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Dr. Banisadr has been a regular contributor to the program since 2009. He earned a PhD in chemical engineering and engineering mathematics at Newcastle University in 1981. Dr. Banisadr joined the MEK in 1979 and served as its representative in Britain from 1990-96. He left the MEK in June 1996. He wrote a memoir of his experiences entitled, “Masoud: Memoirs of an Iranian Rebel”, published by SAQI Books, London in 2004. In 2014, he also published a book called “Destructive and Terrorist Cults: A New Kind of Slavery”. He has been active in exploring and explaining cult manipulation and has written many articles in Persian about cults.

His recent presentation was based on the model that he has created to explain mind manipulation and undue influence, excessive persuasion that causes another person to act or refrain from acting by overcoming that person’s free will. In order to explain his model, he uses his own experience as a defector of the MEK, also known as the Cult of Rajavi.

In the first part of the seminar, Dr. Banisadr presents an general description of a human mind and the way it is gone under undue influence. Using several examples of his own account of being involved in the MEK, he helps us understand how our mind works, what are the weak points of mind and how it can be manipulated. Based on his studies, our vulnerabilities are the open gates in our minds toward which we can be recruited by destructive cults. He presents a list of these open gates and a series of needs that give mind manipulators necessary apparatuses to manipulate us.

According to Dr. Banisadr, mind manipulators do not want us to use our conscious mind, which he calls system 2. They just use our conscious mind, in the first stages of recruitment, to create new beliefs for us. They use our will power, make it stronger and then through the next stages of mind manipulation, when we become zealot supporters of the cult, the driver of our will power is not system 2 anymore, but our unconscious mind, system 1 has been substituted.

The former member of Mujahedin-e Khalq suggests that the manipulators – cult leaders—have to change their victims’ beliefs to change their personality. They affect old beliefs by freezing time. What he considers as alteration of character takes place through creating new emotions and beliefs and by prolonging the process.
As said by his own experience in the MEK, he was influenced to admit that he had new responsibilities. According to MEK manipulators Massoud’s new responsibilities were more important than his family, his children and other personal affairs of his life. “This way, they neutralize your conscious mind and manipulate your unconscious mind,” he asserts.

Having gone through such a system, an MEK member would go up to fight for the organization and to be killed for its cause. The big image of the group’s upcoming victory was one of the tools that MEK commanders use to convince embers to do anything the leaders ask them to do.

The post MEK, a case study on mind manipulation at Salford Uni – Part one appeared first on Nejat Society.

In this edition of The Interview, Fair Observer talks to Masoud Banisadr, a former member of Mujahedeen-e-Khalq.

In 1965, Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MeK) was established in Iran in opposition to US imperialism. Espousing a blend of Marxism and Islam, the group helped bring about the Iranian Revolution of 1979. However, after breaking with the revolutionary government, MeK embarked on a terrorism campaign and was forced into exile, losing followers in Iran after its support for Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq War.

MeK was designated as a terrorist organization by the US State Department until 2012. The Iranian government estimates that MeK activity has claimed some 12,000 Iranian lives over the last three decades.

Operating from exile, the organization had all the trappings of a cult. Attracting young, idealistic Muslims with slogans of Islamic justice and social freedom, it disrupted familial and social ties, forcing members to divorce their spouses and abandon relatives, making them dependent on the group through isolation, misinformation and manipulation.

Masoud Banisadr, a cousin of former Iranian President Abolhassan Banisadr, joined MeK while studying in Britain and served in its political wing for nearly 20 years. Finally leaving the group in 1996, he now writes about the dangers of cult ideology and the appeal of extremism. His books include Masoud: Memoirs of an Iranian Rebel and Destructive and Terrorist Cults: A New Kind of Slavery.

In this edition of The Interview, Fair Observer talks to Masoud Banisadr about what first attracted him to the MeK and what eventually forced him to escape.

Anna Pivovarchuk: How was MeK different from other political organizations? What is your definition of a cult, and how does it fit into that image?

Masoud Banisadr: Cults resemble slavery more than they do political parties, which are idea-based. Cults, on the contrary, are leader- and behavior-based. They claim to have an ideology that is useful for recruitment, to use it as a mind manipulation tool and to glue followers to each other. But when you look at them closely, you will see that they have taken shape around a leader and a code of behavior dictated by that leader.

Cult dogmas are shaped around behavior. For example, for a cult member, it is more important how he looks than how he thinks. In MeK, you could say I don’t believe in this or that principal of Islam, and nobody cared much. But if you behaved differently, if you didn’t follow or have enough loyalty toward the leader, you couldn’t stay in MeK for a second—same as al-Qaeda, same as Daesh [Islamic State]. In all of these organizations, you can see that what is important is survival of the group and absolute loyalty and obedience toward the leader.

The other main difference is that a cult is a way of life, and as slavery there is no way out of it till you die. When you are a member of a cult, it is the whole of you. Your motherhood and sisterhood is defined by being member of a cult. Your work is defined by being a member of a cult.

Pivovarchuk: So what makes people join a cult in the first place? Are there some common reasons?

Banisadr: I think people are recruited by cults rather than joining them freely. However, some people might be more vulnerable than others to fall in the trap of cults due to three main reasons.

The first is personal: I might have a problem of belonging, identity or not having a sense of purpose in life. These days, many young people lack a sense of belonging. Family ties are not as strong as before. Religion is not as important as before. Even nationality is not as relevant as before. This lack of feeling of belonging might attract them toward gangs, cults or groups of any sort to feed that longing. Imagine a young Muslim on the street who has nothing: Suddenly, when he joins a group like al-Qaeda or Daesh, he becomes a warrior, a martyr, a great hero. It’s a great change. People either love you or hate you, but at least you are not insignificant anymore.

The second is the cause: ideological, political, or philosophical, mainly as a means to seek justice. If you feel or see injustice and discrimination against yourself or against your community or religion, you feel you have to do something. Many young Muslims feel injustice against Palestinians in Israel, or they see the rise of Islamophobia in Western countries and feel they have to do something against it. Cults feed on injustice and claim they can offer people a way to seek justice. Cults also give an illusion of a sense of honor and a way for an ordinary normal person to feel that he/she can have an honorable life and that if one dies for the cause, they will be remembered as a martyr or a hero.

And the third reason might be that you have been born into a cult. Your parents have been followers of a cult, and as a result you have been raised in the cult.

Pivovarchuk: You talk about the personality of a cult leader being very important. You have to get people to buy into your narrative. How is that achieved?

Banisadr: After being recruited comes their mind manipulation. Although they have recruited you, using some sort of doctrine, or cause, forcing you to accept that if you join their cult you will become a better person. Still, they have to change you into a committed or, if I may say, blind follower or a “zealot” member. And here comes mind manipulation that I have divided in three intertwined stages.

The first stage is rational trickery and influence techniques that change your belief system. For example, if you are attached to the family, through some rational trickery, through some influence techniques, they can persuade you that your new family are the cult members rather than your parents or your siblings. They persuade you to fight for them—[as] the only way that you can seek justice for yourself or your community. Then using some influence techniques they will force you to do something to affiliate yourself with the group. They might start with small requests and then build on those small steps and gradually pull you deeper and deeper into their swamp.

