The cult of Rajavi

Love is forbidden and ground for punishment in the Cult of Rajavi

Since the so called “ideological revolution” in the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO) in the 1980s, relationships and emotions have been destroyed. Rajavi’s “ideological revolution” forced members to divorce their spouses and eventually to forget their families. A few years later, Rajavi sent all children outside the group’s camps.

Thus, in the isolated camps of the group, children were no more with the parents, ex- couples could no more think of each other, brothers and sisters could no more visit each other except for a short time in the new year celebration and under the supervision of the group authorities.

Love is unheard of in the cult of Rajavi. The only kind of love that is not only permitted but also obligatory is the love for leader. All members should kill the love of their children, family and ex-spouses in their hearts, instead they should grow the love of their leader in their mind. Female members should consider Massoud Rajavi as their only love, their only husband!

As the individuals who are taken as hostages in the Cult of Rajavi do not have any access to the outside world, they are not able to contact their families outside the group.

Despite the efforts made by families of the MKO’s hostages to visit their loved ones in the group’s camp, the group authorities use all types of tactics to keep members far from families demonizing families as spies of the Iranian Intelligence Ministry!

Love is a variety of different feelings, states and attitudes that ranges from interpersonal affection to pleasure. The hostages in the MKO Cult are deprived from all of these interpersonal affections, feelings and pleasures. They are just indoctrinated to idolize their leader, Massoud Rajavi.

Love is one of the most profound emotions known to human beings and this deep relationship is one of the meaningful elements in the life of human beings. Love provides people with a source of deep fulfilment. The MKO leader has tried hard to shallow this source of fulfilment and to alternate it with an absolute obedience to himself.

Therefore, living in the cult of Rajavi requires denial of the love for your spouse, children, relatives and friends. Besides, caring about love make the cult member accountable for punishment. The punishment in the MKO ranges from self-criticism report writing, peer pressure, being humiliates by superior members and peers, psychological and even physical torture.

In case that family of an MKO hostage try too much to contact their loved one in the MKO camp, the hostage is indoctrinated to write a statement against his or her family. This might be the harshest punishment for a person who thinks of love!

Mazda Parsi

July 11, 2016 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

The Cult of Rajavi has all criteria of Modern Slavery

According to Walk Free Foundation – movement to end modern slavery – near 46 million people of the world are trapped in modern slavery. The foundation which is in Australia defines slavery as “situations of exploitation that a person cannot refuse or leave because of threats, violence, and coercion, abuse of power or deception.” According to the foundation, in modern forms of slavery, a person is forced to work for free. It also includes, child slavery, forced marriage, domestic servitude and forced labour in which victims are made to work through violence and intimidation.

For those who have experienced living in the Mujahedin Khalq Organization, the above mentioned characteristics of modern slavery looks very tangible and familiar. They can even add more traits of modern slavery in the cult of Rajavi including forced marriage, separation of parents and children, sleep deprivation and a lot of other examples of human rights violations. RAND report commissioned by US Department of Defense found that the MKO is a cult that utilizes practices such as mandatory divorce, celibacy, authoritarian control, forced labor, sleep deprivation, physical abuse, and confiscation of assets, emotional isolation, and the imprisonment of dissident members.

While the MKO claims to be opposed to “any kind of exploitation of human by another human”, the truth of the life inside this cult–like group proves the opposite.

According to the Walk Free Foundation half of the victims of modern slavery are girls and women and 1/3 of detected victims of slavery is a child. As for the MKO Cult about 900 people out of its near 3000 victims are female and a large number of children of the group members have been also victims of its destructive cult-like system.

Based on testimonies of former members of the group such as Nadereh Afshar and Manizheh Habashi, children in the MKO camps were kept separated from their parents and forced to work. After the first Gulf War, children were sent to Europe where they were forced to beg on the streets to raise funds for the group. Forced begging is considered by Walk Free as an example of modern slavery in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America and in the Middle East. The foundation states that kids “are forced to beg on the streets by criminals.”

68 % of slaves around the world are subjected to forced labour. About the cult of Rajavi, approximately all members are subjected to forced labour. They have to work long hours of the day. They always suffer sleep deprivation. Former members of the cult of Rajavi describe exhausting working schedule in the MKO as useless tasks that was supposed to keep them busy. Zahra Mirbaqeri recalls that she was forced to carry a heavy bag of stones from a place to another. She had to run while carrying an 80-kilo-weight bag.

