Child abuse in madrasas: Will the ulema continue to remain silent?

A teacher wearing a lungi and undershirt is mercilessly beating a child aged eight or nine with a thick stick held in both hands. When his arms grow tired, he kicks the child. Then, sitting in front of the child, he delivers repeated punches to the child’s face and stomach. Several children of the same age sit in a row, watching the scene in terror.

Countless people have seen this barbaric footage circulating on social media. I have seen it too.

Yet the scene is not new to me. I can still picture the second floor of the Gouranadi madrasa-mosque, where Mufti Huzur would beat us with all his might using a thick bamboo stick held in both hands. We little children watched our classmates writhe in pain and heard their piercing screams.

The students’ offence was that they had gone to watch a football match on television during the World Cup. And the stick in the teacher’s hands was actually a large ladle used to stir curry in an enormous cooking pot.

I remember the tip of a cane hurled by the teacher piercing Neyamat’s thigh, soaking the boy’s pyjama in blood. I remember a teacher kicking a child at one end of a huge hifz hall, a room for memorising the Quran, until the child rolled all the way to the other end. I remember heavy chunks of wood being chained to some children’s hands or feet to prevent them from escaping the madrasa.

The teachers were hardly remorseful. On the contrary, much like a teacher whose video has recently circulated on TikTok, showing him poking a child in the face with a cane and writing, “I really enjoy making children cry,” our teachers also made all sorts of callous jokes about the punishments they inflicted on students. Parents were even more extreme. When enrolling their children, they would tell the teachers, “Huzur, the flesh is yours, but the bones are mine,” implying they could punish them as long as they remained intact.

Physical punishment is not the only offence committed by madrasa teachers. Beyond fragmented discussions on social media, horrifying accounts of sexual abuse of children are now appearing in mainstream news media.

I suspect it would be difficult to find anyone who attended a madrasa in our time who had never heard of a teacher abusing a student. Today, cases of rape involving girls at female madrasas are also coming to light. There have even been allegations of killings following rape or of circumstances leading to suicide.

For example, on 19 May, the very day the Ramisa murder case was being discussed across the country, we saw reports of the body of Abdullah, a 10-year-old boy, hanging at a madrasa in Banasree. There were signs of sexual abuse around his anus. We also saw reports of a series of unnatural deaths at a female madrasa in Cumilla, with post-mortem examinations revealing signs of abuse. Teachers themselves have even been recording photographs or videos of children studying and posting them on social media with objectionable and suggestive comments.

It is therefore evident that child abuse in madrasas has evolved into a range of offences. These include: (1) physically punishing children; (2) raping boys; (3) raping girls; (4) killing children after abuse or creating circumstances that drive them to suicide; (5) recording acts of child abuse and posting them on social media; and (6) circulating children’s photographs or videos with objectionable comments. Each of these constitutes a serious offence under Bangladesh’s criminal law, with penalties ranging from a minimum of five years’ imprisonment to the death penalty.

Although laws exist, their enforcement in practice is quite the opposite—a case of rules existing on paper but not in reality.

An extreme example is the alleged sexual abuse of a nine-year-old student at a madrasa in Tangail Sadar.

According to the child’s parents, the madrasa’s headteacher would frighten children by invoking jinn and touch them on intimate parts of their bodies. He allegedly instructed them to record these acts on mobile phones. Although the accused teacher was arrested, he was released on bail just two months later and opened another madrasa under a new name—with the approval of the madrasa education board.

How was this possible?

When asked by Netra News about the matter, Maulana Nadvi, chief director of the Befaqul Madarisil Arabia, the leading board of Qawmi madrasas, said, “It may be that the new registration was obtained in a different name through someone else.”

Expressing his own helplessness, he added, “Legally, the board does not have the authority to do anything.” The question is: Does the board lack even the authority to hand an accused person over to the law enforcement authorities or take the initiative to file a case itself? Did it do either?

A few weeks later, he claimed on social media that, of 57 complaints concerning madrasas received over the previous three months, 52 were false and part of conspiracies. Yet he presented no evidence and did not consider it necessary to tell the media what kind of investigation had been conducted.

Why, after one case of child abuse, rape or murder after another, was the first priority of the institutions and boards to prove their own innocence rather than ensure accountability? Seeking an answer to this question reveals that the problem is not merely a matter of a few individuals with perverse tendencies; it reflects a deep structural failure.

Long-term data published by the Bangladesh Peace Observatory in The Daily Star indicate that most child abuse occurs within families or familiar environments. Hundreds of children are also being abused by teachers at schools, universities and private tutoring sessions, as well as at madrasas.

Therefore, the problem cannot simply be reduced to a “madrasa problem”. But that does not diminish the responsibility of madrasa authorities. The question is not about comparing rates of abuse. It is about the role institutions and boards play when crimes occur under their watch.

One established criminological theory is the “routine activity theory”. It holds that three elements must converge for a crime to occur: a person motivated to commit a crime, an accessible victim, and the absence of a capable guardian.

The existing structure of residential hifz institutions and madrasas makes all three conditions unusually easy to fulfil. Children are separated from their families; supervision is concentrated in the hands of one or two teachers; there is no independent third-party monitoring; and teachers’ absolute authority is treated as beyond question.