The next stage is of “mind control”—control of environment and control of behavior. Because at this stage you are divided between who you were and who you are going to be, your feelings, your personality will force you to go back toward who you were.

I was born the year when the first democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh was violently overthrown by a CIA coup. It affected my generation and the later ones deeply.

To overcome the effect of your old feelings, cult leaders have to isolate you from the society and your past life; this will be done through control of environment. There is an Iranian expression that says, “Whoever leaves your eyes will eventually leave your heart.” By stopping you from having any contact with your parents and friends, gradually cults can stop you remembering your feelings toward your loved ones.

They can change your personality gradually by changing your behavior. For example, if you look at the people who became followers of Daesh or al-Qaeda, you can immediately see a change of appearances and behavior. For example, they grow a beard, or they grow or cut their hair, their clothes change, and also their behavior will change—in extreme form of it, used by Daesh. You have seen in the media that they have asked a British-born person to behead another person, or even destroy shrine of a Muslim saint. By doing that, Daesh will force that person to stand against his old personality by an extreme change of behavior. It is also a way of dehumanizing the outsiders and isolating a new follower not only from the society, but also from history, tradition, ethic and culture of his previous being.

Pivovarchuk: How important is this isolation from family and friends in altering someone’s idea of yourself? In your personal experience, what have you been told to do or asked to do?

Banisadr: When you say that I am a person, what does it mean? I am a person because of my set of beliefs, because of my principles, because of the way I think, because of the things that I enjoy, because of my relation to my family, my relation to parents, siblings, wife, children and so on. If you lose them one by one, then eventually you become an “unperson.” Nobody.

For example, I was in the last year of my PhD. But the way that MeK educated me, I was feeling ashamed of being a PhD student, not proud of it. Why? Because they were telling me that while I was studying and wanted to become a doctor, followers of the group were in prison under torture during the shah’s time. So instead of fighting, instead of sacrificing my life for the people, selfishly, I was studying. So instead of being proud of who I was, I was ashamed of it.

I was even ashamed of my family, because of my family name—because of my cousin, who was the president of Iran.

This is the new you—this new personality of yours. You change into a nobody, and you define yourself according to your cult personality. What is your rank in the cult? What is the relationship between you and the leader of the cult? How have you behaved in the cult? How successful have you been in the pursuit of the cult’s objectives?

I am calling it slavery because you change into an “unperson.” Your relationship with everybody else is defined via your relationship with the cult leader. Because whatever you do, you are not gaining anything for yourself and even your family and your society but for the cult leader. Like slaves whose existence was defined through their relationship to the master, and the fruit of their life was going to the master.

In MeK, we were not even allowed to think of our children and their wellbeing. The logic behind it was that while children in Iran are suffering, you wouldn’t dare let yourself think about your own children. As with slavery, you are a parent, but you are not a parent. You are a supervisor of your children, a person responsible for educating a child so he can change into another follower/slave of the leader/master. You have to teach your children: instead of loving you, love the leader. Instead of remembering grandparents, remember those who have sacrificed their life for the cult.

In slavery, at least in your dreams, in your desires, you are free. You can desire freedom because you can see that you are a slave. In your dream, you can remember your old life. Your country, your family. But in cults you can’t. Because through brainwashing, they have changed you into your own jailer. You even don’t dream of freedom as you are educated to think that you are freest person on earth.

Pivovarchuk: In your book, you say that you underwent a transformation from a “liberal middle-class semi-intellectual” to a zealot ready to die for the leader. It shows that those who join cults are not stupid or naïve, but that it’s a complicated psychological process. What caused this transformation that you talk about?

Banisadr: For me personally, I guess I have to go back to three slogans of the Iranian Revolution: independence, freedom and Islamic Republic.

I was born the year when the first democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh was violently overthrown by a CIA coup. It affected my generation and the later ones deeply. We wanted independence because we used to feel that our country was ruled by Americans—not physically, but we knew that the shah was a puppet of the US. So independence was very important to us.

The first thing to understand is what attracts young Muslims to these groups. I believe it is injustice—injustice against Muslims in different countries. It is very important we recognize this.

The second one was freedom, which was opposite of the dictatorship, and the censorship of shah’s regime. We understood political freedom more than any other freedom, probably because of the lack of it. So when we talked about freedom, we meant political freedom rather than liberalism as it is in the West, where it is mostly about personal freedom. During the shah’s regime, we almost had all personal freedom enjoyed by the Western youth, but there was a total lack of political freedom.

The third one was the Islamic Republic, which was mainly about social justice promised in Islam. We felt that people were divided between the superrich and super-poor, and if you were part of the system you could have everything. What attracted me among many other young people to the revolution were these three ideas, these slogans.

After the revolution, because I was in the UK, I couldn’t see for myself what was going on in Iran. I couldn’t judge for myself. The only source of information we had about what is going on in Iran was MeK papers. Even Western media, because they were against the Islamic Revolution and the new government in Iran, were feeding us with the same kind of news—all negative ones. So we felt that our country was even more unjust than before. What happened to freedom and Islamic justice?

MeK was even telling us that sooner or later, this new government would become the puppet of the United States. That because they cannot run the country, they will need the help of foreigners and will invite Americans and British. As you can see, for us it looked like everything was ruined and lost.

Pivovarchuk: What made you change your mind? What was the catalyst for you leaving the MeK?

Banisadr: As I mentioned before, cults—I believe all cults—have one weakness. They can change you, they can change your set of beliefs and everything, they can change your behavior, your appearance and so on. But they are unable to change one very important thing: They are unable to wipe out your memories. There are some fantasy stories where people have been brainwashed and have lost their memories and have found completely new personalities. That is fiction.

If you do not think about your feelings toward your past life, friends and families, your feeling toward them is still alive—though it is passive, paralyzed or asleep.

Anything can make it active. A smell reminds you of your childhood. A flower, a color or kindness from a stranger. Walking in the streets, seeing somebody who looks like your mother. Seeing love between a parent and children in the street. For the majority of followers of groups like MeK, Daesh and al-Qaeda that have been isolated (both psychologically and physically) from society and normal life, it is more difficult to save themselves because their feelings toward their loved ones cannot be triggered and remembered.

But for a person like me, who had to travel to different countries to represent the group politically at the United Nations in Europe and the United States, the situation was different, because I could see other ordinary people.

The first thing that forced me to remember ordinary kindness was when I was traveling from France to the United States. I was so tired that I slept on the airplane, from the beginning almost to the end. When I woke up, there was an old lady sitting beside me, and I found out that she kept for me whatever was given out in the plane. It was a very natural, ordinary kindness, but it affected me greatly to understand ordinary life, ordinary human behavior, because in the cult you will categorize ordinary people just above animals. They dehumanize outsiders, so followers are ready to do anything for the cult. As you have noticed, followers of Daesh are ready to behead other human beings without any remorse or doubt.

In MeK, if you were called ordinary, it meant that they had called you a dog or a pig. To be ordinary is worse than any other swear words. And suddenly, I was facing the beauty of being ordinary. Beauty through love, through understanding, through simple empathy and compassion.

And the second thing that saved me was seeing my daughter and old friends in the UK. Remembering my love for my daughter. My family and friends.

And also after that, I was lucky because of my back problem I had to be hospitalized. And because the group was so busy with the different political meetings that Maryam Rajavi [wife of Masoud Rajavi and co-leader of MEK] had in London, they forgot about me. So for almost a month, or three weeks, I was in the hospital without having any kind of connection to the group.

