Malaysiakini : “In addition, they were also made to watch other children undergo the same predicament.”

So, the question becomes, what exactly was Jakim doing all this time? Furthermore, it says a lot about how child welfare agencies in this country were carrying out their duties.

Jakim’s defence that they are not an “enforcement agency” when it comes to this issue is laughable because they have made it their mission to be front and centre when it comes to any kind of perceived trespass into their religious domains.

Indeed, they have publicly played a central role in everything from the “Allah socks” issue to the recent outrage that Teresa Kok finds herself embroiled in.

Keep in mind that the IGP has said all this was based on six months of intelligence gathering before this issue gained traction on social media. All these conflicting timelines, when children were allegedly abused, do nothing for the credibility of the state security apparatus or Jakim.

Also, note where the IGP said, “I urge former GISBH members who lodged police reports before retracting them to come forward and help in investigations.”

Oblivious, passive authorities

We should ask ourselves why the reports were retracted by these former members. What exactly is going on when it takes traction in social media before a case warrants attention by the state security apparatus, especially where children are abused and the state security apparatus has to make fait accompli declarations to reassure the public?

What we are talking about here is a federal agency funded to the tune of billions of ringgit, whose presence is felt in every corner of this country and is a cornerstone of the current Madani regime. And despite that, in an effort to consolidate the religious narrative in this country, it was unaware that children were sodomised and were taught to sodomise by their caretakers.

Asri, one of the sacred cows of the mainstream religious establishment, whose task which history has shown is to root out “deviancy” in mainstream religious narratives - for him to claim inaction on the part of Jakim is demonstrative of the kind of internal machinations and schemes currently going on in the religious mainstream.

This gives some sort of probative value to what the GISBH CEO said in the quote that opens this piece and gives weight to what Asri implied. Was there some sort of leniency that led to inaction, in the name of religion?

Covering up crime

GISBH CEO Nasiruddin Mohd Ali claimed there were cases of sodomy but they were handled internally because ”GISBH recognised they constituted a legal offence”.

So, in other words, they covered up a criminal offence and, so far, nobody from the state discovered this.

PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang says his party has regulatory bodies that can prevent sexual abuse from happening at schools run by the party.

But pay attention to what he says:

“The situation in PAS is under control, Insya Allah. We have lajnah-lajnah (committees) led by our leaders to regulate (the institutions).”

The situation is under control in PAS? Is Hadi admitting there is a similar situation but it is under control in PAS? And really, GISBH had its own mechanism for this kind of situation and it merely meant that criminal activities were covered up.

Who’s responsible?

Remember the tahfiz school fire in 2017, which killed 21 children and two adults, and later, two 16-year-old boys were charged for starting the fire?

The same kind of institutional malfunction contributed to the deaths of these children and adults. The religious school where 21 children and two adults died was operating illegally and had been warned for safety violations.

The manager of the school claimed that he registered his school with the Federal Territory Islamic Religious Council, which apparently, unlike the Kuala Lumpur City Hall, did not carry out safety checks.

Two questions - does an Islamic body trump a civil one and does this mean because the owner registered with an Islamic body, neither the owner nor the state religious body in question bears any responsibility for the deaths that occurred during their watch?

Then-federal territories minister Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor said, “Checks showed that this particular premise had breached security guidelines, as it only has one way in and out, which is dangerous in times of an emergency.”

But of course, nothing was done about it at the time, which resulted in the deaths of 21 children and two adults. So it is not far-fetched to think that when something heinous happens when it comes to religious enterprises in this country, especially those which are not regulated, there is some sort of institutional malfeasance.

As long as there is no independent oversight when it comes to religious enterprises in this country, the lives of children will always be in danger. This is a reality Malaysians are forced to live with.