Cairo: Egypt’s leading Islamic Al Azhar University said on Thursday it would not allow an engineering lecturer to keep her post in the state-run institution after having undergone a sex change operation to become a woman.
The university, which applies a segregation policy, said it had rejected a request from the lecturer to be transferred to teach at the women-only part of the Al Azhar engineering school.
“We refused to allow the assistant professor to keep working in the university so that she would not face problems with students,” the university’s deputy president Tawfik Noor Al Deen said.
“Women students already know that this female teacher was previously a man. This can cause problems in dealing with her,” he said. “The decision was taken to protect the teacher’s reputation and is in the interest of male and female students.”
The university said that the lecturer will have to leave the institution for another university or an administrative post outside Al Azhar.
The lecturer, who has adopted the female name Nourhan after undergoing the operation, said she is ready to teach at any other university.
“I have been teaching for 12 years since 2003. So I have no problem working at another university,” she told local private TV station Ten. “But I cannot work in any administrative job.”
Nourhan, who did not give her age, said she had all her official identification documents changed, recognizing her new gender.
Sex change operations are not common in conservative Egypt.
The local lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community has often complained about social intolerance and police crackdown.
In February, an Egyptian transgender woman was sentenced to six years in prison on charges of promoting debauchery after posting videos online of her dancing, according to local media.
