Quranic school for transgender people opens in Bangladesh

In Dhaka, a Koranic school has just opened especially for transgender people, with the aim of helping this community excluded from the education system.

Here, the first students of this school read the Koran during a seminar on November 6, 2020. Munir UZ ZAMAN / AFP

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2 min

In Bangladesh, a Koranic school has just opened especially for transgender people in order to help this community excluded from the education system.

It is the first of its kind.

The Muslim-majority country recently passed several laws to recognize transgender people and provide them with new rights.

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With our regional correspondent

,

They are called "hijras" in Bangladesh and the subcontinent.

According to traditions, these transgender people hold spiritual powers, which allow them to cast spells.

They are therefore feared and ostracized, and are therefore not accepted in schools and often end up prostituting themselves.

This new Koranic school, reserved for these transgender people, is therefore a godsend.

It is housed in a small building in Dhaka, the capital, and accommodates up to 150 “hijras”, most of them already adults.

They will receive lessons in English, Bengali, mathematics as well as the Koran.

The clerics who have taken this initiative say that Islam does not discriminate between the sexes and that it is not normal that these transgender people are thus excluded from society.

The

are indeed still banned

, which is a way to harass them.

But the situation is improving: transgender people were recognized in 2013 as a gender in their own right, and two years ago they were granted the right to vote and to be elected.

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• Bangladesh

• Human rights

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