Bangladeshi gay couple marriage goes viral online, prompts incessant abuse

In breaking news, a Bangladeshi Muslim gay couple tied the knot in London, United Kingdom this past 19^th of March 2017. Mr Shahadat Hosain and his long-term partner Mr Masud Rana decided to tie the knot.

The union, which is a rather rare occurrence in its own right, in light of the fact that Mr Shahadat Hosain and his partner are both are reported atheist gathered even more attention when the news of its occurrence spread across social media platforms like wildfire. The couple tried desperately to keep the marriage as low-key as possible, leaving Walthamstow council (where they tied the knot) as soon as they had gone through the formalities, and inviting no-one apart from their best friend Mr Sujan Chandra Dev to the wedding, according to our sources.

Meanwhile, it is unclear as to how or when social media hawks caught wind of the couple’s union. But it created a domino effect which spread endlessly across popular social media platforms such as Twitter, FaceBook, Instagram.generating quite a bit of attention.

The vast majority, sadly, condemned the news and the couple’s ‘illicit relationship’. Some cited the rules of Islam that prohibit such relationships in order to vilify the couple, while some resorted to downright foul language and verbal abuse of all kinds. Indeed most of the write-ups and links shared or uploaded across the aforementioned platforms, regarding the couple’s marriage of course, were inundate with dozens of comments. While some did offer them their sympathies, the number of users actually congratulating them, were next to non-existent.

Some of those shared links and articles referred to above are given below,

https://www.facebook.com/boysloveworld71/posts/1684269248357985

https://www.facebook.com/BengaliFaizlamis/posts/2018045411788769

https://www.facebook.com/Almostidiot/posts/1004539943051865

https://www.facebook.com/groups/MairalaGroup.Net/permalink/1740828042678468/

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1819143381719194&id=100008706493453

Our readers are advised to exercise caution whilst going through the abovementioned links, as they contain some strong and explicit language. Worryingly enough some of the comments appeared to be rather extreme in nature, with some users threatening to kill the couple if they ‘ever get wind’ of them. There are some comments which we suspect to have stemmed from religiously extremists. The comments vary in nature, but have elements of religious extremism ingrained into them. A few links to those specific comments can of course be seen below. Please bear in mind again that the images contain strong language and are inappropriate for some of our readers. Proceed with caution.

It is hard to gauge what sort of effect it has had in Bangladesh, the newly wed couple’s country of origin of course, but it cannot have been a good one. Bangladesh as a nation, has a reputation for harbouring core fundamentalist ideals, and as such its society strictly abhors anything to do with homosexuality. Of course, it has devised a legalized method of punishing those who practice homosexuality, namely via the Bangladesh Penal Code 377. For now, our correspondent reports that it is strictly limited to soicl media now but ‘will not be long’ before it reaches Bangladesh’s national media and indeed other news local media outlets.

Our correspondent managed to round up a few of the local residents of Naraynganj (where Mr Hosain was born). The majority of them expressed great disdain over their union. A select few offered pity and sympathy rather than congratulations. There were few people who expressed their anger to the higher extent and told our correspondent that this entire act was nothing but a sin and a disgraceful act.

It is also worth mentioning that the same-sex marriage is perfectly legal in Britain. Legislation to allow same-sex marriage in England and Wales was passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom in July 2013 and came into force on 13 March 2014.

We did manage to track down Mr Hosain’s parents in his hometown of Naraynganj in Bangladesh. They however flatly refused to speak to our correspondent regarding the incident, and instead stated that Mr Hosain is ‘no longer a part of the family’.