When 76-year-old Sari Kartina Abdul Karim flips open her well-worn notebook – penned over decades in a mixture of Bahasa Melayu and Dutch – you feel you’re witnessing someone who has spent a lifetime holding her breath, and only now, at long last, is breathing freely. Born male in Johor in 1948, Kartina quietly carried a secret for half a century: in 1974, at the age of 26, she travelled for gender-affirming surgery abroad, becoming one of Southeast Asia’s earliest known Muslim trans women. Her story, recently reported in the South China Morning Post, threads faith, culture, identity and painstaking bravery through the layers of “rumah” (home) and “ummah” (community)—challenging what it meant to be Malay, Muslim and “man” in the years when such questions could cost you everything.
Kartina’s journey began in an era when the word mak nyah was whispered behind closed doors—a colloquial term in Malaysia for transgender women, laden with stigma and social invisibility. At a time when even the idea of a trans woman who was observant and Muslim seemed impossible, Kartina navigated both personal truth and religious belonging. Her early years were shaped by the kampung life of Johor and the modest expectations of a Malay-Muslim boy-turned-girl, yet she channelled her understanding of Islam into her journey. When she underwent surgery overseas, she returned to Malaysia and eventually entered into a marriage blessed by a kadi (Islamic marriage registrar) with approval from the Johor mufti—a deeply symbolic act of asserting both identity and faith.
Living now in the Netherlands, Kartina spends her retirements’ quiet mornings with two cats and a coffee, working on her memoir, My Fifty Years Journey to Womanhood. Yet her relocation abroad was not simply for comfort—it was a distance from the social terrain of Malaysia where legal and religious systems still present steep uphill battles for trans and gender‐diverse persons. It’s important to see her trajectory in the context of ongoing challenges faced by the Malaysian trans community: societal exclusion, legal limbo, religious policing.
In Malaysia today, the existence of someone like Kartina is still quietly revolutionary. While her courage predates much of the more visible activism of recent years, the terrain for all trans persons in Malaysia remains fraught. For instance, institutions in certain states still invoke Sharia laws to target those who do not fit binary gender norms. In 2021, the state of Perlis issued a ruling barring trans persons from entering mosques—one of many moves that underscore how “agama” (religion) and identity clash in real life. Kartina’s story thus becomes not simply a personal memoir but a cultural compass: what does it mean to be Muslim and trans in a society that often says you cannot be both?
Her reflections carry the tone of someone who has waited long to be heard. “For 50 years I carried everything inside me. I stayed quiet for my mother and father because I felt responsible for protecting them. Now that generation has passed, I finally feel free to speak,” she said. It’s a testament to the concept of ketaatan (obedience) not just to parental expectations but to deeply felt faith, and how her transition did not signify leaving Islam but re-orienting her allegiance—to the self she was born to live as.
In speaking her truth now, Kartina also opens a door for the next generation of gender-diverse Malaysians, who still strive for “pengiktirafan” (recognition) and dignity. Despite the hurdles, she carries hope—not only for the individual but for the communal: that Malay-Muslim society may one day reconcile tradition with the manifold reality of gender. The concept of rumah kecil (small home) and rumah besar (big home—i.e., community or nation) doesn’t always include transgender people, but Kartina’s life asks us to expand both homes.
In the end, her life has been a quiet upheaval. While she did not lead mass protests, she carried within her something that shook assumptions. Her own marriage, her own religious faith, her own identity pushed at the boundaries of what many thought allowable. Wherever she sits now, jotting lines in her memoir, she reminds us that one person’s “rahsia” (secret) can, by sheer survival, reshape history. In the lit-up world of social media, visible activism and headline-making court cases, Kartina’s life stands as a testament: that dignity can be claimed not only in the street but in the ordered quiet of one’s own becoming. And for that, terima kasih (thank you), Kartina.
When I read Kartina’s story, I had to put down my kopi and take a long, deep breath. This woman—this graceful, stubborn, quietly revolutionary Malaysian woman—transitioned in 1974. Nineteen seventy-four! When most of us were still learning how to spell “identity,” she was already carving hers with courage so sharp it could cut steel. And yet she carried her truth like a fragile rahsia, tucked close to her heart for fifty years. Not because she was ashamed, but because the world around her could not yet handle her brilliance.
Let’s be honest: we can only imagine the hardships of Kartina’s journey. The loneliness. The fear. The constant negotiation of safety, family honour, social expectations, and the ever-present eyes of state and religious authorities. For a Malay Muslim trans woman in the 1970s, even breathing too loudly could be considered rebellion. Yet she found a way to claim her womanhood, to live her faith, to marry the love of her life with the blessing of a kadi. She didn’t just walk through fire—she danced through it, with grace and a quiet determination that puts all of us to shame.
And yes, she chose silence. Fifty years of it. We are not here to judge. Some people fight by marching in the streets; others fight by surviving long enough to tell the story that exposes the hypocrisy of an entire nation. Kartina survived, and that alone is a victory. A victory over stigma, over bureaucracy, over the endless moral policing that has turned Malaysia into a theatre of fear for its trans citizens.
So let me say this clearly: Wake up, Malaysia! Your sons, daughters, and those beyond the binary deserve better than fear, secrecy and caning. Better than being hunted under Sharia laws, humiliated in the media, or treated as if their existence is a national inconvenience. Enough with the obsession over bathrooms, clothing, bodies, and “morality patrols.” There is nothing moral about cruelty.
Kartina’s life is a mirror held up to the country—a reflection of what Malaysia could be if it chose compassion over punishment, dignity over doctrine, humanity over hysteria. This woman lived her truth half a century before you were ready to hear it. Now that the story is out, don’t you dare look away. Listen. Learn. And for once, lead with love.