The Walk Free Foundation also clarifies that in modern slavery systems, victims are kept behind closed doors. Members of the Mujahedin Khalq are not allowed to call or contact anyone outside their camps. They are barred from using phone, and the Internet. The news of the outside world is filtered by the group authorities. They are only fed with the group’s propaganda media.

Victims of the MKO are kept in the group’s camps in Iraq, Albania and France. They are living under the most tyrannical supervision system. Those who succeeded to escape the MKO actually risked their life because Massoud Rajavi has told them that the group has no exit door – see Human Rights Watch report on the abuses in the MKO titled “No Exit”, published in 2005. The walk Free Foundation says, “Victims say those who are caught trying to escape can be killed or thrown overboard. “

Sexual labour is another example of human rights abuse that is taken place in modern slavery, according to the foundation. This crime has been widely committed by the MKO leader, Massoud Rajavi. He is the only person in the cult who has the right to get married and to have sexual relationships. So, he authorized himself to have sex with a number of female members of the so-called Elite Council of the cult. Batoul Soltani who is a defector of the MKO Cult revealed Massoud Rajavi’s sexual crimes.

The Walk Free Foundation presents statistics and information on slavery around the world such as Thailand, UK and etc. It tries to inform the world on the huge human rights violations that are committed today in modern societies. Victims of the Mujahedin Khalq cult should be considered as part of the bog population who suffer modern slavery. The case of the MKO victims seems to be more critical because of the pro-democratic gesture of its leaders and its propaganda. In fact, members of the MKO Cult are exposed to the most horrible human rights violations despite the group’s propaganda claims for democracy and freedom.

By Mazda Parsi

June 6, 2016 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

Why is the MKO so terrified by a gap in the curtains!?

The fifth trip of families of members of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO/the Cult of Rajavi) to Camp Liberty near Baghdad, Iraq, ended with a dramatic clash between the families and a few of residents of the camp who were seemingly guarding the camp. At the first place, the alleged guards of Liberty countered the families’ kind and fair treatment and their offer of candies by swearing and intimidating. However, families kept cool and tried to offer sympathy to them for they were aware that cult members do not act based on their own logic, they just repeat what they have been indoctrinated for years.

When one of the family members of a Liberty resident tries to squeeze his hand through a hole in the curtain to take the hand of her brother’s comrade, the cult members get so terrified that they cannot control their vehement reaction. Although their faces are covered with masks or scarves, panic is evidently seen in their behavior.

Reasonably, a dozen of men and women in normal clothes of normal citizens with no weapons, behind a wooden gate secured by Iraqi police do not sound dangerous but the members of the Cult of Rajavi get really nervous and confused when they find themselves face to face to the people behind the torn curtains. Their anxiety comes from their fear of the outside world.

Having been isolated from the free life, fed by the huge propaganda of the cult that makes efforts to label families as agents of the Iranian Intelligence ministry, residents of camp liberty may have had a normal reaction to the collapsed wall that had separated them from the families –in their minds framed as agents of the Iranian Intelligence!

Members of the Cult of Rajavi are manipulated to maintain loyalty and obedience to the cult leaders Massoud and Maryam Rajavi. They found themselves threatened by the slightest ‘negative’ thought, word or deed. They fear thinking independently, the outside world, the illusory enemies and eventually they fear leaving the group.

These fears have been created by the MKO leaders through many years of mind control under a very destructive methodology. The methodology teaches the members to fear the outside world. This is used to deliberately scare members in order to gain their attention and make them susceptible to mind control. Families are forbidden to contact because they cause a crack in the huge wall that Massoud Rajavi has built around the minds of his members for over three decades.

Families who picket outside the doors of liberty have accurately realized that in order to help their loved ones leave the cult they should break the news to the camp. Families try to tell them the truth of the free world crying that many other members of the MKO have previously left the group and they are living a normal life in the free world now. They name a list of former members loudly. They give out some photos of the defectors of the MKO –although the guards of the group tear the photos mulishly and throw them back. Mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters of Liberty residents call their names assuring them that no danger threatens them outside the cult of Rajavi.

