In Arshinagar, just across the Bosila Bridge in Keraniganj on the outskirts of Dhaka, stands a modest two-storey building with a discreet signboard that reads “Ideal Marriage Bureau—IMB.” From the outside, it looks like any other matchmaking office. Inside, however, a chilling trade is taking place.
The sole founder and chairman is Mufti Mamunur Rashid Qasemee, a self-styled religious scholar who openly declares that he is merely “implementing the Sunnah of the Prophet (PBUH).” His core product is not marriage in the conventional sense but “masna” (second wife), “sulasa” (third wife), and “rubaa” (fourth wife) arrangements. His primary targets are widows, divorced women, and—most disturbingly—poor, underage, and teenage girls from impoverished families.
Qasemee sells bikes and cars from SBI Car Market and burqas from the online shop SBI Market and runs Taqwa Land Society, a land development business. He is also a director of Markazus Shareeya Al-Islamia, Bangladesh madrasa. He uses his official Facebook profile and pages for promotion.
The IMB website promotes a Quranic verse (Surah An-Nisa 4:3) and a Hadith narrated by Al-Bukhari.
The verse says: “And if you fear that you will not deal justly with the orphan girls, then marry those that please you of [other] women, two or three or four. But if you fear that you will not be, then [marry only] one or those your right hands possess [i.e., captives or slaves]. That is more suitable so that you may not incline [to injustice].”
The common Bengali explanation/interpretation that follows the verse (as used by many preachers): “Allah the Exalted has commanded: From among the Muslim women, marry whichever ones you like—two, three, or four. However, if you fear that you will not be able to do justice among multiple wives, then marry only one, or take a female slave/right-hand possession.”
According to the Hadith, Ibn Abbas (may Allah be pleased with him) said (to Saʿīd ibn Jubayr): “Marry women, for the best of this ummah is the one who has the most wives.”
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The IMB operates with ruthless efficiency. Men pay a joining fee of Tk1,020 and, once a marriage is arranged, an additional “service charge” of Tk10,000.
Women register for free on one uncompromising condition: they must explicitly agree to become a second, third, or fourth wife and accept future co-wives without protest. Their anonymised profiles—photographs and basic details, but no phone numbers or addresses—are uploaded to a secret Telegram channel accessible only to paid male members.
Each woman’s contact number costs an extra Tk200. After that, IMB washes its hands of all responsibility; whatever happens next is “between the parties.”
Qasemee markets the entire enterprise with selective and distorted Quranic verses and hadiths. In Facebook Live sessions that have now been archived as evidence, he can be heard urging fathers to hand over 12-year-old daughters the moment they reach puberty, boasting to his own father about how “enjoyable” the wedding night with very young girls is, and bragging that he will “change” up to 100 women if necessary to secure four “good” wives.
Local sources who have dealt with the bureau quote him saying bluntly: “The younger and fresher the girl, the higher the price we are ready to pay.”
Poor families, desperate for a way out of poverty, are lured by the promise that an “alim” will take responsibility for their daughter. What follows, survivors say, is systematic abuse: physical violence, financial extortion, forced pregnancies followed by forced abortions, and swift divorce the moment a newer, younger candidate appears. Anyone who dares complain is threatened with religious ostracism or a fatwa branding them an enemy of Islam.
This is not an isolated predator operating in the shadows. It is a structured, profit-driven business model that cloaks itself in religious legitimacy while commodifying the most vulnerable women in society.
And it has flourished in a Bangladesh where, since the violent change of power in August 2024, radical groups have grown bolder, moral policing has intensified, and attacks on women accused of “immodest” behaviour—from acid attacks to public shaming—have surged with apparent impunity. In this climate, outfits like IMB are not fringe anomalies; they are the logical, monetised extension of an ideology that increasingly treats women as property to be controlled, traded, or punished.
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