Jim Beaux
11-15-2008, 03:12 PM
Indonesia has the 4th largest population in the world (USA 3rd and Brazil 5th).
Article from Times of India
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Rest_of_World/Indonesian_transgendered_find_refuge_in_Islamic_sc hool/articleshow/3699977.cms
Indonesian transgendered find refuge in Islamic school
YOGYAKARTA (Indonesia): Heavyset and wearing the pink Islamic
headscarf and matching flowing clothes of a pious Indonesian
housewife, 48-year-old Maryani says her penis is a gift from God.
Born as a boy and raised as a Catholic, Maryani spent years of
drinking and selling sex on the streets as part of this city's
transgendered community before discovering Islam.
Now, with her eight-year-old adopted daughter Rizky Aryani scrambling
across her sturdy thighs, Maryani says her job is to bring Islam to
her fellow "waria," as transgendered people are known here.
Tucked into a small alley in Yogyakarta, Maryani's house has been
turned into Indonesia's first Islamic school set up specifically for
waria.
The school is named Senin-Kamis, meaning Monday-Thursday. And twice a
week, around 20 waria in tight jeans, skirts, straightened hair and
fastidiously applied makeup come in -- many bleary eyed from a long
night of drinking and searching for clients -- to study the Koran and
get better acquainted with their religion.
"Waria are people too, we want to be religious. We have a right to
heaven and we have a right to hell. Because we've been given life we
have to remember God," Maryani says.
"I'm thankful to God I've been given this fate, that I live like this."
Indonesia's waria -- their name is a portmanteau of the words for
"woman" and "man" -- have a long history here as a third sex, neither
man nor woman, in the world's largest Muslim-majority country.
Article from Times of India
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Rest_of_World/Indonesian_transgendered_find_refuge_in_Islamic_sc hool/articleshow/3699977.cms
Indonesian transgendered find refuge in Islamic school
YOGYAKARTA (Indonesia): Heavyset and wearing the pink Islamic
headscarf and matching flowing clothes of a pious Indonesian
housewife, 48-year-old Maryani says her penis is a gift from God.
Born as a boy and raised as a Catholic, Maryani spent years of
drinking and selling sex on the streets as part of this city's
transgendered community before discovering Islam.
Now, with her eight-year-old adopted daughter Rizky Aryani scrambling
across her sturdy thighs, Maryani says her job is to bring Islam to
her fellow "waria," as transgendered people are known here.
Tucked into a small alley in Yogyakarta, Maryani's house has been
turned into Indonesia's first Islamic school set up specifically for
waria.
The school is named Senin-Kamis, meaning Monday-Thursday. And twice a
week, around 20 waria in tight jeans, skirts, straightened hair and
fastidiously applied makeup come in -- many bleary eyed from a long
night of drinking and searching for clients -- to study the Koran and
get better acquainted with their religion.
"Waria are people too, we want to be religious. We have a right to
heaven and we have a right to hell. Because we've been given life we
have to remember God," Maryani says.
"I'm thankful to God I've been given this fate, that I live like this."
Indonesia's waria -- their name is a portmanteau of the words for
"woman" and "man" -- have a long history here as a third sex, neither
man nor woman, in the world's largest Muslim-majority country.