Destructive Cults Research Articles

The Rhetoric of Islamist Radical Organizations as a Method of Manipulating the Consciousness of Believers in the Late 20th – Early 21st Centuries

The article examines the influence of specific radical movements of Islam on their adherents through the linguistic attitudes. In the introduction, the author examines the general global reasons due to which a person in modern society is especially susceptible to various types of involvement in destructive cults. The main part of the article is devoted to the consideration of practical examples of verbal manipulations used by the Islamists. The paper also mentions extremist and terrorist organizations whose activities are prohibited on the territory of the Russian Federation and discusses their distorted interpretations of classical theological texts. By analyzing specialized literature in Russian and Arabic, as well as empirically, the research reveals the ways to influence the personality of a believer through the language. The author of the publication personally held many meetings in pre-trial detention centers with those under investigation and accused on extremist and terrorist charges and collected a large amount of empirical material. A conclusion is drawn about the main linguistic manipulations of Islamist organizations.

Social rehabilitation of children from families affected by destructive cults

The relevance of the undertaken study of social rehabilitation of children from families affected by destructive cults is due to the fact that today the number of destructive religious organizations is increasing, as well as the number of children exposed to their negative influence. The solution to this problem lies in the development of social rehabilitation activities, which involves various technologies aimed at restoring the child's mental health.

From the temple of life to the temple of death: keyness analyses of the transitions of a cult

Given their socially and personally beneficial teachings and practices, religious groups are generally seen as positive. However, some religious groups, specifically cults, can have destructive effects. The most notable destructive cult was Peoples Temple, led by Jim Jones, who convinced his followers to commit mass suicide in 1978 at Jonestown, Guyana. Previous research into Peoples Temple has mainly focussed on its social–psychological characteristics with limited applicability to other cults. This study investigates the transitions of Peoples Temple from sect to cult to destructive cult by examining the aboutness and communication styles through the patterns of key linguistic features in Jim Jones’ sermons from the 1960s to 1978 using keyness analyses. The findings show that sect sermons promote religious concepts through a personal involvement style which characterise the group as beneficial, while destructive cult sermons emphasise concepts not traditionally associated with religious discourse, together with the use of othering, intensifying, swearing and controlling styles, and thereby characterising Peoples Temple as dangerous. The cult sermons display dual characteristics which show the transition of Peoples Temple from being beneficial to detrimental. This study provides linguistic indicators for identifying the transitions of a religious group to a cult.

Extreme Organizational Identification: Evidence from a Modern Day Corporate Cult

After observing modern organizations experiment with spirituality and organizational culture, we revisit corporate cultism nearly 20 years after its initial conceptualization. We argue that strong and high-performing organizational cultures risk transforming into corporate cults without strong ethical standards, and propose a mixed-methods research approach to explore corporate cultism in a modern organization. In our qualitative study, we examine how many characteristics of destructive cults the observed organization exhibits. We summarize interviews with five middle managers from a single organization and conclude that 12 out of 14 characteristics of destructive cults are present in the studied organization. This suggests that occult behaviors can manifest themselves within a high-performing multinational company with a strong organizational culture, strong market brand and numerous international employer excellence certifications. By surveying 304 employees within the observed organization in our quantitative study, we test the empirical model of transformational leadership, organizational identification, and employee engagement within a corporate cult. Results indicate that the positive effects of transformational leadership on employee engagement are partially mediated by organizational identification. We conclude with theoretical and practical implications of corporate cultism as a salient ethical dimension of modern leadership.