Actually, members of the MKO cult need assistance from the outside world. Today, families are the closest icons of the free world to the hostages kept in Camp Liberty. On the other side, the authorities of the MKO know well that family is the biggest obstacle in the way to keep their absolute control over members. Therefore, the group propaganda works hard to demonize family for members but the warmness of the hand that succeeded to take the hand of a Liberty prisoner through the gap in the curtain will never leave his mind…

By Mazda Parsi

May 30, 2016 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

From Attraction to Action — How Young People Are Radicalized

In the search for ‘what makes young people vulnerable to radicalization’, there are many push pull factors we can consider: home life, culture, politics, religion, criminality, social ills and the very children themselves – what on earth is wrong with them?!

A different approach is to focus instead on the actual process of radicalization. Who and what is it that changes an ordinary young person into a monster?

When I left a terrorist organization twenty years ago, I discovered that the number of reasons why people got involved in my group was exactly equal to the number of members. In other words, we all took our individual paths into the group. But once inside, we were all subjected to the same controlling methodology, we were all subjected to abuse. And for those who managed to get out, we all suffered the same emotional and mental difficulties toward recovery.

I also learned that this devastating and traumatizing experience was the same for people involved in other cultic groups and that academics and scientists have described and explained this process in detail. This is important because by understanding the harm that the process of radicalization does to its victims, we can recognize it as abuse. We can then better understand it, identify it and try to prevent it. We can give this abuse a specific name: cultic abuse.

For most people the word cult conjures up weird religious groups which suck in vulnerable people. But sticking a label on groups does not explain the harm they do. Instead we can explain cultic abuse, like any other form of abuse, not from the point of view of the beliefs but by looking at their behaviours – what they actually do.

To explain the very real harm that cultic abuse does we should begin by looking at the outcome. We know what grooming for child sexual exploitation (CSE) is for. We know what coercive control in domestic violence (DV) is for. What is cultic abuse for?

The ultimate aim of any form of cultic abuse is to enslave so-called followers, to produce people who are: controllable, exploitable, deployable and disposable. Somebody who will act to order, even when that is against their own and their society’s best interests. Now we can see how this would be of interest to groups pursuing violent and criminal agendas. Interestingly, a defining feature of cultic abuse is the no exit principle. As a slave, you are not supposed to leave. There is no exit.

Our next question is – who wants slaves and why?

Terrorism and extremist violence doesn’t simply spring up on its own. The driving force behind this kind of behaviour will be a charismatic narcissist – it’s all about them! – they are self-appointed, unaccountable and totalitarian leaders and they are motivated by power, sex and money. Usually all three, but notice, religion is not one of them.

In order to recruit followers, they begin by creating a deceptive recruiting script based on a genuine grievance which reflects their own personal philosophical concerns and which may appeal to a particular audience. The script essentially acts as bait to attract potential recruits to the cause. The ideas it expresses are exclusive – ‘you must believe this and nothing else for only we have the answers’ – and simplistic, with black and white thinking – ‘they are wrong, we are right, there is no room for questions’. This script is essentially fictitious. What matters is that you believe in it. This is what we on the outside refer to as a group’s ideology.

Of course, getting people to fall for this dodgy script which aims only to enslave them requires the kind manipulative recruitment methods used in hard sales – foot in the door, soft sales, hard closure. Using their charismatic style to preach their ideology, such leaders will find other intuitive manipulative persuaders who can literally con people into believing. The kind of people who can sell snake oil and other miraculous cures to just about anyone. Thus the process begins with deceptive recruitment.

Victims who have resisted or escaped radicalization often talk about the relentless nature of the assault on their minds and hearts. This is, of course, a deliberate act. Here’s why. Simply put, there is a world of difference between getting somebody to believe in extremist ideas and actually getting them to act on them. Getting ordinary people to take part in extremist violence requires them to make a radical break with their past values and beliefs and relationships. They must be isolated from their normal forms of support and stability and security – their family and friends – in order for the process of coercion to begin which will change their emotional and moral response to outrageous acts, which will literally ‘change their minds’.

