the mosque built by the “Hijras” or the right to pray for the third generation

The “Hijras”, a transgender community banned from praying in mosques in Bangladesh, eventually built their own, the first for a third gender in the predominantly Muslim country.

This modest building, made of sheet metal and on one level, offers hope to the hijras, a minority present throughout South Asia, whose number is estimated at about 1.5 million in this country of more than 170 million people.

“From now on, no one can ban hijras of the third gender from coming to our mosque for prayers,” Joyita Tonu, head of the hijra congregation, told the packed building.

“Nobody can make fun of us,” Tonu (28) told AFP, visibly moved under her white scarf.

The Dakshin Char Kalibari Mosque was built near Mymensingh, 100 kilometers north of the capital Dhaka, on the banks of the Brahmaputra River, on land given to hijras by the government after their expulsion from the local mosque.

“I no longer hoped to be able to pray in a mosque in my lifetime,” says Sonia, 42, on the verge of tears.

No burial

As a child, Sonia loved reciting the Koran, the holy Islamic scriptures she studied in seminary. But when she became a hijra as a teenager, she was banned from entering the mosque.

“People said to us, ‘What are you hijras doing in mosques? Pray at home. Don’t come to mosques anymore,'” she says, “It was so humiliating for us that we didn’t. We didn’t. go there anymore.”

“Now we have our own. No one can stand up to him,” she adds.

Dozens of hijras donated time and money to build the mosque, which was inaugurated in early March.

A cemetery was also attached to it, after last year it was forbidden to bury young hijras in the nearby cemetery, explains Tonu.

“It is the first mosque in the country dedicated to hijras, the third gender,” says Mufti Abdur Rahman Azad, whose charity Dawatul Coran runs numerous Quranic seminars for hijras.

He said hijras from the northern border district “tried to build a mosque” in February but were “stopped by local Muslims”.

The LGBTQ community remains subject to massive discrimination in the country, both by Bangladeshi society and under a law that has punished homosexuality – punishable by life imprisonment – since colonial times.

But hijras benefit from increasing legal recognition in Bangladesh.

Since 2013, they have the right to vote as such, officially registered under the status of “third gender”.

Some entered politics at the national level, and one of them was elected mayor of a rural town for the first time in the country in 2021.

The bill also proposes to allow hijras to inherit, and the government has handed hundreds of them housing units, as part of a campaign to redress the injustices suffered.

But radical Islamists stigmatize this beginning of recognition in national school textbooks. Thousands of people demonstrated in January against these works, calling on the authorities to demand their review.

“All human beings”

The imam of a mosque, Abdul Motaleb, aged 65, condemns those who punish hijras.

“They are like all the creatures that Allah created,” claims the white-bearded priest.

“We are all human. Some are men, some are women, but all are human. Allah revealed the Holy Qur’an to everyone, so everyone has the right to pray, no one can be expelled.”

According to the Imam, many Bangladeshis could learn from the faith and strength of the Hijra.

“Since I came to their mosque, I have been impressed by their character and their actions,” he says. “They are better than us.”

Their mosque is already eroding prejudices. For the second week in a row, Tofazzal Hossain, a 53-year-old local resident, dedicated his Friday prayers to the third-rate mosque.

He assures that life and prayer with hijras overcame his “distorted understanding”.

“When they started living with us, many people said a lot of things”, he recalls, “but we realized that their words are not fair, their life is as legitimate as the life of other Muslims”.

As for Tonu, she just wants to expand the mosque, dreaming of five floors to accommodate more people. “God willing, we will get there very soon,” she said, “so that hundreds of people are praying together.”