In the hospital I could see other people. I remember there was a guy beside me who had an accident and his hands were in plaster. I used to give him lunch and I even helped him to shave. And he showed me kindness as well. These kinds of things suddenly force you to remember who you were and who you truly are: a human being.

Remembering feelings suddenly forced me to wake up from a very, very bad dream. Although I can admit that still I could not understand what was happening or what had happened. I could not understand the political deception; I could not understand the hypocrisy of the group. But I could understand and I could see who I was. I could see my old personality, I could see my old feelings, and I think this was the trigger that helped me leave the group.

Pivovarchuk: How long would you say it took you to process all that had happened to you?

Banisadr: Very long. They say you can leave a cult, but it takes a long time for the cult to leave you. Because it infiltrated your mind, your heart, your philosophy, your way of thinking, and it’s very difficult to get rid of it.

I think for a year I couldn’t understand it as a cult. I couldn’t understand the procedure as brainwashing or mind manipulation. After I started writing my memoirs—gradually, because I was remembering stage by stage what had happened—I think it was in the last chapter of the book that I finally felt that it was a cult and I had been brainwashed.

Pivovarchuk: How did this realization make you feel?

Banisadr: It was great and horrible at the same time.  If you find a very close friend has robbed you, it hurts; if you find him violating your trust and dignity and deceiving you for years, it hurts much more. Then imagine finding out a guy who you thought of as a saint and the holiest person on earth has been just a charlatan wanting to make you his slave through manipulating your mind—robbing not only your wealth, health and happiness, but your individuality, personality and humanity. Then you will understand what I felt.

After that comes realization of nothingness, loneliness and powerlessness. You feel you are free to do anything you like, but you are neither who you were before the cult, nor a follower of the cult.

So you ask yourself, who am I? If I am going to buy clothes for myself, what should I buy? What kind of food do I enjoy? Suddenly making any decision became huge. Impossible. I used to get help from my daughter. Ask her to choose for me, to buy clothes.

What do you consider as honor, and what are you proud of? What are your political or philosophical beliefs? And how do you run your daily life and make a new relation? All these are very big questions.

When people look at you, they see a grown man. But I can say that somehow you are a newborn child without the support of parents. There is no solid wall to lean on. You are really vulnerable, and there is nobody to tell you what has happened to you and how should you find your way.

Suddenly you’re coming out of a cult penniless—the things that I knew were obsolete. For example, I went to a job interview, and they asked me, “What do you know?” I answered: mathematics, chemical engineering, programming and so on. The guy asked me, “Okay, very good, nice great, what kind of programming do you know?” I started saying, “Fortran, Assembly, basic language…” And he looked at me: “Where are you from?”

Suddenly I realized that I knew nothing. I even didn’t have common sense of ordinary people. I had lost it. If you wanted to talk with me about music or movies, or the kind of programs I like on TV, I didn’t have a clue what to say. So what kind of connection and communication could I have with you?

After that you will face another big problem: how to get rid of the cult in your mind. How to change your behavior. How to change your way of thinking, your worldview from a black-and-white into a colorful one. How to see bad and good beside each other. How to get rid of the cult’s way of thinking, what they have forced you to believe and accept as reality. All this will take a lot of time.

Pivovarchuk: Ironically, what they tried to isolate you from—your family, your children—has become something that brought you back to normality. As you said, you can’t destroy memory, so there’s this hope that people can find their way back.

Banisadr: I think so. And this is my advice to parents of all those children who have been recruited by cults: show them love. Instead of arguing and discussing political, religious or philosophical issues, give them love. Let them remember the kind of relationship, the kind of emotion that they had with you. The kind of feelings that existed between you. In this way, they can remember who they were, and in this way they can find a way to get rid of cultic manipulation and become somebody again.

Pivovarchuk: It’s interesting that you mentioned that, because obviously there’s been a lot of attention given to Islamic extremism and groups like al-Qaeda, al-Shabab, ISIS. How do we stop people from joining? Where does this battle for their hearts and minds begin?

Banisadr: The first thing to understand is what attracts young Muslims to these groups. I believe it is injustice—injustice against Muslims in different countries. It is very important we recognize this. For politicians and the media to recognize it—accept that yes, there is injustice against, for example, Palestinians in Israel. There are double-standards toward Israel. We understand this, we accept this. This acceptance is very important.

Then we have to separate the religion of Islam and Muslims from these groups. Calling them Islamic or Muslim is a horrible thing to do. Why? Because we are enabling them to recruit from a 1.6 billion population pool. If you call them Muslim, you will create sympathy, shared ideas and religion between them and these 1.6 billion Muslims. Even these Muslims might see them as their own children—they might see them as their fellow Muslims in need of help and support.

So it’s a very big mistake, which unfortunately many mass media and some politicians make and in a way will help these groups to recruit even more. By calling these terrorist groups Muslim and using Islamic State instead of Daesh, first they enable these groups to recruit more. At the same time, they advocate Islamophobia among non-Muslims in society, and finally alienate ordinary Muslims from the rest of the society.

Therefore, Muslims in the West think of themselves more as Muslim than, for example, as British. Even if the media want to talk about ideology of these groups, they should use the name of their ideology—Wahhabism or Takfiri—and not Islam. The same thing they do when they want to talk about other groups such as David Koresh’s or Jim Jones’s cults, or when they talk about the Moonies.

Second, we have to educate young people about Islam as a religion of peace and tolerance, and at the same time, we have to educate them about cult and mind manipulation—to immunize them against mind manipulation of the cults. To teach them how people can be manipulated, how people can be influenced, be tricked by rational manners. How they can be brainwashed.

Finally, we have to show them a way out of the cult. Instead of criminalizing them, which will stop them coming back. We should realize that followers of a cult are victims as well—a victim of mind manipulation and not a criminal. If we help them and show them kindness and education, they can change into an antidote of cults and terrorism. It is very important for those who have left Daesh and al-Qaeda to say what they have witnessed and educate other people not to fall in the trap of cults.

By criminalizing them, by putting them in prison, we change them into heroes of the next generation of terrorist cults. By executing them, we make them into martyrs.

Pivovarchuk: Can Iran and the US work together against Daesh successfully?

Banisadr: To get rid of Daesh and al-Qaeda in the Middle East, to find a long-lasting peace and stability in the region, America and Iran have to talk and work with each other. But can they? True, every week in the Friday prayer, Iranians chant “Death to America,” but what they mean is “Death to those Americans who tried to destroy our country and still want to do so.”

After all, while no American has ever been killed by any Iranian (except those killed by MeK), but on the opposite side. The CIA overthrew the first democratically-elected prime minster of Iran; America established and supported the shah’s dictatorship; supported Saddam Hussein’s war and his chemical attacks against Iran. During aggression of Saddam against Iran, Americans even shot down Iran Air Flight 655, an Iran Air civilian passenger flight from Tehran to Dubai in 1988, killing all 290 passengers, without any proper apology.

And now some warmongering American politicians are supporting MeK, who have been the lobbying force behind the sanctions against Iran and are lobbying Western countries to attack the country, praying for the destruction of Iran so they might become its new rulers. They are mostly hated in Iran, and I believe this will add to why Iranians don’t trust Americans.

As long as America doesn’t review its foreign policy, realizing who its friends and who its enemies are, and the Western media doesn’t stop this propaganda against Iran based on its love for Saudi petrol dollars, we will hardly see any improvement in Iran-US relations. And, unfortunately, we have to witness growth of Saudi-backed Wahhabi terrorist groups and more instability and suffering in the region.

By Anna Pivovarchuk and Masoud Banisadr , Fair Observer.com

The post Masoud Banisadr:Living and Escaping a Terrorist Cult appeared first on Nejat Society.

 Dr Masoud Banisadr, PhD The son of a prominent Iranian family, he entered radical political activity in 1978 while pursuing his postgraduate studies in Engineering-Mathematics. Then, he was 24 happily married with a one-year-old daughter. The group he affiliated with, the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MeK), played a prominent part in the mass demonstrations and paramilitary activity that led to the 1979 overthrow of the Shah. After Mek’s failed uprising in 1981, it changed into a clandestine terrorist group and Rajavi, MeK’s leader, and many high-ranking members, escaped to France. Soon MeK underwent a radical transition into a cult and by the late 1980s, MeK members were compelled to divorce their spouses, give up their children and live celibate for the rest of their life. In 1986, Banisadr became the representative of the group to UN agencies and human rights organizations, and later their representative in the US, acting as a sort of unofficial ambassador of MeK. He escaped MeK in June 1996 and later wrote a memoir of his experiences entitled Masoud: Memoirs of an Iranian Rebel (2004) and has written many articles about cults and their mind manipulation, including his 2014 book, Destructive and…..

Jeremiah Duggan campaign, June 30 2015

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 In 1979, Masoud Banisadr was a young postgraduate maths student at Newcastle University, watching political upheaval in his homeland of Iran on the nightly news. After the fall of the Western-backed Shah, wanting to play his part in a new society he joined Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), an Islamic Marxist revolutionary organisation.

 But a couple of years after the revolution, the MEK began to clash with Ayatollah Khomeini’s theocratic regime and were soon deemed an enemy of the new Iran. MEK suicide bombings and assassinations followed. In 1981, thousands of MEK members went into exile, and by 1986 had established a tight-knit paramilitary organisation in Iraq led by husband-and-wife team Masoud and Maryam Rajavi.

 Banisadr became the MEK’s PR man, moving between Camp Ashraf, their headquarters in Iraq, Geneva and Washington DC, trying to win over Western politicians. He finally left the group in 1996, went into hiding and now lives back in England.

The United States removed MEK from its list of terrorist organisations in 2012, but Banisadr still considers it a fanatical cult acting under the warped leadership of the Rajavis. He argues that any terrorist organisation is either a cult or “has no option but to become one in order to survive”.

 I spoke to Banisadr about the power of cults, and how this might help us understand why young men in the UK are vulnerable to joining the Islamic State and other extremist groups.

An MEK oath ceremony at Camp Ashraf in Iraq, taken around 2002 by a member who has since left and does not wish to be named.

VICE: You were once a high-ranking member of MEK. Why do you now see the organisation as a cult?

Masoud Banisadr: There was a charismatic leader, Rajavi. There was a black-and-white world view imposed; followers cutting themselves off from family; followers losing their personality. There was mind manipulation. At Camp Ashraf in Iraq there were talks lasting for days on end. I remember one task where we had to write down our old personality in one column on a board, and the new personality in a different column. I remember a guy who said, “My brother works in the Iranian embassy in London. Before I loved him as my brother, now I hate him as my enemy. I am ready to kill him tomorrow, if necessary.” And everyone applauded.

 How did you justify violence?

 I was fortunate not to be involved in any violence. But all group members accepted MEK suicide bombings and killings in Iran to be revolutionary acts. This was the brainwashing. And later, in my role as official representative, I would justify and explain these acts as the only means we had to defend ourselves. I was a nice person, well-mannered, and could argue very rationally with politicians. So I was a good salesman.

 Why did MEK members divorce their wives?

 In 1990, Rajavi said all members must divorce their spouses. My own wife had already left the group by then. All members accepted these terms, and it [applied to] everyone except the leader and his wife Maryam. In a single day, everyone became celibate. Someone asked, “What about sex in the afterlife?” He replied, “I know your trick – you want to fantasise about the afterlife. But no – you must be prepared to forget about sex, about spouses, about love.”

 No sex?

 No sexual thoughts. The idea was that we were in a war to take back Iran, so you cannot have a family until the war is won. This was the excuse the outside world would hear, but inside we were told your spouses are a barrier between you and the leadership. We were ordered to surrender our soul, heart and mind to Rajavi and his wife.

Masoud meeting trade union leaders at an International Labour Conference in Geneva in 1987 (published in an MEK newspaper).

How did you manage to leave the organisation?

What saved me was seeing my daughter. In 1996 I came to London to arrange some meetings. I saw my daughter, after many years of not seeing her. I had totally forgotten about the guy who was the father, the old Masoud. I only knew Masoud, the MEK member. The old Masoud wanted to hug her, but the group member – living under strict rules where men and women never interacted – knew he should not. I was fortunate that I had a bad back problem, so I was allowed to go and recuperate in hospital. And in those two weeks, being around ordinary people, seeing ordinary families, I allowed feelings for my own family to come back. And so, finally, I decided to leave the group.

Where did you go?

I had to go on the run for a time. I learned how to hide myself around the UK until they gave up looking for me.

What do you think it is that makes young people vulnerable to extremist causes?

 Well, terrorism is like a virus. It attacks us through our weaknesses. It kills our personality, our individuality, like a cult. I think there are three stages. The first stage is the injustice of the world. Young Muslims see injustice, become angry and want to react. Then comes along a powerful ideology, and the Wahabi ideology offers a very simple, black-and-white world view, and a very narrow-minded interpretation of jihad, offered as a solution to young Muslims. But both these stages are not enough to make someone a terrorist, a human bomb or a fighter for a caliphate. A third stage is required: the mind manipulation, which robs someone of their personality, makes them identify entirely with the group and cuts them off from their parents and society.

So radical ideas alone aren’t enough to go off and fight for, say, the Islamic State?

If you’re a young Muslim and you feel like a nobody, it’s appealing to hear that we can return to the time of Prophet Mohammed – [that] we will be powerful again and feel proud of ourselves. This can make you radical – even prepared to be violent – but you will not stay a fighter or become a martyr without being entirely cut-off from family and the values of the society you were brought up in. That requires the mind-manipulation that goes on in a destructive cult.

Where does the Islamic State fit in? Do you consider it a cult as well as a terrorist organisation?

The signs are there. The leader – Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – is charismatic and has unlimited ambition. He has been introduced as the leader of all Muslims, the Caliph. Normal leaders want political power. Cult leaders want something more than governing a city or country – they want to govern history. They want to change the structure of humanity. For a while they were calling themselves ISIL – Islamic State of Iraq and Levant.

They wanted control of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel. Now they call themselves the Islamic State. They want whatever they think was once part of the Islamic empire, so they claim Spain, Portugal, North Africa, India and part of China and Russia. They want the whole world, to make everyone Muslim. This is not normal leadership; this is heading towards cult. There is no limitation you can deal with, politically.

 What would you say to British parents who have children fighting in Syria or Iraq?

