For 50 years, Sari Kartina Abdul Karim kept a secret that would reshape Malaysian history. In 1974, at the age of 26, she became one of the region’s earliest Muslim trans women to undergo gender-affirming surgery and, in a rare moment of religious recognition, married with the approval of a Johor mufti.
For five decades, she kept her story to herself. But now she says that silence has finally outlived its purpose.
“It feels like someone who was blind suddenly being told they have their eyesight again,” she told This Week in Asia in an exclusive interview.
