It is never easy to speak about religion in Pakistan. Yet silence, especially when it protects abuse, is not piety. The recent tragic death of a young boy named Farhan — allegedly at the hands of his madrassa teachers in Swat town of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa — has once again exposed the dark underside of religious seminaries in Pakistan.

This is not an isolated incident. Stories of violence, abuse and trauma regularly emerge from madrassas, but the country moves on after registering an FIR, capturing the culprits and issuing a few condemnations. What remains untouched is the institution itself — the structure that permits such acts to be repeated without fear of accountability.

Let me share a personal experience from the mid-2000s. I used to attend a Quran recitation class at a madrassa in DHA Lahore, Block B. It was affiliated with a seminary in Gujrat, well-known for its accurate teaching of tajweed (Quranic pronunciation). The system worked like a franchise: female teachers, trained in the Gujrat seminary, were sent to various cities, their boarding and lodging the responsibility of the local elites.

One morning, deviating from my usual evening visits, I walked in to find the classroom full of children, mostly girls under the age of 14. What I witnessed shook me. A female teacher (ustani) suddenly grabbed two teenage girls by the hair, dragged them to........

© The Express Tribune