As heinous as the crime is, one would expect that woke-liberal-feminist activists, especially those hailing from Bollywood (the Indian film industry), would flood their Instagram and Twitter handles with outraged condemnations of the act. Yet not one of these flag-bearers of morality and icons of outrage could summon up enough courage to do so.

Why? Is it because they want to keep from being labeled “Islamophobes” for slamming a rape-accused mullah? Or have the occurrences of clerics who have mastered Islamic theology and sacred law committing rapes of children inside Muslim religious venues become so rampant and common on the Indian subcontinent that they hardly surprise anyone anymore?

Back in April of this year, a 14-year-old girl was raped by a moulvi (a Muslim religious scholar) named Zafru inside a mosque in Alwar, Rajasthan. In this case, the girl had not gone to the mosque voluntarily, but was abducted from her house, taken to the mosque, and raped. Zafru, who had a wife and two children, then threw the minor into a nearby well and fled the town with his family. The girl was rescued by the police with the help of local people.

The events surrounding these rapes get weirder with every occurrence. The villagers of Katra, Muzaffarpur took turns sending meals to the cleric of a local mosque.

Back in January 2019, when a 15-year-old girl went to deliver food to the cleric at the mosque, he sedated her and subsequently raped her inside the venue. He also made a video in the process. She was threatened into silence and was repeatedly raped at the mosque, resulting in a pregnancy, which broke the news to the locals.

In March 2019, a minor girl was lured inside a mosque in Peshawar, Pakistan by cleric Qari Saeed. The cleric, as it is alleged, had promised to give her good-luck bearing amulets, and sexually assaulted her in a room inside the mosque. In August 2020, a disturbing video emerged on the internet from Pakistan’s Sindh province. The viral video showed a Muslim cleric raping a minor boy while he was reading the Quran in the prayer house.

When it comes to sexually abusing minors, the madrassas have also contributed a fair share of headlines. A madrassa manager along with five others was accused of raping an 11-year-old girl in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghosi in 2018. In August 2020, a 25-year-old madrassa teacher from Raipur, Chhattisgarh, was booked for raping his nine-year-old student, whom he taught Urdu. These Islamic religious schools are awash with instances of molestation of minor boys.

It is an open secret and an accepted way of life here. In February 2018, a lone student of Madrasa Darul-Hudda in Baramulla was called by his teacher into his room, where, right after wrapping up his morning prayer, the teacher molested the minor boy. Other students were arriving at the mosque to study the Qur’an when this incident took place.

This episode stands out in itself, not because of the nature of crime, but because of its timing. As we have come to conclude from several news reports, madrassa teachers generally take boys with them during nighttime to perform unnatural sex acts. It is hence unique that the Madrasa Darul-Hudda teacher allegedly chose the morning, after prayer time, to accomplish the act.

In another shocking instance, Kashmiri Maulvi Aijaz Shaikh was accused of raping scores of minor boys under the pretext of warding off evil paranormal elements, and was booked under section 377 of Jammu & Kashmir’s Ranbir Penal Code.

Parents would voluntarily send their children as young as 11- to 14-year-olds to have the “evil eye” removed by the maulvi. The teacher of the Qur’an and Arabic in a local school would not only sexually exploit them, but when he had collected several boys, he would make them perform sexual activities on each other, and watched them all night.

Islamic schools and mosques in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are infested with crimes of the sexual abuse of children, irrespective of gender. However, seldom has any exemplary judgement been pronounced to punish the perpetrators. What is even rarer is for the family members of the minor victims to file formal complaints of sexual abuse against these institutions, fearing social backlash and victim-blaming.

Indian media treats these cases with kid gloves, lest reporting on them ends up infuriating the demographic that is known to gather in mobs and target establishments and their facilities. Hence, in many cases, they have been found guilty of manipulating facts by giving out misleading headlines that suggest that Hindu priests have committed the atrocious sexual assaults.

Only when one reads the entire article and locates the name of the culprit does one realizes that the perpetrator is a Muslim and not a Hindu.