For this reason, cultic abuse involves the systematic and sustained application of recognized methods of psychological manipulation. Relentlessly swamping the victim with stress in this way suppresses critical thinking. Once this is achieved, new beliefs can be indoctrinated into the unprotected mind of the victim.

The success of cultic abuse rests on the end product – if the recruiter is successful and the radicalization has claimed its victim they can then be deployed according to the whims of the leader.

The radicalized person will never recognize their own predicament. They sincerely believe their group and their relationships are righteous and no amount of logic will persuade them otherwise. They weren’t converted by logic so you can’t argue them out of it by logic.

To our eyes, the overt horror of terrorism and extremist violence appears a crude instrument. But recruiters are involved in a highly sophisticated game of mind control which we ignore at our peril. If we don’t take seriously the methodology behind the bloodied images, then we will continue to allow our young people and even whole families to be deceptively stolen away from their normal lives and put on a conveyor belt toward death and destruction.

Follow Massoud Khodabandeh on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ma_khodabandeh

Anne Khodabandeh (Co-authored by Massoud Khodabandeh),

May 25, 2016 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

Elimination Project, Masoumeh Gheibipour

Masoumeh Gheibipour was a mother whose son was separated from her under the leaders’ decisions in the Mujahedin Khalq Organization ( the MKO/ the Cult of Rajavi). Prominent former member of the Mujahedin Khalq, Batul Soltani recalls the times that they both suffered grieves of separation from their children. ”We both missed our children”, she writes. However, they could not criticize the cult-like system ruling the group.

Masoumeh was not used to observe religious rules well so she was under severe peer pressure in the cult, according to revelations made by Batul Soltani listiong a number of dissident members of the MKO who were physically diminished by the leaders.

“She was all the time suppressed by the group authorities for her careless covering or for not performing prayers,” Batul Soltani writes.

Meanwhile, another former member of the MKO, Edward Termado writes about Masoumeh Gheibipour,”She used to take her headscarf back to show off her hair as a way to protest suppressions made by her superiors.”

Edward Termado describes the grieves of Masoumeh, “Before she was separated from her son, she looked happy and delighted to see her son in the camp but her son -Makan- was sent out of Iraq. Since then she always looked depressed and sad.”

Batul Soltani who was a friend of Masoumeh stated how Masoumeh left her life behind by openly criticizing the leaders’ approaches in public meetings. “She was so courageous that she could stand up in the meetings and say “Ideological leadership is a suppressive argument.” Her courageous objections was then resulted in grave pressure by the side of the group authorities or her peers. She was labeled as “traitor”. Batul recalls that one of the agitated brainwashed women in the meeting saying “if you cheat on Masoud, I will strangle you!”

Eventually, Masoumeh was found dead in her bed a few days later. She was strangled to death by her headscarf.

When Batul got to know that Masoumeh was killed, she rushed into the location. No one was there except twelve members of the newly elected members of the Elite Council!

Batul was so shocked that she got sick after the horrible incident. Then she was made to attend a meeting in which Maryam Rajavi tried to convince them that Masoumeh was loyal to Massoud Rajavi until the last moment. “Nothing was said about how Masoumeh was killed,” Batul Soltani writes.

Surprisingly, a few days after her assassination, the group announced that Masoumeh passed away in hospital! They graved on her tomb that she died from an illness!

May 14, 2016 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

Elimination projects in the MKO – Alan Mohammadi

Alan was 14 years old when she was brought to Camp Ashraf to visit her parents who were members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization. She had been sent to Europe after the so-called ideological revolution in the MKO that forced couples to divorce and eventually to leave their children. Alan and her peers had been sent to Germany where they were kept in pensions or by Iranian families who were sympathizers of the MKO.

Alan who was supposed to come to Camp Ashraf to visit her parents could not accept that she would not be allowed to leave the Camp anymore. Ms. Nasrin Ebrahimi former member of the MKO writes about Alan’s sad story inside the MKO,” As I knew the group’s reality, I realized that Alan and other children like her would never get back to Europe and the group would force them to stay in Ashraf, Iraq.” The teenagers were first told by the leaders to stay in the Camp to get to know more about the “Organization”. They were treated friendly and given present. High-ranking officials used to receive them in private meetings.