It’s very difficult, very delicate. If a parent says anything critical against a radical preacher, or about an organisation like Islamic State, that’s when a person’s mind becomes defensive. It is difficult to argue rationally. So if a parent has contact, they should not try to talk about politics or religion. They should show only kindness and love. This is the member’s weakness. Feelings do not die away, even if personality has changed. So the parent has to let them know they will be there, waiting. There has to be a pathway back to a life where family love is there, something that has nothing do with ideological thinking. Unconditional love unlocks the mind manipulation that has taken place.

 Thanks, Masoud.

Adam Forrest, Vice.com

The post A Former MEK Member Speaks About the ‘Cult’ of Extremism appeared first on Nejat Society.

Dr. Massoud Banisadr speech at London Press Conference; “Terrorism, Cult and mind manipulation”

Iran Interlink: Following is the trascript of the speech of Dr. Massoud Banisadr at the London Press Conference, August 2014

Terrorism, Cult and mind manipulation

After September 2001, there is not a single day without some sort of news about Terrorism, its atrocities and our vulnerabilities. These days we are witnessing thousands of people killed, maimed, kidnapped and imprisoned by various offshoots of terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda, ISIS, or the Islamic State, in Iraq and Syria, Al Nusrah in Syria, Al-Shabaab in Somalia, Boko Haram in Nigeria and others in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen and elsewhere.

Even aside, the terrible traumas inflicted on hundreds of thousands or millions of individuals and their families by the destructive/terrorist cult leaders and the financial damage that they inflict on the society; there are also the further victims; i.e. members and followers of these groups.

In this very short speech, I want to explain what the relation between Terrorism and Cult is and explain how these violent groups recruit in our societies and how they can change normal, ordinary and even intellectual young people into a human bomb.

Terrorism

Terrorism in my view is some kind of a social virus similar to any other we know. We are all vulnerable to be infected by this virus mainly because of injustice, discrimination and double standards. Therefore, Terrorism has been with us since the beginning of civilization and unfortunately will remain with us as long as there is any kind of injustice in any society that makes people vulnerable toward it.

Like any other disease; for terrorism, we either can understand its characteristics and our vulnerabilities and immunise ourselves and our society against it, or fight its symptoms, prescribing a very strong painkiller that can harm healthy part of organism as well.

Unfortunately, as usual, governments have a habit of going for the latter one and only when they are forced by public opinion they will go for the former one. This is why most of government’s policies toward terrorism are aiming to face terrorists, rather than cause of terrorism.

Well I am not going to talk about terrorism in general but terrorist organisations in particular and their metamorphosis into destructive cults. Their victims and what can we do to stop them recruiting.

Terrorist Organisations

I will call an organization a terrorist organization if its only tactic, or at least its main tactic, dealing with outside world or for reaching its goal is an act of terrorism. According to this definition, I will not call any popular political organizations, even if they use terrorism to deal with their enemies, a terrorist organization because they are dealing with other problems of society as well; terrorism is not their sole tactic or the pillar of their actions in dealing with their daily problems and objectives. I argue any terrorist organization to survive; either is a destructive cult or has no choice but to change into one.

Change into a destructive cult

Let say virus of Terrorism like any other has only two principles, values and objectives: first to survive and then reproduce or expand its territory. Not being abided by any set of values, culture, custom or beliefs of the society is the main reason why terrorist organisations have to change into a destructive cult. After all their members are from the same society with the same set of values; therefore terrorist organisations either are able to change belief system, personality and individuality of their followers or will lose them for good and like other viruses without, let say hosts either they will fade away or will hibernate somewhere else. This is why soon or late they have to use some sort of mind manipulation technique to change their member’s set of beliefs and later their personality and their selfhood. This is their path toward changing into a destructive cult.

Here I assume everybody is familiar with definition of a cult and a destructive one, therefore I am not going to talk about that.

Vaccination is the solution:

As other viruses that attack live cells of our body and make us ill or even kill us, Destructive cults also attack our system of believe, our personality and individuality and they too will kill us, if not killing our body, certainly they will kill our personality and our individuality.

If we accept this analogy, then we might ask how we face a new deadly virus? Let say HIV or Ebola that we are facing these days. Do we bomb them or their victims? No. We certainly to stop spread of diseases will isolate victims but not killing them, we try to cure them.

We know that no virus or parasite (another analogy or metaphor for leaders of destructive and terrorist cults) can survive without a host. Therefore, instead of killing the Virus, we immunize potential hosts by vaccinating them against the virus, and without any available or substantial number of hosts, viruses soon or late will die away.

How can we vaccinate our people, and especially our young Muslims living in the west?

Three open gates or vulnerabilities of mind of young Muslims:

To prevent young people, especially young Muslims in Western countries, from being recruited, we should understand how terrorist cults use three vulnerabilities of their victims.

1- Injustice: We know that injustices are perpetrated all over the world against individuals and minorities, sometimes even against whole populations. Young people especially are particularly sensitive to these injustices and seek ways to put them right. This is their first ‘vulnerability’, or the first ‘open gate’ to their minds that terrorist cults can enter to infiltrate their thinking and ostensibly offer a solution to the problem. Governments, the media and politicians generally fail to understand and accept the nature and extent of injustice or to give young people ways to vent their anger and frustration about the sorry state of the world. Instead, they tend to turn a deliberate blind eye to wrongs and injustices and try to project a rosy picture of things. Hence, they aggravate and themselves become promoters of the problems, and it is left to the police to deal with protests and public unrest. Among young people, this creates resentment and hatred, not only towards the police and authorities but sometimes towards all of society. Rage leaves the ‘open gate’ of the minds of victims and sympathizers even wider for infiltration by terrorist recruiters.

2- Ideology or doctrine: Nowadays, positive nationalism, public ethics and morality, family traditions, cultural ties and tolerant religions are all diminishing in importance in the everyday lives of young people, especially in the West, and being displaced by pure individualism, celebrity worship and the assumption that, to be of value, you have to be talented, beautiful or rich. Young Muslims in the West are increasingly turning to religion as a cure for all their ills and dissatisfactions. This can be very positive and helpful, but, in the absence of intelligent and progressive preachers in the mosques who understand their frustrations and show them the tolerant and moderate face of religion, this merely opens the second ‘gate’ into the minds of the young devotees for terrorist recruiters and preachers (the main export of Saudi Arabia to other countries after oil). Using a few misrepresented and misinterpreted sentences of the Koran or the Bible, it is easy to radicalize them.

3- Mind manipulation: Unfortunately, schools and universities fail to educate young people about the dangers that destructive/terrorist cults pose to innocent minds unprepared to fend off their influence and their blandishments. Ex cult members, experts in this field can show the methods of mind manipulation that cults, terrorist cults in particular, use to alter young people’s personalities and make them capable of turning into slaves, and even suicide bombers. Lack of education and awareness about what freedom and slavery are in the modern world and how mind can be manipulated by a cult leader is the third vulnerability of these young people. Here we might be able to help; With such education, it might be possible to close this third ‘gate’ into young people’s minds.

How do I define Mind Manipulation?