Distinguishing the Language of Destructive Cults from the Language of Mainstream Religion: Corpus Analyses of Sermons

The language of religious leaders expressed in their sermons characterizes the social characteristics of their groups. Over the past decades, most studies into cults specifically destructive cults and mainstream religion have mainly focused on their social-psychological characteristics with limited applicability to other religious groups. In this study, corpus-based methods were applied to the sermons of the leaders of two destructive cults (namely, Peoples Temple led by Jim Jones and Heaven’s Gate led by Marshall Applewhite) and the sermons of mainstream religious groups represented by Baptist preachers to distinguish the language between dangerous and beneficial religious groups based on the patterns of key linguistic features. The methodological process includes keyness analyses (namely, keyword analysis, key semantic tag analysis, and key part-of-speech analysis) and multidimensional analysis. The results from a keyness perspective show that the destructive cult sermons promote non-religious concepts with the use of othering, intensification, and strong elaboration. For the mainstream sermons, they uphold religious concepts for life development with the use of personal involvement and moderate elaboration. The results from a text dimension perspective show that the language of destructive cults and the language of mainstream religion displayed in their sermons are both persuasive and elaborative. However, the language of destructive cults is more persuasive and elaborative than the language of mainstream religion. The findings may serve as a basis for how to recognize the potential detrimental and beneficial characteristics of religious groups based on their language.

Countering extremist activities of religious associations: International experience of legal regulation

Everyone can freely profess any religion, i. e. to be a member of a religious association or to be an atheist. This is what practically all existing legal norms concerning freedom of conscience and faith say. However, restrictions on the spread of new religious movements, destructive cults and sects, individual religious rites and ceremonies, and extremist worldviews are regularly introduced by legislatures in different countries. Such legislative acts can be divided into two main categories in accordance with the logic of law enforcement practice: prohibitive and restrictive. Prohibitive laws provide for a direct ban on any actions, restrictive ones provide for a number of conditions under which the norm is used as a means of partial prohibition. Prohibitive and restrictive measures against religious extremists are considered as the activity of the State to ensure the right to freedom of conscience and freedom of religion. This article analyzes the international experience of legal regulation of the activities of destructive religious associations — new religious movements, cults and sects, in particular, countering their extremist activities, and also examines the possibility of implementing the norms of international law in this area.

Study of the formation of the professionally important qualities of a psychologist, necessary for the resocialization of adolescents exposed to religious extremist influence

Introduction.The interest of extremist associations and destructive religious movements in the indoctrination and recruitment of adolescents is explained by the researchers by the peculiarities of age and psychosexual development, which make adolescents sensitive to entering a destructive religious cult. An adolescent is a valuable demographic and social resource for religious and political organizations professing extreme views, since it is at this age that resistance to destructive psychological influences is low as never before, while personal needs for self-expression are especially acute. Since being in a destructive religious cult often entails various disorders of psychological health and social maladjustment, adolescents are especially in need of the process of resocialization, which includes various therapeutic, corrective and rehabilitation measures aimed at restoring the socio-psychological status of former members of destructive cults. In turn, this entails the need for special training of psychologists for the implementation of this process, the identification of special professional qualities that affect the effectiveness of the resocialization process, in order to develop them in specialists in the field of social rehabilitation.Materials and Methods.The aim of the study is to identify the level of formation among psychologists of the CVC, necessary for effective resocialization of adolescents at risk. The empirical study involved 161 psychology subjects: employees of educational organizations, psychological and rehabilitation centers, private practice specialists and psychological assistance centers. The age range of the sample is from 25 to 53 years old, 94.37% of the sample were women. The conclusions were based on the results of mathematical and statistical processing of the data obtained using the computer program SPSS Statistics 22 and Excel 2016. Psychodiagnostic techniques were used: "Social norms of prosocial behavior" I.А. Furmanova, N. V. Kukhtovoy, test "SOINT" N.F. Kalina, A.S. Lazurkina, methodology “Diagnostics of the level of emotional burnout by V.V. Boyko "; methodology "Assessment of suggestiveness" O.P. Eliseev's.Results.With high indicators of prosocial behavioral attitudes, the subjects showed rather low indicators of social intelligence, low indicators of critical thinking, psychological markers of symptoms of emotional burnout, expressed in indicators of psychosomatic and psychovegetative disorders in the sphere of the emotional state of the personality of a specialist, which can reduce the ability of a specialist to show empathy, which is an important component of the structure of the professionally important qualities of a psychologist.Discussion and Conclusions.The results revealed the factors of restraining the personal and professional growth of psychologists in this area, and the effectiveness of professional activity in resocialization of adolescents, since the competence of the subjects of the resocialization system (socio-pedagogical, psychological and professional) largely determines the effectiveness of the process of resocialization of minors. The identified problems of professional self-development can be used to create and organize special conditions that contribute to the development of a system of professional competencies, indicating the areas of work of specialists.

