[custom_adv] Bangladesh opened its first Islamic school for transgender Muslims on Friday with clerics calling it a first step towards integrating the discriminated minority into society. [custom_adv] The madrasa is one of a series of recent moves in Bangladesh to make life easier for the Muslim-majority nation's up to 1.5 million transgender people. [custom_adv] The LGBT community faces widespread discrimination in the South Asian country, with a colonial-era law still in place that punishes gay sex by prison terms, though enforcement is rare. [custom_adv] But about 50 transgender students read Koranic verses to mark the opening of the Dawatul Islam Tritio Linger Madrasa, or Islamic Third Gender School, on the outskirts of the capital Friday. [custom_adv] Akhter was born a girl and had always wanted to become a doctor or lawyer, but those ambitions were thwarted when she left home while still a child to join a transgender commune. [custom_adv] Azad said transgender people, known as Hijras in Bangladesh, have suffered too much.“For too long they have been living a miserable life. They can’t go to schools, madrasas or mosques. They have been victims of discrimination. We, society and the state are to blame for this,” he said. [custom_adv] “We want to end this discrimination. Allah does not discriminate between people. Islam treats everyone as a human being. Hijras should enjoy all rights like any other human being.” [custom_adv] In 2015 Islamist extremists hacked to death a leading gay activist and editor of an LGBT magazine, while other prominent homosexuals have since fled the country. [custom_adv] But steps forward have been made for the community. Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government has since 2013 allowed trans to be identified as a separate gender.