According to my Mathematical model that I am not going to bore you with mathematical part, I have divided the mind manipulation in three stages:

The first stage is the use of rational and Influence techniques to engender a change of beliefs among new recruits. The next phase is to instil and stabilize the new beliefs and prevent the new recruit from returning to his previous belief system under the pressure of his pre-existing personality and his feelings towards his old way of life, family and friends. This is done mainly via isolation and forcing a change of behaviour, which I call it mind control (control of old feelings and control of behaviour). Finally, a destructive cult leader has to change a disciple’s personality into a collective cult personality; this is done mainly by the use of emotion, which I have called it brainwashing. If you are interested to know more, you can either refer to my articles on RIDC.info web site or see my new book that hopefully will come out next month: [Destructive/ Terrorist Cults are a new kind of Slavery]

What can we do?

How should we stop suicide bombers or punish them? By arresting them before they act? Or after their act, when they are in their own paradise? The first option goes against our values and principles, and risks fatal errors and the victimization of innocent people; the second is a joke and impossibility. However, we can and must stop people from becoming human bomb or a killing machine. Therefore, in my conclusion I suggest that we need, urgently and seriously, to conduct more research in order to understand the phenomena of destructive cults and mind manipulation. We need to inform and educate society and especially young people about these phenomena and the dangers they pose. We must criminalize the brainwashing and enslavement of people, just as we banned the old slavery. We need to help people who are on the road to killing their personality and individuality, just as we try to prevent would-be suicides. We have to help the families and friends of those who are enslaved in cults to rescue their loved ones, and encourage and give moral and financial support to those who want to escape cults. In this way, we will save many thousands of individuals from the new slavery and protect our modern way of life from the terrorism perpetrated by organizations that can only survive by changing into destructive cults.

The post Dr. Massoud Banisadr speech at London Press Conference appeared first on Nejat Society.

Steven Hassan – one of the world’s leading authorities on cults and undue influence, and author of two of the most acclaimed books on the subject – Combatting Cult Mind Control and Freedom of Mind: Helping Loved Ones Leave Controlling People, Cults and Beliefs. Steven has appeared numerous times in television programs and on radio shows to share his professional insights on undue influence as a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC). Steve has developed the BITE model for addressing undue influence. Freedom of minds.com

Masoud Banisadr – a representative of the group Mujahideen-e-Khalq Organization (MeK). He left the MeK in 1996 and has written of his experiences in the book Masoud: Memoirs of an Iranian Rebel (and more recently Destructive/ Terrorist Cults: A New kind of Slavery). He is active in raising awareness of undue influence and its links with terrorist organisations. Banisadr.info

–

PRESS CONFERENCE – August 22, 2014 at 1.30pm

On Friday August 22, before the two-day meeting a press conference will be held to draw attention to this issue, but also to highlight what some experts consider should be the approach to tackling the fallout. The press conference is for members of the press and AAWA invited guests.

Details of the press conference

22nd August 2014 at 1.30pm

London College, Victoria Gardens, Notting Hill Gate, London W11 3PE

For more Information:

International experts meet in London to discuss “UNDUE INFLUENCE” of extremist groups

Iran Interlink from AAwa.co

The post Masoud Banisadr joins Int. experts to discuss “UNDUE INFLUENCE” of extremist groups appeared first on Nejat Society.

“Masoud Banisadr, a former Iranian MEK [Mojahedin-e-Khalq] cult member came up with this idea – he said after a civil trial, there should be a sharia trial. An Islamic cleric should come in and basically try the person and say, ‘You’re going to hell, because the Koran explicitly states you should not harm women, children, elderly,’” Hassan said. “And I’d like to see ex-jihadists come and give lectures on campuses, at mosques and such. I’d like to see more people taught about how social influence works.”

hereandnow.wbur.org

Download Steve Hassan interviews Masoud Banisadr

The post Steve Hassan interviews Masoud Banisadr, former member of MEK appeared first on Nejat Society.

Good afternoon Masoud,

Thanks so much for speaking with me. I think e-mail will work best, so I’ve put my questions below. Just as background, I’m writing about the potential role that the People’s Mujahedin could have in the current situation in Iran – specifically if supporting the MEK either publically or covertly could be beneficial to the U.S. and Israel, or if it could have an effect – either positive or negative – on Iran’s nuclear program.

– Does funding or training the MEK or MEK operatives make strategic sense for either Israel or the United States? Or is it altogether a bad idea?

– Could the MEK be actively trying to sabotage the Iranian regime and its nuclear program?

– Is it in the United States’ interest to de-list the MEK as a terrorist organization?

– What are the negative consequences of supporting the MEK?

– If Israel chooses to launch a military strike against Iran, would the MEK be an important ally for Israel?

– If you don’t mind me asking, why did you leave the MEK and what are your views toward the organization now?

– Lastly, is there anything else I need to know, or anyone you think I should talk to?

Thanks again.

Best, reporter

Dear reporter: please find my reply to your questions as below:

First let me answer your final question as it will be a good base for answering your other questions.

My view toward MEK:

In my view MEK since 1985 has changed into a destructive cult, why and how? I have explained it in an article that you can find it in below address. In short, I believe all violent or terrorist groups to survive have no choice but to change into a destructive cult. When in 1981 MEK’s strategy and all its tactics changed into a blind terrorism; to survive, she had no choice but gradually to change into a cult.

http://www.banisadr.info/ICSA.htm

Fortunately now days many independent organizations, experts and even governments do agree that MEK has all the characteristics of a destructive cult; for example you can read the RAND report. You can find its full report in below address:

http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG871.html

I believe cults although, to recruit and as a tool of manipulation need to have a doctrine or an ideology, but in reality they only have to principles that followers of the cult are loyal to and are ready to die for:

Survival of the cult with any price
Absolute obedience and loyalty toward the cult leader

To follow these two principles cults internally use different methods of mind manipulation (If you like to know more you can read my article on this subject in: http://www.banisadr.info/Inform.htm ) and externally they have theorized deceiving of others as part of their doctrine (in a way, I believe all destructive cults, ideologically are hypocrite); in simple word they openly and genuinely believe in ‘end justifies means’. Or in another word as Chameleon, they can change color in mater of few hours or even minutes due to circumstances or their immediate or long term interests.

After Iranian revolution, late seventies and early eighties MEK could change from a guerrilla (or terrorist organization according to different people’s definition) into a popular political group attracting thousands of young people. But after moving back to terrorism, ignoring and violating people’s ethics, beliefs and principles, especially working with Iraq’s president, Saddam Hussein after the incursion of Iraq into Iran, they lost all their support inside Iran and as matter of fact in public view they changed into a traitor organization. Although they have about 3400 members in Iraq and another few thousands supporters in Europe and America, talking with any other Iranian (pro or against Iranian government, inside or outside of Iran) you can find out that, they are very much hated among Iranian and this is why no other opposition group (inside or outside or Iran) is ready to work with them.

Average age of MEK members is about 45, and since they were disarmed by Americans in 2003, I can say majority of their members are too old and untrained for any real and effective military activities. Saying this, doesn’t mean that they cannot change back into a terrorist, able to kill few more soft targets, such as Iranian scientists.

– Does funding or training the MEK or MEK operatives make strategic sense for either Israel or the United States? Or is it altogether a bad idea?