Determination of the criteria of destructiveness in the activities of new religious movements (theoretical and legal aspect)

The confessional composition of modern society is characterised by great diversity. In addition to traditional religious organisations, new (non-traditional) religious and socio-spiritual movements operate in it, representing a whole spectrum of religious, quasi-religious and pseudo-religious cults, whose teachings and practices can be both destructive and constructive. In carrying out legal regulation of the activities of religious associations, the state must, on the one hand, ensure the freedom of conscience and religion guaranteed by the Constitution, and on the other hand, protect society from destructive cults that can harm morality, health, rights and legitimate interests of citizens, the constitutional order and security of the state. Therefore, one of the most important tasks of modern social sciences, including legal ones, is the study of the spiritual «temperature» of society; conducting research aimed at identifying the causes of negative and positive processes occurring in the spiritual sphere of society, as well as determining the specifics of non-traditional religiosity as a special form of social activity. Based on the analysis and interpretation of rich empirical material, the authors formulated a list of criteria by which one can separate destructive (totalitarian) sects from new religious or intellectual (spiritual) movements of a positive nature. The proposed list of criteria can be used by law-making and law enforcement bodies in the framework of improving the legal regulation of the activities of religious associations and building state-confessional policy in general.

The Language of Destructive Cults

Destructive cults are the most notable damaging religious groups in society where leaders convince their followers to engage in destructive acts. Examples of such cults include Peoples Temple led by Jim Jones and Heaven’s Gate led by Marshall Applewhite who convinced their followers to commit mass suicide. Previous research into destructive cults has mainly focused on their social-psychological development. This research breaks new ground by examining the patterns of linguistic features in the sermons of destructive cults indicating the characteristics of their language using keyness analyses. The main data sets are the sermons of Jim Jones and the sermons of Marshall Applewhite in the period leading to mass suicide. As a benchmark, these sermons were compared to the sermons of Billy Graham and the sermons of Rick Warren, leaders of mainstream religious groups. The findings show that the language of destructive cults based on the sermons of the leaders upholds extreme non-religious ideologies that cannot be found in the sermons of mainstream religious groups. The styles of their language focus on othering, intensifying, elaborating, and negating with the aim of controlling their followers. The results may allow destructive cults to be identified before damaging events occur.

Религиозный экстремизм как угроза национальной безопасности. Роль органов прокуратуры в борьбе с указанным явлением

The article considers the modern problems of religious extremism in the Russian Federation and abroad, and attempts to analyze of the causes of religious extremism and its spread. This paper highlights the scope of Islamic religious extremism and the danger of other kinds of extremism activities, destructive cults and totalitarian sects, which have distorted the essence and image of religious teaching. The article focuses on the current problems of the activities of Islamic religious extremist organizations, modern worship and its radical ideologies, which can be considered as a real threat to national security of the Russian Federation. Moreover, the problems of the prosecution’s office activity in the struggle with religious extremism are touched upon.

Diskursus Negara Pancasila di Kalangan Muhammadiyah

This study focus on the process of understanding how Muhammadiyah is interpreted as Islamic organisation and Pancasila is as the ideology. The understanding toward Pancasila as the ideology is important because the Khalifah ideology appear to replace Pancasila. Furthermore, the drawback of globalisation which bring neoliberalism issue into society weaken the principles of Pancasila. In addition, destructive cult appears to claim that their movement/ organisation apply the most the principles of pancasila. This study aims to investigate the strategies used by Muhammadiyah in implementing the five principle of pancasila ad the ideology. This study used hermeneutika Paul Ricoeur methodology which emphasis on the interpretation on distantiation between text and reader. The findings mentioned that the understanding about Pancasila is rely in al-Qur'an's Saba verse 15 "baldatun thayyibatun wa rabbun ghafur", (a good country is in Allah's forgiveness). In discourse analysis, this verse is interpreted by Muhammadiyah that Indonesia is a country which is used pancasila as the ideology. They believe that Indonesia is darul ahdi wa syahadah then this belief become cons discourse to against some movements to establish Khalifah Ideology.

