doesn't really address the implications of the fact that it is acceptable in some of North Indian traditional culture for men to have hijra girlfriends, but only as long as they also have a proper wife they raise children with, suggesting that straight trans women, though perhaps their dating straight men is more accepted, can never really be a full-status part of this society.
Among the Eunuchs: A Muslim Transgender Journey gave me a lot of complicated feelings about the interconnection between gender identity and society, and the degree to which one's possible gender options are strongly tied to what one's society assumes with, in most traditional societies, an expectation that marriage and childbearing is essential to counting as a full person, even if roles exist for non-childbearing adults as well. (Having just read Making the Mark: Gender, Identity, and Genital Cutting may have influenced my feelings here.) Leyla Jagiella repeatedly mentions, but doesn't really address the implications of the fact that it is acceptable in some of North Indian traditional culture for men to have hijra girlfriends, but only as long as they also have a proper wife they raise children with, suggesting that straight trans women, though perhaps their dating straight men is more accepted, can never really be a full-status part of this society.
March 25, 2023
One thing that my past few years researching and reading about religion has taught me, is the importance of being open-minded and compassionate – especially when it comes to understanding, rather than discounting, the experiences of those whose religious views may diverge from your own.
Over the last few years, numerous enlightening reads about Queer Muslim experiences have been released, from Samra Habib's “We Have Always Been Here” to the new Saq Bbooks anthology, “This Arab is Queer”, and Leyla Jagiella’s “Among the Eunuchs: A Muslim Transgender Journey" is the latest launch in this diverse realm of publishing.
Leyla is a transgender Muslim woman of Polish ancestry, raised in Germany, who travelled to India and lived among the nation’s “hijra” or “khwajasara” communities. She is a cultural anthropologist, scholar of religion and community activist, and her book is both a memoir and social commentary/historical analysis exploring the history of transgendered communities in Muslim and South Asian history. She spends a lot of time highlighting how “the third gender” was accepted and discussed openly by early Muslim communities and scholars, and how this attitude contrasts greatly with much more conservative “orthodox” viewpoints today.
One of most thought-provoking and personally impactful statements Jagiella makes in the book is, “I now believe that the true Islam is found in the small voices, the oppressed voices, and the disenfranchised voices. It is with the marginalised of history, not with the victorious. That, to me, also includes the many queer voices in Islam that have been erased from history.”
Definitely recommended if you’re looking to broaden your perspectives and read about those religious experiences that don’t always make it into “mainstream” narratives.
Over the last few years, numerous enlightening reads about Queer Muslim experiences have been released, from Samra Habib's “We Have Always Been Here” to the new Saq Bbooks anthology, “This Arab is Queer”, and Leyla Jagiella’s “Among the Eunuchs: A Muslim Transgender Journey" is the latest launch in this diverse realm of publishing.
Leyla is a transgender Muslim woman of Polish ancestry, raised in Germany, who travelled to India and lived among the nation’s “hijra” or “khwajasara” communities. She is a cultural anthropologist, scholar of religion and community activist, and her book is both a memoir and social commentary/historical analysis exploring the history of transgendered communities in Muslim and South Asian history. She spends a lot of time highlighting how “the third gender” was accepted and discussed openly by early Muslim communities and scholars, and how this attitude contrasts greatly with much more conservative “orthodox” viewpoints today.
One of most thought-provoking and personally impactful statements Jagiella makes in the book is, “I now believe that the true Islam is found in the small voices, the oppressed voices, and the disenfranchised voices. It is with the marginalised of history, not with the victorious. That, to me, also includes the many queer voices in Islam that have been erased from history.”
Definitely recommended if you’re looking to broaden your perspectives and read about those religious experiences that don’t always make it into “mainstream” narratives.
August 12, 2023
Reading this book was an absolute blast. Leyla Jagiella instructs us that the best way to write about the other is to be self-reflective, to be personal, and at once cognizant of one’s own situatedness in culture and history. She invites us to recur to curiosity before judgment when we think that the other is ungraspable, to be modest about what we presume as rightful and meaningful, to be respectful of the weight of history and of the richness of human cultures in their quest to create meaning. She shows us that it is possible to analyze things thoroughly, make balanced and well-reasoned arguments while writing beautifully, and maintain intimate connections with the things we write about. She shows us, most importantly, that there are still so many ways to think and write about sexuality beyond the language of choice, rights, and identity.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews