Bengali, Muslim

Bangladeshis are one of the three largest foreign communities in Bahrain, roughly 110,000 to 150,000 people, almost all Bengali-speaking Sunni Muslim men from the districts of Chattogram, Chandpur and Brahmanbaria. They came in large numbers from the 1990s to build, clean and staff the island's construction sites, cold stores, salons, groceries and scrap yards, and many now run small businesses of their own. Since 2018 Bahrain has frozen new labour visas for Bangladeshis, so the community is ageing in place, with many men separated from their families for years and a large share working without valid papers. On 21 February and at Pohela Boishakh they gather at the embassy and the Bangladesh School in Salihiya, founded in 1996, to sing Bengali songs and mark their language and new year.

Bangladeshis are the largest foreign labour community in Iraq, an estimated 200,000 to 250,000 men, more than half of them without valid papers. Most came in the 2010s and 2020s through recruitment agencies or on visit and pilgrim visas, and they now sweep the streets for city councils, clean homes, shops and the great shrines of Karbala and Najaf, and labour on building sites from Basra to Erbil. Nearly all are Sunni Muslims from rural Bangladesh, working in Shia shrine cities whose pilgrim seasons of Ashura and Arbaeen bring their busiest weeks. Since 2024 they have faced mass deportations and a ban on new work visas, even as the two governments negotiate regular recruitment and an amnesty.

Bangladeshis are one of the largest Asian communities in Jordan, most of them young women who sew clothing for export in the factories of the Qualified Industrial Zones at Al-Hassan near Irbid, Ad-Dulayl and Sahab, while others work in Amman households, street cleaning and construction. They live in employer dormitories, some housing more than ten thousand women, and work shifts of twelve to fourteen hours at peak season. Contact between workers and Arab supervisors has produced a pidgin of its own, Jordanian Bengali Pidgin Arabic. Most are Sunni Muslims from rural Bangladesh who came on short contracts from the 2000s onward to send money home.

Bangladeshis are Kuwait's third-largest foreign community, about 333,000 people in mid-2026, almost all of them Bengali-speaking Muslim men who left villages in districts such as Cumilla and Chandpur to work as cleaners, labourers, drivers and household staff. Many owe their jobs to a visa trade in which brokers charge up to 800,000 taka for a work permit that officially costs a few dinars, and a Bangladeshi member of parliament was jailed in Kuwait in 2021 after his cleaning companies brought in thousands of workers who had paid for their jobs. Over 86,000 work in private homes, and others sweep Kuwait's streets, airport and government buildings for some of the lowest wages in the country. In 2025 their embassy set the first minimum wages for Bangladeshis in Kuwait, a sign of how little protection they had before.

Bangladeshis are Lebanon's second-largest migrant community after Ethiopians, about 40,000 people, both men and women. The men sweep streets, guard and clean apartment buildings, pump fuel and work in bakeries, mills and workshops, while the women work as live-in maids; many came through brokers who charged them heavily for visas that left them tied to one sponsor. Almost all are Sunni Muslims who pray in local mosques, with a Hindu minority, and many share crowded rooms in poorer neighbourhoods of Beirut and its suburbs or in towns of the south. The 2019 crash wiped out their dollar wages, and in 2026 Israeli strikes killed at least five Bangladeshi workers, including two from Satkhira district whose home in Zebdine near Nabatieh was hit by a drone.

About 23,000 Bangladeshis live in Libya, nearly all young Muslim men from rural Bangladesh who came for construction, cleaning, factory and farm work. Unlike most migrants in Libya, more than half live in the east: Benghazi alone holds about 10,000, many of them flown in on visas sold by brokers, and others live in the coastal towns of Zliten, Misrata and Sirte and in Tripoli. Libya has become the main launching point for Bangladeshis trying to reach Italy by sea, and every few weeks a charter flight carries home 150 to 180 men released from detention centres such as Ganfouda in Benghazi. They speak Bengali among themselves, follow the Hanafi school with the saint and shrine devotion of Bengali Islam, and have no mosque, school or association of their own in Libya.

Bangladeshis are Oman's largest foreign community, about 630,000 people, outnumbering even the Indians, and almost all of them are Bengali-speaking Muslim men who came from villages in districts such as Cumilla, Brahmanbaria and Chandpur. They build, clean, cut hair, wash clothes, tend date and vegetable farms on the Batinah coast, fish, drive and keep small shops in every town of the country. Many came on a so-called free visa, paying an agent around 1,200 rials and a sponsor a monthly fee to work for whoever would hire them, and so many fell out of status that Oman stopped issuing visas to Bangladeshis in October 2023, a ban only partly lifted since. Once a year thousands gather for the Bengali New Year fair at Barka, with Bangladeshi food, songs and village games.

Bangladeshis are Qatar's second-largest foreign community, about 473,000 people, almost all of them men who came alone on two-year contracts to build the stadiums, metro lines and towers of the World Cup era and to clean, drive and guard the city since. Most live in company camps in the Industrial Area west of Doha, where they share rooms with men from the same home district, cook rice and fish curry together and play cricket in Asian Town on their day off. They are Bengali-speaking Sunni Muslims with a small Hindu minority, and the embassy-run Bangladesh MHM School in Abu Hamour, founded in 1979, serves the few families. They are joined by Bengali-speaking Muslims from West Bengal in India, mostly from Murshidabad, Malda and Nadia districts, who share their language, faith and village ways and work beside them in the same trades and camps, though no one has counted them. Recruitment debts, traded visas and unpaid wages weigh on many, and more than a thousand Bangladeshis died in Qatar in the decade before the 2022 World Cup.

Bangladeshis are the largest foreign community in Saudi Arabia, over two million people at the 2022 census, nine in ten of them men (some 54,000 more who hold Bangladeshi passports are Rohingya, a people of their own), and the kingdom takes two of every three Bangladeshis who go abroad to work. Most come from the villages of Comilla, Chittagong, Noakhali, Brahmanbaria, Tangail and Sylhet, speaking Bengali, Chittagonian or Sylheti at home, with a few Buddhist and Christian hill people, often after paying brokers several years' wages for a visa, and they sweep the streets of Riyadh and Jeddah, build, clean hospitals and malls, farm date palms, work in shops and factories, and, increasingly, serve as housemaids. The Batha market quarter of Riyadh, with its Bengali grocers, barbers and money-transfer shops, is their best-known gathering place, and Bangladesh International Schools in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam teach the children of the few who bring families. Nearly all are Sunni Muslims who pray in the kingdom's mosques and count work near Mecca and Medina a blessing, while a small Hindu minority worships in private. About 1,600 Bangladeshi workers' bodies come home from the kingdom each year, a toll of heat, accidents, overwork and fires.

About 1.2 million Bangladeshis live in the Emirates, the third-largest foreign community after Indians and Pakistanis, almost all of them men from village and district networks in Cumilla, Chattogram, Noakhali, Sylhet and other districts who work two-year contracts in construction, cleaning, factories, farms and transport; nearly 8,000 of them drive Dubai's taxis. They share rooms in labour camps and crowded flats in Deira, Sharjah's Rolla and Abu Dhabi's Mussaffah, cook rice and fish curry together and send home more money than Bangladeshis in any other country. Bengali-speaking Muslims from India's West Bengal live and pray alongside them. In July 2024 dozens were jailed for marching in support of the uprising back home and later pardoned and deported, and in 2026 several were killed by debris from Iranian missiles and drones while at work.