The Story You Rarely Hear: Transgender Schools in a Muslim Country

In most Western media, being transgender and Muslim are treated like opposites. They are rarely imagined together without discrimination.

The story often depicts that gender diversity cannot exist in Muslim societies. How traditional cultural values are absolute, their rights are foreign and that is that.

In reality across South Asia, there is a centuries-old community known as the Hijra. Long before terms like “transgender” entered global conversations, Hijras were already living, blessing, and shaping society, sometimes on the margins, sometimes at its very core and today they are quietly opening schools. Schools for transgender young people that no one else would welcome.

Gender diverse communities in South Asia are not new. History dating back to the Mughal era have described individuals who lived their lives outside the male and female binary. These individuals served in professional roles, spiritual roles and often ceremonial roles too.

But what changed? The law.

Under British colonial rule, Hijra communities were criminalised and labelled “deviant,” forcing many further into poverty and exclusion. The stigma that persists today is a shadow of that period.

Yet the community endured.

In 2018, Pakistan passed the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, allowing transgender people to legally self-identify their gender. Long before Western media paid attention, Pakistan had also recognised a third gender category on national ID cards.

These changes did not erase discrimination. Violence, unemployment, and exclusion remain daily realities.

For many transgender young people, rejection begins at school.

A student starts expressing their gender differently. Classmates notice. Teachers grow uncomfortable. Families fear shame. Bullying escalates. Some children leave school. Others are quietly pushed out.

Education disappears, and with it, the future narrows. Without it, opportunities shrink. Many end up surviving through informal economies because mainstream doors remain closed.

Unless someone interrupts the cycle.

In cities like Lahore and Karachi, members of the Hijra community began creating classrooms for transgender youth.

Some initiatives have grown into more formal education settings. In Lahore, The Gender Guardian School, founded by Transgender activist Kami Sid provides formal education alongside vocational courses.

But many classrooms remain smaller, operating in rooms above community centres, sometimes hired buildings, sometimes empty halls. They rarely resemble a conventional school.

Inside these spaces, something rare is happening. Students are being taught Urdu, English, Mathematics, Computer skills, alongside other life skills.

What made these classrooms extraordinary, this was for many students the first space where no one treated them like a problem that needed fixing.This was a safe space where they could receive education like any other child, they were treated like young people with futures, ambition and dreams.

For generations, the Hijra community has functioned as a chosen family.

When Transgender youth are disowned by family, they often seek belonging within the Hijra community. These communities are led by elders called “Gurus”, the households within the communities form networks of protections and guidance.

The schools are an extension of that instinct.

From a Western perspective, Pakistan is rarely discussed as a place where gender diversity has historical roots. More often, the headlines focus on repression or extremism.

The Hijra community challenge these assumptions and remind us that Muslim societies, like every other society, carry contradictions. They carry a history that doesn’t fit neatly into mainstream headlines.

Pakistan is a country where transgender people can legally register their gender identity while still facing deep social stigma. It is also a country where marginalised communities create spaces of belonging when the state and society fail. Both realities exist at once.

The classrooms built by the Hijra community are small, often underfunded, sometimes fragile. They may never make international headlines but inside them, a quiet resistance is taking place.

Somewhere in Pakistan today, in a small classroom filled with borrowed desks and determined students, a young person who was once told they did not belong in education is learning again.

It may look ordinary from the outside.

But ordinary can be revolutionary.

Stories like these rarely make international headlines, yet they quietly reshape lives. If this story moved you, share it, talk about it, and challenge the narrow narratives we often hear about Muslim societies. Change does not always arrive loudly. Sometimes it begins in a classroom few people notice.