Bangladeshi Sex Worker Receives Historic Funeral
In a historic act defying centuries of discrimination, a Bangladeshi woman just became the first sex worker to receive a formal Muslim funeral in the country’s largest brothel.
Life in the world’s largest brothels
Marginalized in life, the women who work in Bangladesh’s shadowy sex work industry seldom receive any more dignity in death. Although the country legalized prostitution in 2000, the heavily Muslim population still looks down on the world’s oldest profession. Muslim clerics have historically refused funeral rites to deceased sex workers, so community members bury them in unmarked graves and even throw bodies into the nearby river.
A coalition of sex workers and advocates aims to change all that.
When 65-year old Hamida Begum died, the group petitioned local police to mediate a discussion with a local imam. He reluctantly agreed to perform religious rites. On February 6, Begum became the first sex worker in perhaps centuries to receive a formal Muslim funeral.
Hundreds of people attended the historic burial, celebrating both Begum’s life and the important milestone. Begum’s daughter Laxmi expressed happiness at seeing her mother “treated like a human being.” A sex worker herself, Laxmi and other women in Daulatdia hope for a future free of discrimination based on their job.
Legal but socially unacceptable
Daulatdia, a dense village 100 miles west of Dhaka, is the largest of Bangladesh’s twenty legally recognized brothels. Located at the intersection of two major rivers, the village plays host to thousands of traveling workers, mostly men, looking to fill time between ferry trips.
Its narrow alleyways are home to over 1,500 women and girls, the anchor of the community’s chief economic driver. Many have lived here their entire lives, born into the trade or sold into it at an early age. Underage and forced prostitution is illegal, but corrupt police frequently turn a blind eye to unlicensed workers and abusive conditions. Exorbitant rents and the high price of everyday goods trap residents in a cycle of poverty. Workers stay because they lack other options. “I’m just here for survival,” says one woman.
Imam faces conservative backlash
Soon after Begum’s funeral, the imam who performed the funeral rites faced backlash from local villagers. Many in the conservative Muslim community have reacted with confusion and anger toward the imam. This has prompted him to vow not to perform any more religious funerals for sex workers.
Other imams disagree. “There is no connection between the work of a person and a janaza (funeral),” said Moalana Amzad Hossain, a Muslim cleric. In his eyes, anyone “with faith in Allah and Namaz(Islamic prayer) deserves a proper Islamic burial.” He vows to perform a Muslim burial for anyone who requests it.
Some Catholic clergy also believe sex workers, like anyone else, deserve a religious funeral. “Death frees all from worldly connections,” asserts Father Liton H. Gomes. Final judgment, he says, should be left up to God.
In the Christian Bible, Jesus himself extended kindness and grace to sex workers, treating them with a respect they received from no one else. Many Christians take this to mean they, too, should offer kindness and reserve judgment. Yet Christian churches throughout history also shunned sex workers, prohibiting their burial in consecrated church graveyards.
A shameful hypocrisy
Activists also point out the hypocrisy of a society that allows sex work to flourish while denying basic human rights to those who provide these services. As long as customers demand it, sex work will continue to occupy the dark, marginal spaces where legal and ethical lines blur.
Local authorities and residents in Daulatdia hope that the funerals will continue. A more humane life for sex workers begins, perhaps, with their acknowledgement as full human beings in death.
