Bangladesh opens first Islamic school for transgender Muslims

DHAKA AFP Nov 6, 2020-Bangladesh opened its first Islamic school for transgender Muslims on Friday with clerics calling it a first step towards integrating the discriminated minority into society.   

The madrasa is one of a series of recent moves in Bangladesh to make life easier for the Muslim-majority nation’s up to 1.5 million transgender people.   

The LGBT community faces widespread discrimination in the South Asian country, with a colonial-era law still in place that punishes gay sex by prison terms, though enforcement is rare.  But about 50 transgender students read Koranic verses to mark the opening of the Dawatul Islam Tritio Linger Madrasa, or Islamic Third Gender School, on the outskirts of the capital Friday.   

 “I am ecstatic,” Shakila Akhter, a 33-year-old student, told AFP.   

 “We are grateful to the clerics for this beautiful move.” Akhter was born a girl and had always wanted to become a doctor or lawyer, but those ambitions were thwarted when she left home while still a child to join a transgender commune.