Pope Benedict XVI’s recent commentary suggesting religion is being exploited to fuel continuing wars is a concept familiar to award-winning author Reza Aslan.
Aslan, 35, who spoke Monday before a packed audience at the World Affairs Council in San Francisco to promote his latest book How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror, discussed religious ideology and extremism and its destructive impact on the world.
According to Aslan, the former Bush administration’s self-proclaimed “War on Terror” was never about terrorism. If it were, Aslan argues, the war would have included terrorist groups like ETA (Basque separatists), or the Iranian group Mujahideen-e-Khalq, for example. Instead, the US war on terror is specifically targeting Islam and Muslims, in areas of the world where the US has oil and gas reserve interests.
“That is what it is. The war on Islam,” Aslan said. “That is how it was deliberately conceived and it was how it was consciously propagated.”
ByFanny Dassie – Fogcityjpournal
devotion to the charismatic leader and their fanatical submission to his orders. To achieve such an objective, the charisma should be combined with mind control techniques since the members would not submit to the leader automatically. So the charisma leader uses this powerful attribute together with manipulation practices. This mixture will end with the total devotion of members to the cult and its goal. The brainwashed members are always ready to run the cult’s objectives.
through different means. He could get some youth away from their homes. They were innocent young individuals whose natural right was to live a normal life, but MKO could deceive them to join the group. I remember that at the time each person needed 30 thousand Tomans (roughly 30 American Dollars) to flee from Iran. The organization recruited those who were out of job or those who had other problems and sent them out of the country through various ways. There were also individuals who were introduced to the organization. For instance my husband was introduced by a member who had already joined the group. Then the organization sent a guy to recruit him in Iran and sent him abroad. There were some smugglers who took the recruited ones passing the borders and the journey was very dangerous. But it didn’t matter to Rajavi. When the organization tricked my husband and me, we were supposed to join MKO’s courier. We got out of Iran on camels. We risked our lives so many times but finally we could survive. I remember a lot of young couples were killed in the way. 

the country is based primarily on security issues. The group’s long history of alliance with Saddam Hussein and its history of killing and suppression of Iraqi citizens are not in question. However the specific approach used to dismantle the group reveals that Iraq’s authorities have a clear understanding that the principle problem posed by the group is as a dangerous, destructive mind control cult which has no place in any society. 
