Abstract This article explores the negotiation of Muslim transmasculine religiosity through the notion of farz (duty) as the Federal Shariat Court of Pakistan (FSC) pronounces being transgender “sadd az-darai” (an evil that must be blocked). Granted citizenship by the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2018 following over a decade of judicial discussion of transgender identity, transgender people have become an affective community before the law. Challenging the 2018 legislative act in the FSC has given legislative voice to a popular socioreligious belief that being transgender is not acceptable in Islamic society. In the tussle between sharia prohibitions and state-sponsored emancipation, how does an emergent masculinity make religious sociality stable? How is religious farz practiced while managing the demand to distance oneself from piety? Transmasculine religiosity becomes a palimpsestic temporal plane called qareeb zamaana (near time) as it attends to fluctuating moralities of gender in Pakistani state formation. Psychic states during farz namaz (obligatory prayer) reach beyond state sovereignty into the futurity of Akhirat (Judgment Day) as a lived moral present. Qareeb zamaana is a lived theory of religious temporality through which this article follows transmen as they mobilize the chronologies of pre- and posttransition masculinity to do religion properly.
Uzma Zafar (Sat,) studied this question.