Why a hardline religious party in Pakistan is backing transgender rights Memphis Barker reports from Islamabad A member of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-F (JUI-F), one Pakistan’s hardline religious parties, this month proposed […]

Memphis Barker reports from Islamabad

A member of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-F (JUI-F), one Pakistan’s hardline religious parties, this month proposed the country’s first piece of legislation aimed at protecting the rights of transgendered people.

The Transgender Bill 2017, which is expected to pass in the coming weeks, represents the most eye-catching sign of an awkward alliance between Pakistan’s increasingly visible transgender community and its fundamentalist religious wing.

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The support of the JUI-F is a “landmark”, says Mehlab Sheikh, a 25-year-old activist who helped to prepare the bill and identifies as a transgender woman. Most commentators expect that the Bill’s protections – which ensure transgendered individuals can inherit, for example – will soon become law.

It follows the issue of the state’s first ‘third-gender’ passport in June, one of a number of recent reforms that place Pakistan among the most liberal countries – bureaucratically – for transgender people worldwide. Activists, however, remain wary of religious support for their cause.

Why are they supporting the bill?

JUI-F politicians point to the backing of religious scholars to explain their soft-spot for transgender rights. In 2015, the Council of Islamic Ideology, an influential body that believes wife-beating is permissible and condones child marriage, issued a declaration of support for gender-fluid individuals. Last year it further confirmed a “fatwa” issued by 50 clerics against harassing the transgendered.

Part of the explanation for such support comes down to the history of so-called ‘hijras’ in South Asia, says Ms Sheikh. For centuries these sari-clad figures, who are almost exclusively born male, have danced at weddings and other ceremonies, sought out for their supposed power to confer blessings.

This tradition, however, is causing friction with the modern trans rights movement. “I am not intersex,” says Kami Sid, 27, the country’s first transgender model and a leading figure within it, “I’m not born with both genitalia. I always say that gender is in your head but they [religious parties] are not aware of these things.”

Ms Sid argues that the JUI-F, mindful of the swathe of recent coverage of transgender issues, “is using us for their own political purpose”.

Steps to soften image

The party has recently sought to soften its image in English-language publications, while those in Urdu – the language spoken by the majority of the population – still reflect the hardline leanings of its founder, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, a man once termed “Pakistan’s Osama Bin Laden”.

Meanwhile activists complain that political attention from the English-speaking elite has failed to prevent a rising tide of violence – and may even have encouraged it.

Trans Action Pakistan says that more than 50 transgender people were killed in a single province between 2015-16. One woman died of gunshot wounds outside a hospital, as doctors debated which ward to place her in.