An 18-month-old in Karachi died after an alleged sexual assault. A three-year-old girl in the same city was raped and murdered. In Haripur, a five-year-old girl was raped and killed. These are not statistics. They are children. Against this horrifying backdrop, a video of Pakistani preacher Mufti Tariq Masood has resurfaced in which, while discussing marriage, he jokes about a four-year-old girl as a possible bride. Masood has since defended the remark as a joke taken out of context. But there are some subjects that should never become the subject of humour. The sexualisation of children is surely one of them. The issue is not simply what Masood intended to say. It is also about what religious discourse chooses to emphasise — and what it leaves conspicuously unsaid.

According to Sahil, a Pakistani child-rights organisation, 1,914 cases of child abuse were reported in Pakistan between January and June 2026, including 1,015 cases of child sexual abuse. These are reported cases and therefore cannot capture the full extent of the problem. But behind every number is a child. In August, an 18-month-old girl in Karachi’s Qayyumabad area died following an alleged sexual assault. In June, three-year-old Kulsoom Mohammed Qasim disappeared while playing outside her home in Karachi. Her body was later found stuffed in a gunny bag, with a post-mortem examination reportedly confirming sexual assault. In Haripur, five-year-old Ayat Noor went missing on August 10. Her body was recovered from an unused well on August 24, and the post-mortem reportedly confirmed rape and fatal injuries.

Jammu and Kashmir has also seen a series of deeply disturbing cases involving minors this year, including the alleged rape and subsequent death of a 15-year-old girl in Kishtwar, the alleged sexual assault of a 14-year-old in Jammu, and the alleged gang rape of a Class VII student in Poonch. The rape and murder of a........

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