First; MEK is a destructive cult, to be a cult means, they always pursue their own specific interest. They might be useful in one occasion or another, but as a whole as they are not loyal toward any norms, ethics, principles or mutual agreement (except those two values of all destructive cults, mentioned above) like Al Qaeda, they cannot be trusted. Therefore strategically I believe it is not in the interest of anybody or any country to trust, not only the MEK but any destructive cults and should take note that any cooperation with them might soon change into their own nightmares as cooperation of the United States with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan during Soviet’s occupation, ended with the 9/11.

Second; I have to separate your question in two parts first about Israel and then United States; as I think their interest on Iran, while due to lobby of AIPAC, it seems are the same, strategically are different.

I genuinely think and feel, if the United States accepts the era of Shah has gone forever and recognizes Iran as it is; not only strategically they can live in peace with each other but also they might even change into a close allies (Well if you ask me why, then I have to write an essay, explaining culture of Iranian that is totally different from its western Arab neighbors or its civilization and its social and scientific progress which is different from its eastern and northern neighbors …) . However, even if the United States against its own interest and just for sake of tactical interest of Israel decides to work against present regime in Iran, it is against its own interest to capitalize on a group that, is a destructive cult, is like a balloon that looks big from without (because of sophistication of its propaganda tools) but empty from within; hated among Iranian and has no chance of gaining any support among them (Inside or outside of the country. Please don’t be deceived by MEK’s propaganda tricks including moving their two to three thousands members and supporters from one country to another or use of other nationalities in their gatherings for show of support among Iranian. Iran’s population is about 75 Million and there are more than two million Iranian who live in the United States and perhaps another million who live in Europe).

For Israel, again if you are talking about strategic interest of Israelis, I feel and think their long term interest is in reaching to some kind of agreement with Palestinians and live with them in peace, coexistence and cooperation. In this case I think even present regime of Iran, not only is not an obstacle, but even can help both sides to reach to long lasting peace and friendship (As Jews have lived in Iran for thousands of years in peace and harmony with their Zoroastrian, Muslim and Christian neighbors). But if you are talking about government of Israel and especially its present extreme right wing government, although in the past they have used MEK for example for announcing Israel’s findings about Nathans enrichment site (where no other Iranian opposition group agreed to do this job) and they might have used them for assassination of Iranian scientists, still I think trusting a cult is not a good idea. Capitalizing on people who are under mind control of a destructive cult; all of them live in a psychological isolation and more than half of them have to live both in psychological and physical isolation from the wider society to remain loyal to the group and its leader, is very bad idea even for present government of Israel. I am sure they can find younger and more loyal mercenaries to do their dirty job rather than cooperating with MEK.

Final word on this question; I genuinely think any cooperation of either the West, the United States or Israel with MEK is only beneficial to Iranian Regime in showing to Iranian; against all claims of the West for being supportive of Human Rights, Democracy and being against Terrorists, what kind of people they are supporting and what kind of government they are hoping to establish in Iran.

– Could the MEK be actively trying to sabotage the Iranian regime and its nuclear program?

It is more than thirty years that they are trying to harm Iran, and have not done much except terrorizing and killing few thousands soft targets and manipulating and deceiving few reporters and members of parliaments of Western countries. If during Sadam Hussein, when they were much younger, more united, and could benefit from unlimited resources of Iraq, including money, arms, and training, still couldn’t do much against Iran, or sabotaging any activity of Iran; it is very difficult to imagine they can do anything effective now.

– Is it in the United States’ interest to de-list the MEK as a terrorist organization?

I wish all countries including the United States had a law against destructive cults; then there was no needs to have a law against terrorist groups as all terrorist organizations, to survive eventually have to change into a destructive cult. Please don’t forget that all destructive cults cannot be trusted for what they claim they are, and all of them can violate all civilized norms and ethics to survive.

But as for now no country except perhaps France has such a law, de listing MEK in my view is a very bad idea. It will damage US claims of being against terrorists, or supportive of democratic groups (at least among Iranian); gives legitimacy to a destructive cult that violates all rights of its members; and damages long term relation between Americans and Iranian people. I feel it even might damage US’s prestige among Iranian, as bad as 1953 CIA’s coup d’état in Iran.

– What are the negative consequences of supporting the MEK?

I guess I answered it above.

– If Israel chooses to launch a military strike against Iran, would the MEK be an important ally for Israel?

How?! I cannot see it. When we are talking about Israel’s military strike, we are only are talking about its Air strike and in this case they don’t need any people in the country as they have all the satellite plan of Iranian nuclear sites. Israel knows very well that with one, two or few even successful air strike against Iran, she cannot destroy nuclear activities of Iran; therefore I feel their aim would be to force Iran into a reaction which eventually will force the United States into war against Iran. In this case neither MEK, nor any other opposition groups are useful for either the US or Israel as Iraqis opposition groups were useless when the real war started against Sadam Hussein. For sure in this scenario all Iranian, including Iranian oppositions (inside and outside of Iran) will support present Iranian government.

– If you don’t mind me asking, why did you leave the MEK and what are your views toward the organization now?

If you ask those who leave destructive cults, you might receive different answers. They might claim, suddenly they realized how bad they are; how manipulating they are; how much they deceive ordinary people for soliciting money or else; … in case of MEK, I have met those who claim; they suddenly realized that the organization is a traitor toward Iranian people, collaborating with Iranian enemies; or left them when they collaborated with Sadam Hussein, in suppressing and killing Iraqi Kurds, … But my sincere and honest answer is: I left them as I couldn’t change myself anymore and give them the reminder of my own personality, identity and individuality.

Between 1978, when, we (I and my ex wife) became MEK’s supporter till 1996 when I escaped, through use of different techniques of mind manipulation I was forced to give them whatever they asked me; first any capital or material things we had; then any love, attachments or relation we had with our country, our family and friends in Iran; then when they asked all members to divorce their spouses, I lost love of my life, my dear wife and could not see my children for almost six years; I lost part of my health, and many times were on the edge of dying for them. Then in final stage of their system of mind manipulation, they asked us to divorce ourselves, our identity and personality; I tried and lost big part of it, but couldn’t do more so I escaped. I honestly cannot understand or accept claims of others who say they realized this or that so they left, as I think those who are under mind manipulation of a destructive cult, have no chance of seeing or realizing what they are doing or saying, to reject it. Only when they escape, by chance or due to inability to give what cults wants them to do more; and only after years of hard work they might be able to realize what has happened to them and what have they done for the cult.

– Lastly, is there anything else I need to know, or anyone you think I should talk to?

I guess I have said more than enough and perhaps by now, have given you a headache.

Best wishes Masoud
Steve Hassan, Freedom of mind,

The post Former MeK top official answers questions appeared first on Nejat Society.