This is not an inherent defect of religious institutions. The risk increases in any closed institution with inadequate supervision and unchecked authority. Similar patterns have been observed worldwide in orphanages, boarding schools and sports academies. But failing to take measures to mitigate known structural risks creates serious institutional responsibility.

In psychology, this kind of tendency can be explained through the concept of “moral licensing”. Religious identity can create an aura around a person in the eyes of society, making it difficult for suspicion to take hold. A robe and cap, being a hafiz of the Quran, or being addressed as “Huzur” are all powerful symbols of trustworthiness in society. Offenders may consciously or unconsciously exploit this perception.

The madrasa in Tangail where a teacher allegedly touched children after frightening them with stories of jinn provides a classic example of this tactic. Fear and religious authority are combined to place a child in a psychological state in which resistance or disclosure may seem unimaginable.

When the truth finally comes out, the victim suffers a second injury if the institution refuses to believe the child and instead tries to cover up the incident.

Psychology calls this “institutional betrayal”, which can cause longer-lasting psychological harm than the original abuse itself.

Against this backdrop, Befaqul Madarisil Arabia’s claim that the allegations amount to “propaganda” must be examined fairly.

The concern is not entirely unfounded: some allegations may be politically motivated or arise from misunderstandings, as in the case of Mozaffar, an innocent teacher from Netrokona who spent seven years in prison.

Likewise, the risk of sweeping allegations against religious institutions is real. But the solution is not to deny the truth; it is to ensure transparency. If claims of false allegations are genuine, the evidence should be presented through the findings of an independent investigation. Merely citing a number in a statement does not discharge one’s responsibility.

Another tension is at work here, which might be described in philosophical terms as the “burden of sacredness”. The more an institution becomes a symbol of religious sanctity, the more its criticism is liable to be misinterpreted as an “attack on religion”. This misunderstanding silences critics and gives offenders free rein. Islamic jurisprudence, however, offers an effective solution.

One recognised principle of fiqh, or Islamic jurisprudence, is ‘sadd al-dhara’i,’ meaning “blocking the means or pathways that may lead to harm”. This principle should have been applied in madrasas before anything else, yet it is absent in practice.

Has any madrasa authority set an example by handing over to the law the teacher seen brutally beating a child in the footage circulating on social media? Instead, the number of offences continues to rise amid the authorities’ indifference.

According to data from the human rights organisation Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK), at least 52 children suffered sexual abuse in madrasas last year, three of whom died. Between 2020 and 2025, at least 211 incidents of rape and sexual abuse at madrasas across the country were reported in the media.

Human rights activists believe the actual number is higher because most incidents are suppressed through local informal arbitration.

The problem of abuse in madrasas is not unique to Bangladesh. Similar patterns have emerged in other countries, but they have chosen the path of reform.

In Senegal, abuse had continued for years within daaras, residential Quranic education centres. Following a ruling by the international child rights body ACERWC in 2021, the state began a programme to bring daaras under the formal education system and develop what it called “modern daaras”.

In Pakistan, the leaking of a video in 2021 showing a senior teacher named Mufti Azizur Rahman raping someone triggered widespread outrage. Subsequently, madrasa boards introduced stricter codes of conduct, and the federal education ministry brought all madrasas under government registration.

In Indonesia, the ministries responsible for women and children’s affairs and religious affairs are working together to prevent abuse in Islamic boarding schools. Measures include establishing a child protection task force at every madrasa, installing confidential complaint boxes, setting up hotlines and making psychological screening mandatory for teacher recruitment.

Because Bangladesh’s Qawmi madrasas operate outside the government registration system, there are no background checks on teachers’ past records, no psychological screening and no independent mechanism to monitor compliance with the safeguards under the Children Act 2013.

To fill this gap, every madrasa must verify the backgrounds of teachers and staff, adopt policies restricting unsupervised one-to-one interactions, establish confidential complaint hotlines and set up independent child protection units recognised by the relevant boards. At the same time, non-residential alternatives to residential hifz programmes should be expanded for young children so that parents can remain regularly involved in their lives.

A similar instruction can be found in the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). When a group of adolescent boys and young men came to him to learn about religion, he permitted them to stay for no more than 20 days. Seeing how much they longed for their families, he affectionately told them: “Go back to your families, stay with them, teach them religious knowledge and enjoin good deeds. And pray as you have seen me pray” (Sahih Muslim, Hadith 631).

How, then, can it be justified to keep children aged six to 10 confined in enclosed rooms, separated from their families for years on end?

The safety of residential religious educational institutions cannot be left solely to the blind faith of parents. It is the responsibility of both the state and madrasa boards. If an institution, despite knowing the structural risks, focuses on protecting offenders rather than preventing or addressing abuse, its inaction amounts to nothing less than complicity in the crimes.

If the ulema do not clean up this rot within their own ranks, history will remember them not as guardians of religion but as silent accomplices to crime.

* Manzurul Haque is a senior sub-editor at Prothom Alo’s Religion Desk. Prothom Alo Bangla online published this article by Manzurul Haque on 29 July 2026. Recent incidents of child abuse in madrasas have once again sparked public debate. The article is being republished in view of readers’ interest.

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* The views expressed are the author’s own.