Predators routinely target the most vulnerable because the likelihood of accountability is minimal. In Bangladesh, sexual abuse remains a pervasive issue within certain residential madrasahs, which cater to children from impoverished families. Unable to afford better alternatives, desperate parents rely on these low-cost institutions, unwittingly leaving their children exposed to exploitation.
There’s an incentive for madrasah teachers, students, and authorities to maintain a collective silence to protect their colleagues and the institution, because these seminaries are privately funded by local communities. Unlike other types of madrasahs (not that they’re paragons of virtue), they operate outside government oversight and enjoy near-complete administrative autonomy, rarely answering to anyone.
People involved with these madrasahs fear that if details of these crimes become public, they’ll lose their funding and livelihoods. They also fear that if these crimes are shown to be widespread across the system, the resulting outcry could cost them their credibility and autonomy.
The situation resembles the sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church in the West. Like the madrasah authorities, Church administrators chose to protect the institution’s public image and avoid legal trouble rather than protect children. They kept sensitive internal records from the public and obscured details of these crimes with euphemisms such as “inappropriate conduct.”
The Church also transferred priests instead of dismissing them or taking legal action. As a result, these predators ended up in new parishes, where they committed the same crimes repeatedly. Compounding the problem, social pressure from the Church and its allies in the community often forced victims and their families into silence. Eventually, journalists and activists uncovered evidence of the abuses and brought them to public attention, forcing the Church to act and disclose its records.
Although the Church faced consequences, a similar outcome may not follow in the case of these madrasahs. The chances of their losing funding or autonomy remain slim.
In highly secularized “Christian” countries, the Church has lost much of its political and social clout. In Bangladesh, the situation is the opposite. This particular madrasah network is a sought-after political ally and can influence election outcomes, especially outside major cities.
They have millions of students and teachers and, therefore, enormous street mobilization capacity. On the other side of the sexual abuse allegations, better-run madrasahs that provide better education and safety have fiercely loyal, grateful, and disciplined students. These students are prepared to go to great lengths for their teachers.
Thousands of these madrasahs are scattered across the country, and their connections form an influential rural network. They are deeply embedded in rural communities, where their influence can translate into votes for political parties.
Beyond the number of students, teachers, and seminaries, there are strategic considerations. For major political parties—whether secular or moderate Muslim—the specific madrasah network offers strategic advantages. Secular parties can ally with them to appear less confrontational toward Islam, while moderate parties can use them to contain political opponents on the Left and the Right.
Major parties can enlist madrasah leaders and respected clerics to issue fatwas on elections or political issues, potentially swaying millions of votes or mobilizing public support for themselves or against their opponents.
Working individually and with minimal organizational support, their students and graduates can exert considerable social influence as imams and clerics in rural areas. Unlike political parties, NGOs, or aid agencies, they do not even need offices or organizational bases to operate.
Given these political calculations, it’s difficult to imagine political parties confronting this madrasah network and jeopardizing their electoral prospects. As disturbing as it sounds, perhaps the best we can hope for is that the isolated cases that come to light are fairly prosecuted.
Other strategies would take too long to protect children who are being abused or will be abused after entering the system. The sheer number of seminaries, teachers, and students within the network means that Bengali Muslim equivalents of Oliver O’Grady can hide within it.
The state’s role in this trail of depravity must be addressed. Successive governments have failed these children. They sacrificed their safety for political gains, failed to confront the rapists, and allowed these crimes to spread across institutions and throughout the country.
They failed to register these institutions or establish minimum standards for the madrasah network. They offered children and their families no viable alternatives where they could receive better secular or religious education at the same or lower cost in safer facilities. The state’s apathy toward the victims amounts to inhuman cruelty.
In Spotlight (2015), the Oscar-winning film about a group of Boston Globe journalists uncovering sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, Stanley Tucci’s character summarized this collective failure:
“If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one.”
One or a few may have perpetrated the crimes, but the wider society remained silent and did nothing to stop them. The suffering of defenseless children was overlooked in pursuit of larger interests.
When I say defenseless, I mean there will be no human rights defenders by their side. There will be no foreign-funded NGOs to help them. Civil society will say little, fearing that speaking out might encourage “radicalization” and complicate its opposition to the usual excesses of counterterrorism.
We have failed these children as a society and as a country. Political expediency and the fear of alienating our support bases have brought us here. Our outrage will probably go no further than a few social media posts and will barely survive until the next case comes to light.
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Nayel Rahman is a political analyst