into two groups: those whose feminine traits seem unchangeable, despite the person’s best efforts to stop them, and those whose traits are changeable but refuse to stop. Early Muslim scholars like Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī stated that all mukhannathun must make an effort to cease their feminine behavior, but if this proved impossible, they were not worthy of punishment. Those who made no effort to become less "effeminate", or seemed to "take pleasure in (his effeminacy)", were worthy of blame. By this era, mukhannath had developed its association with homosexuality, and Badr al-Dīn al-ʿAynī saw homosexuality as "a more heinous extension of takhannuth", or effeminate behavior. Ibn ʿAbd al-Bāŕr stated that mukhannathun in his era were "known to be promiscuous", and resembled women in "softness, speech, appearance, accent and thinking". These mukhannathun were the ones initially allowed to be the servants of women, as they did not demonstrate any physical attraction to the female body. Modern views While sometimes classified as transgender individuals, mukhannathun as a group do not fit neatly into any one of the Western categories of gender or sexuality used by the LGBT community. Although they were probably not predominantly cisgender or heterosexual, it cannot be said that they were simply either homosexual males or transgender women. There was too much variety between one mukhannath and the next to determine a specific label for their gender or sexual identity, and the term's meaning changed over time. Western scholars Aisya Aymanee M. Zaharin and Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli view the term mukhannath as referring to men who are "obviously male" and behave like women, but do not want to undergo sex reassignment surgery, in contrast to transgender or intersex people. In the late 1980s, Mufti Muhammad Sayyid Tantawy of Egypt issued a fatwa supporting the right for those who fit the description of mukhannathun to have sex reassignment surgery; Tantawy seems to have associated the mukhannathun with the concept of hermaphroditism or intersex individuals. Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued similar fatwas around the same time. Khomeini's initial fatwa concerned intersex individuals as well, but he later specified that sex reassignment surgery was also permissible in the case of transgender individuals. Because homosexuality is illegal in Iran but gender transition is legal, some gay individuals have been forced to undergo sex reassignment surgery and transition into the opposite sex, regardless of their actual gender identity. Due to Khomeini's fatwas allowing sex reassignment