“This tactic was effective. Some of the children were deceived by the group and stayed in Camp Ashraf,” writes Ms. Ebrahimi.”Some others including Alan still insisted on leaving Iraq.”

But, one crucial sentence was repeated by the MKO leaders on various occasions: “Entry doors of Camp Ashraf are open but exit doors are closed.”

Consequently, children were forced to attend indoctrination meetings. ”I remember what happened to Alan during the meetings,”Ebrahimi writes. “I remember her with her innocent face and her small body that had become the topic of their so-called ideological arguments.” Alan was ordered to divorce her parents, her friends and her normal life in Europe! She was told not to think of the opposite sex. The MKO leaders tried to indoctrinate her to admit their main cult jargon: “Long Life Divorce”!

After dozens of brainwashing sessions, Alan still asked to let her leave the camp. She resisted against the indoctrination process. So, she endured the most severe psychological tortures. Commandants abused her verbally and humiliated her before her peers in the meetings but Alan did not obey Massoud Rajavi’s mind controlling system. Thus, she was no more tolerated by the system.

One day in 2001, the group announced her death. There are different accounts about Alan’s tragic fate. The group’s propaganda told that Alan had shot herself by a machinegun unintentionally. Nasrin Ebrahimi wonders,” How that little girl could shoot herself by such heavy weapon?” Another version says that Alan committed suicide. Given that the second version is true, it shows the extremely brutal atmosphere ruling the MKO.

“Yes, a lot of people committed suicide in Camp Ashraf including me but I’m sure that the 16-year-old Alan was murdered by the MKO”, asserts Nasrin Ebrahimi.

April 17, 2016 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

Gender Segregation Everywhere in the MKO Cult

Gender segregation has always been a controversial issue depending on social, religious and legal structure. Critics of gender segregation argue that it is a violation of human rights and denial of capabilities of a specific sex. This phenomenon is a very iconic aspect of the life inside the Mujahedin Khalq Organizatin (the MKO) as a cult-like group. However, the group makes efforts to launch pro-democracy propaganda, chanting slogans of human rights, gender equality and feminism and condemning the Iranian Government for human rights violation and gender segregation.

A short news on the MKO propaganda website reports what it calls “a religious decree issued for segregation of sexes in transport systems.” The alleged report quotes from the state source website ‘hamshahrionline.ir that ”according to the train company schedule, and in cooperation with the Islamic republic’s train service, a special section has been assigned to women for traveling between Tehran and Mashhad on Nour Railways’ for the first time.”

The MKO propaganda accuses the Islamic Republic of continuing “to implement gender segregation across the country” while its own record on gender segregation is notoriously known to the world. The MKO’s abusive structure has been discussed by various bodies. Independent reports from Human Rights Watch and from the RAND Corporation have gathered facts on the group’s cult-like control over members, which according to RAND, include “a near-religious devotion to the Rajavis … public self-deprecation sessions, mandatory divorce, celibacy, enforced separation from family and friends and gender segregation.” [1]

The women only passenger wagons in widely customary across the world. In many countries like, Brazil, Japan, Mexico, and Indonesia gender segregated transport system is used to create a more relaxing and peaceful journey for women. A recent report says that, a central German regional railway is also launching a special women and children only area for their trains “. [2] Regardless the controversial arguments that gender segregated carriages on trains are effective to prevent sexual harassments against women or not, the MKO –also known as the Cult of Rajavi—lacks the least competency to argue about such issues.

The freelance British journalist Owen Bennet Jones in his book, “Terrorists? Us?” defines how the MKO destructive cult turned in to the “Cherished ally” of the West. He accurately describes the development of Rajavi’s cult-like control system in the MKO after the disastrous failure in his Saddam-backed military operation against Iran called “Eternal Light”. “Rajavi had to come up with an explanation for the defeat,” he writes.” His unorthodox solution was to tell his fighters they had lost because they had been distracted by love and sex. He commanded members to divorce, become celibate and live in communal, single-sex accommodation, just like soldiers in a regular army. Filled with ideas of self-sacrifice and martyrdom, they did as they were told. (The celibacy rule is to this day so tightly enforced that there are separate times for men and women to use Camp Ashraf’s petrol station.) Members were urged to transfer their passions from their former spouses to their leaders, the Rajavis. Aware that people were becoming sexually frustrated, meetings were organized where members were obliged to confess their sexual fantasies in public. If you did confess to something, other members spat at you. Friendships were also discouraged at Camp Ashraf, and so were children. From the mid-1980s, citing safety concerns, the leadership ordered that several hundred children living in the camp be moved to pro-MEK foster families in Europe and Canada. Some parents have not seen their children for more than twenty years.” [3]

