By Asif Shahzad
ISLAMA BATH (Reuters) – A long white scarf on her head, Rani Khan gives daily Koran lessons at Pakistan’s first transgender-only madrasa, or Islamic religious school, which she set up herself using her life savings.
The madrasa is an important milestone for the LGBTQ community in the overwhelmingly fundamental Muslim country, where transgender people face ostracism, although there is no official restriction on them attending religious schools or praying at mosques.
“Most families do not accept transgender people. They throw them out of their homes. Transgender people turn to wrongdoing,” said Khan, 34, while other transgender people, with their heads covered in the same way, back and forth behind her. swung and recited Quran verses. .
“At one time I was one of them too.”
Khan held back tears and remembers being denied by her family at 13 and forced to beg.
At 17, she joined a transgender group and danced at weddings and other functions, but it stopped joining her religion after a dream in which a deceased transgender friend and fellow dancer pleaded with her to do something for the community. to do.
Khan studied the Koran at home and attended religious schools before opening the two-room madrasa in October.
“I teach the Qur’an to please God, to make my life here and in the afterlife,” Khan said, explaining how the madrasa provides a place for transgender people to worship, learn more about Islam and convert them. for actions from the past.
She says the school did not receive help from the government, although some officials promised to help students get jobs.
Along with some donations, Khan teaches her students how to sew and embroider, hoping to raise funds for the school by selling clothes.
The Pakistani parliament recognized the third generation in 2018, giving individuals fundamental rights, such as voting in official documents and choosing their gender.
Nevertheless, the transgender in the country remain on the fringes, and often have to resort to begging, dancing and prostitution to earn money.
The Madrasa could help assimilate people into the mainstream community, Hamza Shafqaat, deputy commissioner of Islamabad, told Reuters.
“I hope it will improve if you repeat this model in other cities,” he said.
A religious school for transgender people has opened in Dhaka, the capital of nearby Bangladesh, and last year a Christian transgender group started its own church in Pakistan’s busy port city of Karachi.
In the 2017 census of Pakistan, about 10,000 transgender people were recorded, although the rights for trans rights say that number could now be more than 300,000 in the country of 220 million.
“It gives my heart peace when I read the Koran,” said one madrasa student, Simran Khan, who is also eager to learn life skills.
“It’s much better than a life full of insults,” the 19-year-old added.
(Reporting and writing by Asif Shahzad; editing by Gibran Peshimam and Karishma Singh)