What was meant to be a place of learning turned into a site of horror for 14-year-old Farhan Ayaz. The boy died after allegedly being brutally tortured at an unregistered madrassa in Khwazakhela, Swat. Reports claim that 14-year old Farhan was beaten by not just one, but three religious instructors — the head cleric, his son, and a colleague — simply because he missed classes. He was rushed to the hospital in critical condition, but didn’t survive. His crime? Skipping lessons. His punishment? Death.
This isn’t an isolated incident and Farhan reportedly, had already complained about the beatings to his family earlier, who confessed to not having taken him seriously. (The Friday Times)
Earlier in May, a madrassa teacher in Muzaffargarh was arrested for allegedly raping an 11-year-old student inside the seminary’s premises. According to the FIR, the teacher took the child to his residential room and raped him twice. The case, registered under Section 376(iii) of the Pakistan Penal Code, is one of many. In fact, NGO Sahil’s Cruel Numbers report documented 1,630 cases of child abuse in the first half of 2024 alone. Out of these, over 800 were cases of sexual abuse, and dozens were linked to educational institutions, including madrassas. (via: Dawn)
But here’s the real problem: laws exist, yet they don’t apply everywhere.
Pakistan passed the Prohibition of Corporal Punishment Act in 2021, which was celebrated as a win for children’s rights. The law bans physical punishment in both public and private educational institutions. Social activists and musician Shehzad Roy has also played a crucial role in pushing this legislation forward. But does the law only apply to registered schools? Madrassas — especially those that are allowed to operate outside of the system, unregistered by any formal authority – what happens when abuse happens in such a place? Who takes responsibility? And does a minor, subjected to physical abuse, need to die for the story to make the news? What about countless children who must have been abused as well but nobody knows about them? What about countless parents who think it is okay for a teacher, a cleric, to hit a child if he misses school?
This is where the loopholes lie. We have parallel systems operating in Pakistan — the formal school system, and an informal religious education network that remains largely unmonitored. While madrassas are legally required to register, thousands remain unregulated — for instance, nearly 250 of Islamabad’s 562 madrassas were unregistered as of 2022. This lack of oversight leaves countless children vulnerable to unchecked abuse — as seen in horrifying cases that continue to surface.
Unfortunately, parents who send their childen to these illegally set up institutions share a different point of view as one of them reportedly remarked: “What matters is that it’s doing a great service to our religion [Islam] by teaching our children how to read and understand the Quran and that, too, free of charge,” DW News. In many areas, these madrasas operate without registration, oversight, or accountability. Often they provide food, clothing, shelter to the students whose families are too impoverished to afford sending them to school. Hence, it is comprehensible yet unfortunate that parents refrain from speaking up if their child returns home after getting a thrashing from the teacher. This is exactly what happened with Farhan who had complained about the beatings several times, but his parents had not paid heed. To address the probability of rape and sexual harassment is an even more challenging hurdle to overcome, one that is liable to cause more hostility in a culture where the clerics running these madrassas are widely revered and trusted in the community they operate.
But perhaps the problem runs even deeper than laws. There is something broken in our collective psyche. Many children in Pakistan grew up being hit by elders and teachers as a form of acceptable reprimand — “discipline” was masked as love. Some of us pledged to break the cycle and never do the same to our children, but many continue the same manner of disciplining, also enforced quietly by a society conditioned to parenting and teachimg with a guiding ethos: “spare the rod and spoil the child.” Society often justifies it: “Kabhi kabhi lagana parhta hai.” A slap here, a beating there — until one day, a child succumbs to his injuries and your rage – and we ask how it happened.
It’s not just about punishing the perpetrators, it’s about breaking the cycle of resorting to violence as a form of discipline — starting from the home, to the classroom, and all the way up to policy and law. We need to regulate all educational institutions, not just the public and private schools in cities.
But will the concerned authorities be able to accomplish what no establishment has been able to achieve yet? A call for mandatory registration of all unregistered madrassas is the need of the hour, and a complete shut down of those that fail to comply is a given.
Whether a child is sitting in a madrassa or a government school, they deserve safety, dignity, and the right to learn without fear. Until then, how many more Farhans will have to lose their lives just because we can’t let go of our rage?
Sources: DW News, The Friday Times, DAWN, France 24, Global Education Magazine, Arab News, First Post, Tribune.