The Potential Illegitimacy of the PRC’s Effort to Distinguish from “Cult” or “Destructive Cult”

The PRC has a systematic, self-consistent theory and set of policies focused on xie jiao (邪教), a term that is often mistranslated as “destructive cults,” thereby causing disagreement throughout the international academic world. A more appropriate and accurate translation/interpretation agreeable to all within the PRC and beyond would contribute to bridging the confusion that often leads to misunderstanding. Our article addresses this problem by analyzing official Chinese documents and the critiques of certain international experts. Although the concept of xie jiao has its own philosophical logic, that it is often misunderstood in international communications leads to much dispute over interpretation and policy. Sino-western cultural differences explain much of this misunderstanding.

Coercive Persuasion As a Specific Type of Violence in Criminal Law

The field of cults, and that of destructive or coercive cults in particular, has received little attention from the perspective of criminal law doctrine. Supporters of such groups often claim to be victims of a violation related to freedom of will. In this article, I consider various methodologies and manipulation techniques used by such groups and suggest that comparative law, criminal definitions, and regulatory problems provide the basis for a more comprehensive understanding of criminal phenomenology that includes these concerns: the loss of freedom through coercive persuasion, and thus being the victim of a crime, or through becoming an instrument for the commission of crimes ordered by third parties. Research shows that the conventional definition of crime against freedom of will and physical injury is inadequate. I posit that a new approach to legal doctrine and criminal classification is required to fight against new crime phenomenology. I propose a criminal classification aimed at considering coercive persuasion as a crime, and a definition for the criminalization of certain organizations that engage in willful misconduct or reckless conduct.

ОСМЫСЛЕНИЕ ПРОБЛЕМЫ ДЕСТРУКТИВНОЙ СОЦИАЛИЗАЦИИ ЛИЧНОСТИ В ИНТЕРНЕТ-СРЕДЕ

The article examines the destructive socialization of the individual from the point of view of the synthesis of philosophical and pedagogical approaches. The first considers it as a phenomenon that arises in the programs of propaganda of destructive cults, implemented through the use of modern information and communication technologies; the second approach is aimed at finding possible ways to solve the indicated problem, which is investigated within the framework of media pedagogical science, which closely correlates with the processes of interaction between the subject of information and its media agent. The work focuses on the formation of a new vector in the development of media pedagogy by rethinking its target content.

THE ISSUE OF THE TERM «SECT» JURIDICAL DEFINITION

This article is devoted to the problem of the concept "sect" determination in religious studies and legal discourses. The paper presents the analysis of the etymology and use of the term "sect" in the history of philosophical, theological and religious thought. The authors advocate the position that there is no clear and consistent definition of the concept “sect” in modern religious science. The authors also express doubts about the possibility of an unambiguous definition of this concept development. The article expresses concern that an attempt to give and legislate a legal definition of the concept of “sect” (including “totalitarian sect” and “destructive cult”) may lead to the practice of unfair enforcement and other negative consequences in the context of Russian reality.

The Influence of Self-esteem and Sense of Security to the Cognition of the Destructive Cult of College Students

In this study, self-esteem scale (SES), Security Questionnaire (SQ) and cult susceptibility test questionnaire were used to investigate 350 college students in Beijing, and the results were analyzed to explore the influence of self-esteem and sense of security on college students’ cognition on cults. The results indicate obvious differences in demographic variables and correlations among college students’ self-esteem, their sense of security and their cognition on cults. In addition, due to the predictive functions of self-esteem and sense of security, the cult confusion among college students can be prevented by improving their self-esteem and sense of security by means of introspection, feedback from others and participation in practice.

