Promotion of transgender rights, according to liberals, is equivalent to promoting sexuality in a country where the majority of Muslims live.
On November 17, 2020, transgender people in Bangladesh’s capital city of Dhaka will learn how to read the Holy Quran in a third-gender Muslim convent known as “hijra.” Islamist extremists are protesting the legalization of trans people.
Islamist extremists in Bangladesh, which has a majority of Muslims, have begun to flex their muscles once more in recent weeks amid an ongoing controversy over transgender rights in the nation.
A professor at BRAC University was fired on January 23 for making anti-transgender remarks, and hundreds of students staged a protest rally in the nation’s capital, Dhaka.
The activists demanded that Asif Mahtab be reinstated in the university’s idea office. “We are Islam.” One of them told a local television station, “We have certainly come to study in the school to gain our faith.
Some of their training does, in fact, contain material that promotes homosexuality, the protesting individuals argued.
Mahtab gained national recognition after his speech on January 19 at a conference in Dhaka that targeted trans people went viral on Facebook.
The popular picture depicted Mahtab tearing down two pages of the brand-new history and social science curriculum for students in class VII, claiming that Sharifa is a trans person.
Mahtab asserted that such a campaign will result in a situation similar to that in the West, where, he added, 40% of the population has turned to sexuality, and that “Sharifa validates gayity.”
In order to demonstrate their opposition to the new text, he urged Muslims in Bangladesh to follow his example.
Mahtab was fired after liberals and secularists vehemently objected to his love talk and his act of tearing text pages over.
However, extreme clerics and radical political parties boldly backed him and called for his termination to be revoked.
Jihadists have likewise demanded that the school and its parent company, BRAC, be boycotted.
The National Teachers’ Forum, a group supported by the conservative political party Islami Andolon Bangladesh (IAB), organized the seminar.
Traditional speakers who criticized the current Awami League authorities for the new curriculum spoke at the event.
Muslims’ faith in a nation where 92 percent of the population is Muslim is undermined by the textbook education. The loudspeakers said during the conference that the majority neighborhood may make things right.
The IAB is renowned for its extreme demands, which include opposing women’s independence and enforcing sharia law.
It held a protest in Dhaka on January 19 to protest the new text education and call for the implementation of blasphemy laws.
The most recent incident is the fourth of its kind to target Bangladesh’s disadvantaged transgender community in the last few months.
A well-known trans activist was prevented from speaking at a women’s career festival last November at North South University, another prestigious private education institution in Dhaka. A group of traditional teachers and students protested, which led to this.
A community of hardline clerics started a hate campaign against transgender individuals earlier this month in an effort to stop the state from passing the law that would have protected them.
According to observers, Bangladesh, which was once known as a mild Muslim country, is now slowly but steadily becoming more Islamic. The robust opposition to the democratic legislation even among educated segments of the society is an indication of this.
Islamic militancy has recently resurfaced in the country of about 170 million people, and the Awami League state has been accused of courting radicals for political gain.
About 50 people have been murdered since 2013 by Islamic extremists pledging allegiance to international terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, including atheist blogs, progressive academics, writers, people of religious minorities, and foreigners.
Numerous suspected militants were killed in raids as a result of the government’s severe global onslaught, and hundreds more were detained and tried.
After reports by well-known non-Muslim artists were removed from a main school curriculum in 2017 and replaced with works by Muslim poets, the state came under fire.
This was in column with demands made by Hefazat-e-Islam, a significant Islamic conservative organization (Protectors of Islam).
Liberals and hardliners objected to the move, and as a result, the government revised the text and reinstated some of the posts.
It was the conservatives’ turn to criticize the government at the rally on January 23.
Promoting the trans area, according to Moontaseer Mamun, is equivalent to advocating sexuality because “it may be allowing people who intentionally change their sex organs to live up.”
Hijras and trans people represent different types of people, but we accept them because they are born with deficient sexual organs, according to Mamun.
In 2014, the Hijras—a term used to refer to slaves, transgender, and transgender people in South Asia—were officially recognized as the third sex in Bangladesh. Voting rights were granted to them in 2020.
But, hardliners in Islam contend that transgender and woman are two distinct categories of people. Mahtab and Mamun’s opinions are consistent with the Islamists’ perspective on trans people.
Hardline preacher Mizanur Rahman Sayed informed UCA News that Islam forbids synthetic gender transition.
Clerics at the Hathazari Madrasa, one of the oldest and biggest madrases in the southeast Chattogram district, declared transgender people to be haram (forbidden) on December 27 of last year.
The largest Islamic social gathering in Bangladesh, Jamaat-e-Islami, released a statement on January 25 praising Mahtab for his speech.
It claimed that the government “ruined individuals’ character by enforcing a curriculum devoid of morals and ideals.”
Hefazat-e-Islam released a speech praising Mahtab and calling for his reinstatement on the same day.
It referred to the trans population as “cursed and faith-destroying.”
It argued in a statement that the proposed transgender protection laws should not be passed, calling the theory “a psychological problem.”
A five-member authorities commission has been established by the Ministry of Education to examine the transgender narrative in the History and Social Science text for quality VII.
According to journalist, director, and human rights activist Shahriar Kabir, the continuous trans controversy is unrelated to Islam and is being staged by Islamist hardliners for political gain.
There are 12,629 trans people in Bangladesh who are referred to as Hijra, according to the 2023 people census.
The second sex is recognized by the law. They are citizens of the nation. They may be protected by the state, according to Kabir.
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