Pray for Bangladesh

Known as the “Land of Rivers,” Bangladesh’s 700+ waterways flow across its low-lying terrain, where boats transport local crops and ferries substitute for school buses. Despite the fact that Bangladesh is one percent the size of Russia, far more people call it home. Operating under a tropical monsoon climate, the country experiences hot summers, heavy seasonal rainfall, and regular coastal cyclones. Bangladesh is one of Asia’s fastest-expanding economies, driven by a massive garment manufacturing industry. Bangladesh is a parliamentary republic. Following widespread protests in 2024 that led to the prime minister’s resignation, Bangladesh entered a period of political transition.

Despite the new government and its reforms, political violence continues to stir instability across Bangladesh. Political violence, riots, and attacks linked to ongoing political tensions continue to create instability, as do annual monsoon floods, cyclones, river erosion, and rising sea levels. Rapid urban migration into cities like Dhaka also creates extreme traffic congestion, air pollution, and housing shortages that overextend municipal services. The country hosts roughly one million Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar, where they encounter food scarcity and disease in overcrowded camps.

Roughly 90 percent of Bangladeshis identify as Muslim, while eight percent are Hindu and 0.5 percent are Christian. Even though Islam is its state religion, people of different religions are free to worship and even evangelize. However, in practice, Christians who share the Gospel — especially with Muslims — face hostility and attacks from Islamist extremist groups and local communities. Converts from Islam or Hinduism encounter pressure and even violence from their families. Few evangelical ministries are focused on ministering to Muslims, and it is estimated that there are fewer than a thousand Muslim-background believers there. Even so, the Gospel is slowly spreading, and the Bible is being translated into their different languages.