2 - A Variety of Islamic Discourses on Hijra Identities in Bangladesh: Community, Contestation and Context

Dawatul Islam third gender Madrasa, a privately funded islamic religious seminary was founded in 2020 in Kamrangirchar, a working class area on the outskirts of Dhaka to provide free islamic education, especially lessons in the literacy and recitation of Quran and Arabic to hijra population. That the news hit both the national and international headlines and generated so much interest and attention has partly to do with the assumption that the gender-nonconforming hijra identities do not sit well with Islam, the majoritarian religion in Bangladesh. While hijra-trans entanglement with various Islamic traditions has long been part of Bangladeshi social structure, socio-cultural discourses that deem the relationship between Islam and hijra identities to be unproblematic are in wide circulation as much as discourses that propound incommensurability between Islam and the hijra subject positions.

Drawing on a range of sources including oratorial and discursive performances by sellers of sexual medicine on footpaths in urban dhaka, recently published pamphlets on hijra identity by Islamic scholars, Islamic sermons on gender/sexual transgression and interviews with islamic preachers and hijra interlocutors, this presentation will focus on the the way hijras in Bangladesh are variably construed in public imagination. A focus on these discourses and ideological positionings brings into view various contestations currently unfolding around the draft Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Act likely to be put into practice before the upcoming national election in January 2024.