…The day after the bombing of Islamic Republic Party office, Mr. Abbas Davari and Mr. Azdanloo [two MKO members] came to see me. I asked them if they had bombed the IR Party office. They told that they hadn’t. I had already issued a statement to condemn that attack, the same day. I asked them the question because I was looking for a reason to accept Mujahedin’s alliance with our foundation. […]

When they declined the responsibility of that bombing, I posed some questions to answer so that I could decide what to do. The questions were about independence, freedom, the position of a political organization in society, the position of MKO in the society, the method of thinking in MKO – if it was like the past, a mixture of other ideologies?- if MKO was ready to accept critics on its ideology. They brought me the answer. They said that they had admitted the entire questions I had written […]

We are supposed to go to MKO’s safe house where we can learn about the changes they claim in their thinking method. If I make sure that the changes are serious; if they admit to the critics they are faces; if MKO becomes an organization with the objective of freedom, not the objective of power, I will manage to let them be a member of NCR. They bring me a book called Explaining the World. I read and correct it page by page. Then Mr. Rajavi comes to see me. I find out that the house belongs to his first wife [Ashraf]

I told Rajavi that we want nothing for the future. We don’t need any state and we just want to be political activists. Rajavi promises to make all changes in their ideology in order to adapt it with the freedom objective […]

[…] I tell Massoud Rajavi :" I cannot trust you totally, power addiction will not leave people easily […] I hope that you really act in accordance with what you say."

We manage to write an act based on three basic principles: Independence, freedom and lack of hegemony. I define these three principles: Any organization to submit to these principles, accepts that the objective of the struggle is freedom not power […]

One day Rajavi came to me and told that we had to communicate with states in order to be recognized as an alternative. I replied that the states were seeking their own benefits and we had nothing to do with them […]

[…]An hour later Mr. Rajavi came to my room and told that Mr. Tariq Aziz had asked to visit him […] I told him:" Now that you accepted to visit him, you should treat him the way our Iranian Emperor Shahpour the first treated the Roman Valerian. Our Emperor humiliated the invader to our country. He [Tariq Aziz] should understand that he had invaded a country which has national pride. You should notify that and you shouldn’t let the visit last more than half an hour." […] He said "Ok, I will" but instead of behaving like what he was supposed to, the meeting lasted 5 hours so that the following day Le Monde newspaper wrote that Mr. Tariq Aziz bought Mr. Rajavi or something like that […] after that visit, Rajavi’s behavior changed and changed …

Translated by Nejat Society

The post The outset of Rajavi’s longtime treason appeared first on Nejat Society.

REVIEW: Masoud Banisadr, Masoud: Memoirs of an Iranian Rebel Memoirs of an Iranian Rebel (London: Saqi Books, 2004).

The Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO), or the People’s Combatants Organization, was established in 1965 as an armed, underground group opposed to the Pahlavi regime and seeking to establish a "monotheistic classless society." Fus­ing aspects of Marxism-Leninism and political Islam, the MKO played an important role in mobilizing urban, educated Iranians during the Islamic Revolution, yet quickly fell out with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his inner circle in the post-revolution­ary period. Driven out of Iran, Masoud Rajavi and the Central Committee moved the MKO’s headquarters to Western Europe and then after 1986 to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Aside from its of­ficial history, little has been written in English about the inner workings of this highly secretive group.

The memoir of Masoud Banisadr, until 1996 a US and Eu­ropean representative of the National Council for Resistance (NCR), the MKO’s nominally independent political wing, helps present a picture of the organization as it functioned from the late 1970s. Masoud is especially timely, since the MKO, though deemed a "terrorist organization" by the State Department and several European governments, has been identified by neo-conser­vatives Daniel Pipes and Patrick Clawson as a candidate to bring "the tide of freedom" to Iran. The book seriously challenges such assumptions. In fact, Banisadr’s detailed life story corroborates a recent Human Rights Watch report, which describes the MKO’s systematic abuse and torture of members who challenge the Cen­tral Committee or seek to defect.

Banisadr, a cousin of the first popularly elected president of the Islamic Republic, and his wife were postgraduate students in Britain during the 1979 revolution. They became involved with the MKO and its affiliates after the fall of the Shah. A self-described "social democrat" at the time of the revolution, Banisadr was attracted to an ideology that "seemed indistinguishable from [Ali] Shariati’s," the thinker he had read and admired while still in Iran. Interestingly, he acknowledges that many MKO supporters did not "know much about the Mojahedin ideology, especially as it differed from that of other Muslims and Marxists." For him, "it was enough to know that they supported democracy, independence and progress."

At almost 500 pages, Masoud is a meticulous, but often me­andering and disjointed, book. Yet, for the patient reader, it is crammed with poignant details of how the MKO has maintained organizational unity despite external hostility and the many unsa­vory practices described by Banisadr. He tells us how the various "bases" scattered across Europe created a combination of complex, opaque hierarchy and communal living arrangements, how songs and military drills were used as rituals to develop a sense of soli­darity among middle-class college graduates, and how in order to raise funds the MKO established businesses, such as a stand that "introduced the joys of kebabs" to Durham.

But what will receive the most attention are the disturbing psy­chological techniques employed to force members to relinquish all sense of individual identity, to monitor each other and to disavow feelings for all people other than the married couple who make up the ideological and spiritual leadership of the MKO, Masoud and Maryam Rajavi. From the outset, the MKO encouraged members to distance themselves from their families, unless they could support the cause monetarily or through activities in Iran. The detachment from greater society, however, reached new levels after 1985 when the Rajavis announced various stages of the "ideo­logical revolution," whereby the MKO sought to reposition itself against the more consolidated regime in Iran. This "revolution" was initiated by the "marriage of the century," in which Rajavi wed Maryam Azodanlu, who had been married to another lead­ing member until shortly beforehand. All MKO members were expected to go through their own "ideological revolutions" in order to become true Mojahedin and demonstrate their loyalty. This was done at regular group confessionals ("cooking pots") in which Mojahedin would admonish themselves and each other, as well as through writing reports on one’s weaknesses, burn­ing "bourgeois" luxury items, limiting and even ending relations between the sexes, and divorcing one’s spouse to prevent "con­tradictions." The latter step was said to remove the main "buffer" preventing true understanding of the revolution, embodied in "the ideological mother" Maryam Rajavi, the only bridge to her husband. The meetings, taped sermons by the Rajavis and limits on outside sources of information created what Banisadr calls the "mystical efficacy of drip-fed propaganda."

This politico-theological apparatus surely helped to create some devoted followers, as demonstrated when several Mojahedin set themselves on fire when France briefly arrested Maryam Rajavi in 2003. Yet Banisadr describes how this psychologically abusive atmosphere, combined with growing doubts about the MKO’s military capability and political skill, led many other members to question the leadership and eventually quit. Banisadr’s suggestions and criticisms were met with indifference and public personal con­demnation, so much so that he began to doubt his own character. Unlike others who ended up attempting suicide or in Abu Ghraib prison for their criticisms, Banisadr was able to leave with relative ease, because he spent much of his time abroad and still had an extended family, including his ex-wife, living in Britain.

Masoud does not fully explain why Banisadr joined the MKO, as opposed to another political party, or why he left when he did. Nor does it offer an alternative politics to the one offered by the MKO. Like many autobiographies, it is too self-reflective to take these analytical steps or challenge the teleology of the narrative. Instead, Banisadr paints a picture of an organization that, over time, corrupted its members’ idealistic vigor and organizing acu­men into a means for self-abnegation with the only relationship of any significance being that between the individual member and the two-headed Rajavi beloved. After reading Masoud, it is difficult to imagine, as Pipes and Clawson apparently do, that the MKO will be able to mobilize its small, psychologically frag­ile membership or recruit more Iranians in order to overthrow the Islamic Republic, let alone establish a transparent political regime and foster a pluralistic society.

Reviewed by Arang Keshavarzian

MIDDLE EAST REPORT No:237

http://www.banisadr.info/MER.htm

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