Pakistan’s first transgender-only madrasa breaks barriers

 

A long white shawl on her head, Rani Khan gives daily Quran lessons at Pakistan’s first transgender-only madrasa, a religious school she set up herself using her life savings. The school is an important milestone for the LGBTQ community in the Muslim-majority country, where transgender people face ostracism, even though 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,” Khan, 34, said, as other transgender people, their heads similarly covered, swayed back and forth behind her, reciting verses from the Quran. “At one time, I was also one of them.” Holding back tears, Khan recalled how she was disowned by her family at 13 and forced into begging. 

At 17, she joined a transgender group, dancing at weddings and other functions, but quit it to connect with her religion after a dream in which a deceased transgender friend and fellow dancer pleaded with her to do something for the community. Khan studied the Quran at home and attended religious schools, before opening the two-room madrasa in October. 

 “I’m teaching the Quran to please God, to make my life here and in the hereafter,” Khan said, explaining how the school offered a place for transgender people to worship, learn about Islam and repent for past actions. She says the school has not received aid from the government, although some officials promised to help students find jobs. 

 Along with some donations, Khan is teaching her students how to sew and embroider, in hopes of raising funds for the school by selling clothing. Pakistan’s parliament recognised the third gender in 2018, giving such individuals fundamental rights such as the ability to vote and choose their gender on official documents. Nonetheless, the transgender community remains on the margins in the country, and often has to resort to begging, dancing and prostitution to make a living. 

The madrasa could help trans people assimilate into mainstream society, Islamabad Deputy Commissioner Hamza Shafqaat told the Reuters news agency. “I’m hopeful that if you replicate this model in other cities, things will improve,” he said. A madrasa for transgender people has opened in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, and last year, a Christian transgender group started its own church in Pakistan’s bustling southern port city of Karachi. Pakistan’s 2017 census recorded about 10,000 transgender people, though trans rights groups say the number could now be well over 300,000 in the country of 220 million. “It gives my heart peace when I read the Quran,” said 19-year-old school student, Simran Khan, who is also eager to learn life skills. “It is much better than a life full of insults.”  

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Why is there no sectarian divide in the transgender community?

From a child tutored by eunuchs to a Quran teacher: The story of Jameela

Jameela, born a transgender in 1941, has never felt comfortable in her entourage in Pakistan.

Her mother died when she was four years old, and her father sent her to live with her stepmother in Karachi.
At her all-girl middle school, Jameela was constantly teased for her looks and style.

So when a eunuch named Pasham Fakir came to her house and asked her stepmother to hand her over to him, and despite being refused, Jameela went without telling anyone.

Pasham took the 10-year-old girl to his house in Garhi Yaseen near Shikarpur where she began her ‘training’ as a eunuch.

Jameela recalled that period to The Express Tribune newspaper in Pakistan: “I lived with him for three years but I wanted to get away because I didn’t like his company. Luckily, the fakir (spiritual guru) took me to Hazrat Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai’s shrine for the annual Urs celebrations, where eunuchs come together from every part of the country.”

This is where Jameela met her new guru, Fakir Ameer Zadi, also known as Saboo, who adopted her after paying Rs5,000 to Pasham.
Saboo took Jameela to Sukkur. With his permission, Jameela purchased a house at Takkar Muhalla in 1970.

One day, Jameela learned from the newspaper that her brother had been killed in a robbery. “His death was a turning point in my life. A female neighbor taught me how to read the Holy Quran. With Allah’s grace, things just fell into place for me after this,” she told Sarfaraz Memon from the Express Tribune.

Jameela began teaching her neighbor’s child the Quran and soon the number of students grew day by day.

Today, she has a total of 450 students, who she teaches in seven different shifts without any charge, reported the Express Tribune. “A student’s mother sends Jameela two meals a day and offers to wash and iron her clothes. Since she teaches her students free of charge, their parents give her money and clothes as gifts. Jameela said she was lucky enough to perform Hajj four times and Umrah once,” writes Memon.

“Allah created me the way I am, but nowadays being a eunuch has become a profession,” she said with regret, adding, “teenage boys turn into fake eunuchs by taking hormonal injections and this is a big sin” she said.

Jameela’s story raises many concerns about the conditions, rights and treatment of sexual minorities in Pakistan.

In a recent article published in The Nation, Shahnaz Khan wrote that eunuchs “are one of the most marginalized groups, not only ostracized by society, but also abandoned by their own parents at a young age.
Under these circumstances, recent news of the Supreme Court taking notice of this situation gives some hope that their lot is about to change. Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry has directed that the department that handles national identity cards, NADRA, create a column on the registration card where they can list their sex as she-male. Also, parents abandoning transgender children and gurus forcing them into prostitution will face criminal charges."

Last year, Reuters reports that orders went out from the Supreme Court to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to enroll eunuchs as voters, a development that accords the basic right to a much mistreated community. It is estimated there are between 80,000 and 300,000 members of the transgender community, locally referred to as hijras, in Pakistan.
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