ShiaMuslim:

At least you are making some sense for the first time and you are not lying.
In every law, there are people who try to beat the gun and abuse the intent of the law. If you look at Islamic practices, you can find everyone that has been exploited for the wrong purpose by mischievous people.
Secondly, to us, the sharia is not holy. The sharia was not revealed. The Quran is holy. The sharia is based on interpretation of laws by fallible scholars, via the Quran and authentic Hadith, be they Sunni or Shia scholars. Those scholars are neither holy/infallible imams of the Ahlul Bayt (as) nor prophets. So these laws can be reviewed, annulled or adjusted if the bad is weighted to be more than the good. I'd leave that for the Iranians and their leaders/scholars to decide for themselves and what is good for them in sex change.
Further it is very possible to find another Shia ayatollah who views the permission by Ayatollah Khomeini on sex change to be invalid and haram. In Shia Islam, our scholars are mujtahids. The concept of ijtihad did not stop as it stopped in Sunnism with the four scholars of the four Sunni schools of thought. That is why in Shia Islam, the highest scholars can and are permitted to hold different views and opinions in interpretation. That will keep the religion fresh, dynamic, for all times and progressive. So there is no question about whether the fatwa of Ayatollah Khomeini can be wrong. It can. That is why in Shia Islam, based on the open concept of ijtihad among the highest scholars (marjaiyyah) who issue fatwas, the ordinary Shia (laity) can choose any among the 80 to 100 of them in the world to follow. You as a Shia can follow any of these scholars opinion and interpretation of Islamic laws and practices and you can also disagree with any of them. The concept of the marjaiyyah is for the laity to choose one of the ayatollahs and make him his source for emulation, as Sunnis follow one of the founders of the four Sunni schools only, and those four have died about a thousand years ago. We follow scholars that must be alive in terms of marjaiyyah or source of emulation called Taqlid. This means our scholars are not infallible and we accept criticism and improvement, as far as the criticism is of their legal opinion and interpretation and not of the fundamentals of the religion expressed unequivocally in the Holy Quran or the authentic Hadith.
So when your fellows want to turn this thread into a bashing exercise of Shia and they want to use it as launch pad to lie and talk nonsense, I simply laugh at what you do not know. You guys are used to anyone who knows some verses of the Quran and had memorized few fatwas with a long beard as worthy of being a scholar. And usually their views are put on par with the Quran and disagreeing with them can lead to Takfir. That's why you see Wahhabis can kill even themselves. Shia on the other hand do not go to such extremes and we view differences of opinions as healthy for our faith and progress as Muslims. And only the marjaiyyah-scholars with the title of ayatollah- that can issue fatwa for Shia. Not even our sheikhs issue fatwa!
In this way we are more organized and our scholars cannot become fatwa machines or government employees calling themselves muftis who make political fatwas to serve governments or tyrants as witnessed many times in the Sunni countries or even by terrorist groups. That is also why I'm Shia Islam not anyone calling himself scholar can call for jihad. Our scholarly system is based on the Imamate. When the ghaibatul kubrah of the 12th Imam (as) started, we are instructed to follow the fuqaha (plural of faqih). The scholar with title of ayatollah is the highest faqih we follow.the marjaiyyah gets its legitimacy from the Imamate and learning in the hawza and not through appointment.the Imamate is a divine station like prophethood.it is a reflection and successorship of prophethood. And both gain legitimacy from Allah (swt).
Both prophethood and Imamate are understood as political and spiritual leadership. The Sunni caliphate on the other hand doesn't get legitimacy from prophethood because you believe the Prophet left without any successor or system to choose a caliph and he left it for the people. Caliphate gets legitimacy from the people. And the Quran says Allah's choice is above ours and the Prophet has more right over us than we have over ourselves since the Shia believe the Prophet appointed a successor. We obey secular authorities on taqiyyah and for the sake of peace where do not have numbers and power (means) for the establishment of Islamic law. We were created on earth as khulafa of Allah and all authority must obey Allah and follow the line of prophethood and imamate to have divine approval/legitimacy for us to listen to and abide by. For a scholar to become an ayatollah or marja taqlid who can issue fatwa, he must have the approval of two existing and living ayatollahs in the hawza ilmiyyah (Islamic seminary in Qom or Najaf, the highest center of Shia learning equivalent to al azhar for Sunnis).

Main thread: https://www.nairaland.com/3213034/tragedy-sex-change-iran-aftermath#47571882