‘AND of the people is he whose speech pleases you in worldly life, and he calls Allah to witness as to what is in his heart, yet he is the fiercest of opponents. And when he goes away, he strives throughout the land to cause corruption therein and destroy crops and livestock. And Allah does not like corruption.’ — Surah Al-Baqarah (2:204–205)
This verse unmasks the moral danger of performative piety — the tendency to invoke God while engaging in corruption. The result is a disturbing coexistence: faith and corruption thriving side by side, hypocrisy serving as the bridge between them. It is the paradox of morality in modern Bangladesh — where devotion adorns the surface, but deception anchors the system beneath.
In every democracy with a free press, the pages of a leading newspaper serve as a mirror — revealing whether the nation’s face shines with confidence or clouds with hypocrisy. That mirror in Bangladesh has long shown a disquieting reflection: a nation radiant in prayer yet darkened by corruption, fervently religious yet habitually dishonest. This is the paradox of our time: religiosity and immorality coexist because hypocrisy bridges the two.
Some recent editorials and op-eds in Bangladesh English dailies have asked a question that should unsettle the nation’s collective conscience: Are we willing to confront corruption even when it hides behind religion? They wondered whether exposing wrongdoing within sacred institutions would be deemed sacrilegious. Yet such inquiry is not blasphemy — it is bravery.
This dissonance between public piety and private morality — often visible even within religious institutions — is not a statistic but a lived contradiction. The concern is whether confronting deceit and abuse of power under the guise of religion will ever be acceptable to religious leaders themselves as a necessary step towards reform. Calling out wrongdoing in places devoted to worship is not an act against faith but of faith itself. Religion is weakened, not strengthened, when exploited for protection or privilege. To challenge such misuse is to defend the sanctity that hypocrisy defiles.
Bangladesh ranks among the world’s most devout societies. Mosques overflow on Fridays; Qur’anic verses roll easily off tongues; pilgrims save for decades to touch the Kaaba. Yet recent commentary shows the cost of this contradiction. One ¶¶Òõ¾«Æ· editorial (August 16, 2025) declared: ‘People in Bangladesh are not dying solely from poverty; they are dying under the crushing weight of cruelty, superstition and hypocrisy.’ Another noted that in the 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index, Bangladesh’s score ‘declined to 23 … and its global rank slipped to 151st out of 180 countries.’ The mirror of faith reflects devotion; the mirror of governance reveals decay.
For many, faith has become a transactional contract rather than conviction. Pray, fast, give zakat, perform hajj, and expect divine recompense in health, wealth, or heaven. Religion becomes employment, not transformation. The businessman who cheats believes his pilgrimage will wipe the slate clean. The politician who loots wraps himself in scripture to sanitise his deeds. When ritual replaces righteousness, belief becomes camouflage for betrayal. The Qur’an warns: ‘Woe to those who pray but are heedless of their prayer — those who make a show of it and withhold simple assistance’ (Al-Ma`un 107:4–7). Worship without honesty or compassion is hypocrisy in disguise.
In Bangladesh today, religiosity often offers access, privilege and protection to those who display it most visibly. The contradiction is striking: when piety turns into performance, corruption gains the illusion of virtue. Public displays of faith frequently soften the scrutiny that should accompany public responsibility. Religion, once a moral compass, risks becoming moral cover. As ¶¶Òõ¾«Æ· reported on September 4, 2025, quoting Transparency International chair François Valérian, ‘Corruption has not been eradicated from Bangladesh even after the July mass uprising.’ In short, devotion remains strong, but integrity continues to erode.
For ordinary citizens, petty corruption is often leniently overlooked. Disturbingly, at higher levels, grafters find refuge in political patronage — often as insurance against instability. A politician may loot the treasury and still command respect by building a mosque, financing a madrasa, or distributing iftar meals. Public piety launders private sin; rituals of charity become political theatre, not spiritual atonement. From such individual rationalisations grows a collective fatalism that ‘everyone is doing it,’ spreading corruption like a social virus. The consequence is cultural collapse: once corruption becomes routine, honesty turns into rebellion. As ¶¶Òõ¾«Æ· editors wrote (August 16, 2025), ‘The nakedness of our collective moral bankruptcy … is not isolated tragedies; they are symptoms of a deeply unhealthy social structure and of our contempt for the very religious principles we claim to follow.’
Bangladesh’s political order institutionalises corruption through patronage networks stretching from grassroots toll collection to high-level contract negotiations. Institutions meant to ensure accountability — the police, courts, regulators, and even the Anti-Corruption Commission — have long been compromised. Nevertheless, the ACC’s renewed activism is encouraging. A ¶¶Òõ¾«Æ· editorial (September 16, 2025) reported that the Commission had disciplined 244 officials, including 34 dismissals, since 2008, concluding: ‘When the guardians of probity are themselves tainted, public trust drains away.’
Between hypocrisy and immorality runs a steady current of moral decay. Religiosity in most societies is inherited, not earned — absorbed and indoctrinated in childhood through rituals and repetition rather than reflection. When faith drifts from conviction to convenience, deviations from genuine religious teachings give birth to hypocrisy, which in turn tolerated, breeds immorality. The two then feed off each other, reinforced by social apathy and political corruption. In such a culture, religion becomes a performance — faith reduced to display, worship stripped of truth. Our religious leaders must rise above rhetoric; their duty is not just to preach divinity but defend it, by exposing and punishing those who desecrate it in the name of piety.
Bangladesh is hardly alone in this paradox. Across much of the world, religiosity and corruption rise together. Where rule of law is firm, corruption recedes; where faith replaces accountability, corruption flourishes. Reform must, therefore, begin not with ritual but with re-education. Religion must be re-centred on ethics rather than exhibition. The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: ‘The superiority of a scholar over a devout worshipper is like the superiority of the moon over the stars. Indeed, the scholars are the inheritors of the prophets, who bequeath not wealth but knowledge.’ Knowledge, especially moral knowledge, is the path to paradise. Civic education should reinforce that integrity is both divine virtue and civic necessity — the foundation of trust in markets, government and everyday life.
Corruption thrives in darkness and fears exposure more than punishment. Accountability must therefore be public, impartial and consistent. Court verdicts, administrative actions and asset disclosures should be open to citizens. Naming and shaming habitual offenders is not vindictive; it is preventive. At the same time, structural incentives must change to decent pay for public servants, digitized service delivery that limits discretion, protection for whistle-blowers, and swift action against extortionists. A culture of accountability, once established, will do more to sanctify society than any sermon.
Bangladesh does not lack faith; it lacks integrity. The real test of piety lies not in the number of mosques built or prayers uttered, but in the distance — still vast — between the prayer mat and the public office, between the sermon and the signature, between devotion and duty. The coexistence of religiosity and corruption persists because hypocrisy welds them together; it is hypocrisy — not faith — that allows the two to inhabit the same soul. The hypocrite lives comfortably in both worlds — professing virtue while practicing vice — and thus keeps hypocrisy forever alive in the moral vocabulary of humankind.
The word religion can be read as an acronym for ‘Realizing Ethical Living in Genuine Integrity, Openly Nurtured.’ If it were truly nurtured in that spirit, hypocrisy would vanish from its coexistence with immorality and religiosity. What was meant to elevate the human spirit is now tainted by vice — entangled in vanity, politics, and moral contradiction. Faith, stripped of its inner light, has become more a badge of belonging than a path to transcendence.
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Abdullah A Dewan is professor emeritus of Economics at Eastern Michigan University, USA, and formerly a physicist and nuclear engineer at the Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission. Humayun Kabir, a former senior United Nations official, is contributing while visiting Dhaka, Bangladesh.
