| A Kuwaiti court has said a 25-year-old man who underwent sex-change surgery can be officially regarded as a woman. The unprecedented ruling came after the court was told of the plaintiff’s physical and mental torment since childhood due to hormonal imbalances. Lawyer Adel al-Yahya told Reuters news agency the judges were guided by a religious edict allowing gender change if there are medical reasons for it. ... Mr Yahya, the plaintiff’s lawyer, said he presented the court with an edict from Sunni Islam’s top religious institution, al-Azhar, in Egypt. This allows people to change their gender if there are proper medical reasons for doing so. "We have evidence, a fatwa from al-Azhar, because we have a case of illness, not a case of switching gender or as they call it in Kuwait a third-sex case," he told Reuters. "This is a very rare condition... and the court ruled according to that condition." |