FACTS AND ARTEFACTS OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN UKRAINE


 The article looks at the psychological conditions in which a modern person can rightly exercise their right to religious freedom and the preconditions for their involvement with the totalitarian (destructive) religious cults. The central issues of the article are as follows: the concept of spiritual need as a socially recognized psychic norm; the phenomenon of psychotherapeutic potential of the religious community; religiosity and spirituality.
 It has been proved that personality maturity is the precondition and the basis for healthy spirituality. A marked artefact of religious freedom in Ukraine is individuals’ involvement with destructive cults, which may lead to psychic and social dependence. Also the article presents the results of an empirical research involving a mass psychosemantic survey carried out in order to find how this religious problem is reflected in the mass consciousness of Ukrainians and in-depth interviews with people who have experienced psychic dependence on the cult.

Employing Trafficking Laws to Capture Elusive Leaders of Destructive Cults

In the 1970’s and 80’s in the United States, American newspapers raised public awareness about cults. Capturing headlines were articles about women, and later men, who followed Charles Manson to the extreme length of committing “Helter Skelter,” a cold-blooded killing spree. Cults continued to exist, out of sight and unobserved, until each next tragic occurrence when they would again be the topic of a news story. Even when cults did not achieve “front-page” status in the news, they continued to recruit adults and raise children born into the group.Because cults are undocumented and do not appear in our census, it is difficult to estimate how many are in the United States today. Estimates range from 2,500 to 8,000 cults in the United States, with their membership ranging from a few individuals to tens of thousands in any given cult. According to the International Cultic Studies Association (“ICSA”), an organization that monitors cults and provides education and counseling, approximately 2,500,000 Americans have joined cultic groups since the 1970s. Some cults are benign, others destructive; cults may change over time, sometimes from benign to destructive, sometimes vice versa. Benign cults appear not to inflict physical or emotional trauma to their members. In contrast, destructive cults do harm members, in large part because they are characterized by exploitatively manipulative and controlling interpersonal dynamics. Destructive cults are the focus of this paper. (The term “cult” is more commonly used in the United States; whereas, “sect” is used more prevalently in Europe.) Cults continue to evade our justice system here in the United States and abroad. This paper seeks to offer a fresh legal framework, which, I posit, could aid in the capture and prosecution of cult leaders for their crimes.In Part I, I describe how cults function. In Subpart (A), I describe a young girl’s (Elissa Wall) tragic marriage into a lifetime, and expected eternity, with a relative whom she initially resisted. Cults use four processes of control involving the mind, behavior, emotion and information, explained in (B). In Subpart (C), cults are categorized as religious, political, terrorist groups, psychotherapy, and commercial. The shortcomings of our legal system to provide remedies is set forth in Subpart (D). In Part II, international and American efforts to prevent and combat trafficking are presented. In Part III, I posit that law enforcement and the international community use the anti-trafficking laws and resources in capturing cult leaders, prosecuting them for the harm that they inflict on their adherents, and to provide services to former cult members. In this way, the religious or political dogma of cults is not an obstacle to holding them accountable for their criminal behavior.

Media Effect on Public Opinion: A Monograph on Anti-Islamic Brainwashing Discourse

This paper attempts to explain the effect of media on public opinion in the light of brainwashing theory. After reviewing the history of the term brainwashing, the researcher provides detailed illustration of its modern applications especially the techniques used in to convince their members commit suicidal attacks. Then, the research focuses on the Nation of Islam as a famous example of destructive cults to show how the media coverage of this perverted movement had dangerous effects on the public opinion in America that helped create an illusive kind of that researcher refers to as anti-Islamic Brainwashing discourse .

Spiritual Movements, Secret Societies, and Destructive Cults

Spiritual Movements, Secret Societies, and Destructive Cults