the organisation calls all of its previous members, critics and who were showing some kind of opposition towards the group as the Iranian regime’s agents and members of secret police of Iran. Such allegations are made at a time when the organization is posturing as the most democratic Iranian opposition in exile.
There are some cases in which cult formation has not been predetermined and leaders were to bring about religious and social reforms. However, as a result of inferring new ideologies, they have separated themselves from others thus forming a cult faced with opposed ideologies on the part of the society.
Psychological strategies used for justifying people such as the length of organizational sessions, debriefing strategies and mental control, duality of extra and intra relations, humiliating members, cutting emotional relations with relatives, determining the relation of members with others, and their family in particular!nternal controlling system of MKO in contrast with traditional cultist system focuses on some complex and unbelievable dimensions.
After ideological revolution in MKO, leadership was considered as the zenith of the organization that, emphasized in inter-organizational meetings, had to be obeyed blindly and whose superiority could never be questioned. Such a leader is only accountable to God. In other words, he is regarded as the vicegerent of God. Mahdi Abrishamchi describes the position of leader as follows:
Nowadays, there are at least two organization accused of being terrorist and cultist, namely Al-Qa’ede and MKO. In 1997, U.S. foreign ministry introduced MKO as a sect following cultist doctrine. The US State Department’s report refers to the terrorist nature of MKO and their cultist doctrine: Rajavi, who heads the Mojahedin’s political and military wings, has fostered a cult of personality around himself.
It is a word which resonates with people. More familiarly I would call it ‘mind control techniques. These are well-known, well-documented. For years and years destructive cults have been using them. The way that they work in essence is that they will take a perfectly ordinary person and strip that person of their values using specific psychological manipulation.
One example of the social destruction of cult practices could be observed with the case of Mr Djavani. He has not only abandoned the organisation but every kind of religion and the Almighty God too. He has lost his faith with God all together after being disappointed with a cult claiming to be a religious establishment.
..intra-organizational controlling procedures in order to exercise a permanent and all-out mental, emotional and political control over the insiders. It was aimed to break members’ ties of attachment to anything and replace them with an ideological, political and social dependence to Rajavi’s leadership… .
He has spent 20 years of his life as a Mujahedin member: he thinks that he had wasted those years, thus he wants to warn the others on this organization. He was the member of the political wing of the organization and was based in London. His main duty was to contact British parliamentarians. The organization put priority on these sort of actions and Ibrahim knows well how important, for MKO, the propaganda is
The meeting was unfortunately disrupted by an unusually large number of Mojahedin cult members who had lain in wait at the venue in order to prevent people speaking. Regardless of the implications for freedom of speech in a European country, this kind of disruption has become emblematic of the Mojahedin’s inability to even vaguely disguise its cult nature.