Gender segregation in the MKO is mandatory. It is neither permissive –ordered by law— nor voluntary. Inside Camp Ashraf eating places, dormitories, gas stations and even streets were sex-segregated. The couple, both defectors of the MKO, Ann Singleton and Massoud Khodabandeh described the violations committed against members of the MKO cult in their book “The Life of Camp Ashraf Mojahedin-e Khalq – Victims of Many Masters” :

“Over the years former members who escaped from Camp Ashraf have told their stories to a world unwilling or unable to listen. Thousands of them consistently and courageously described the conditions of the internal revolutions and Rajavi’s bizarre requirements for members to divorce and to remove all the children from the camp; to undergo the daily humiliations of public self-confessions which enforce the celibacy and gender apartheid; to suffer micro-management of their every waking moment which imposed deliberately exhausting work schedules and disorienting indoctrination sessions; to be deprived of any information from and contact with the outside world and their families. Rajavi did all this to keep his members from leaving. When this failed, he imprisoned them.”[4]

Rania Abouzeid of the Time also provides a comprehensive account on the MKO’s hypocrisy: “Camp Ashraf, with its gender-segregated dormitories, manicured lawns, flower beds and tree-lined streets, is the only home many of the residents have known. The MEK maintains firm control over its members, preventing them from marrying and restricting or preventing contact with family elsewhere.” [5]

Constant human rights violation and gender segregation are in the essence of the MKO as terrorist destructive cult even if it is relocated in Europe in the heart of democracy; and even if its propaganda resorts to each and every means possible.

Mazda Parsi

Sources:

1] Goulka, Jeremiah, Hansell, Lydia, Wilke, Elizabeth, Larson, Judith, The Mujahedin-e Khalq in Iraq, A Policy Conundrum, RAND, 2009

[2] Lane, JJ, Oliver, German Railway Launches Gender Segregated Carriages In Wake Of Sex Attacks, breitbart.com, March26, 2016

[3] Jones, Owen Bennett, Terrorists? Us?, Vol. 34 No. 11 · 7 ,London Review of Books, June 2012

[4] Khodabandeh, Anne, Khodabandeh, Massoud, The Life of Camp Ashraf Mojahedin-e Khalq – Victims of Many Masters, IRAN-INTERLINK, September 2011

[5] Abouzeid, Rania, Why Is the Iraqi Military Cracking Down on an Iranian Camp?, The Time, April 15, 2011

April 12, 2016 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

MKO, God Father of Suicide bombers!

Recent suicide attacks in Belgium capital, a park in Pakistan and a stadium in Iraq have resulted in dramatic loss of lives. All attacks were operated by the extremist terrorist suicide bombers who left their own life behind to take the lives of a large number of innocent people.
What makes a person to commit a suicide bombing?
To understand the motives behind suicide bombing many people try to excuse or approve it. It seems easier to assume that suicide bombers are just malicious characters who hate their victims but terrorism is not a simple phenomenon with easy explanations. Actually a wide variety of motives and factors are involved. For analyzing these motives and factors the Mujahedin khalq Organization (the MKO) is a significant example of such terror acts. The group may be one of the first role models of suicide bombers for extremists through the history.
One may also think that suicide bombers are crazy or psychopathic or that they lack moral feelings but most terrorists are not psychologically deviant and do not operate outside the normal rules of behavior, but are instead ordinary people from ordinary backgrounds. A glance at personalities of current and former members of the MKO indicates that the majority of them are from average Iranian families with religious or/ and honorable backgrounds. Most of them are smart, university educated individuals with intellectual tendencies.
Nonetheless, the crucial point about them is that they believe that their violent actions, while somewhat regrettable, are justified and noble. Moreover, their emotional commitment to their cause and their comrades and particularly their leader is revealing of normal human psychology. Often their actions do not ultimately stem from hatred, but rather from love of their leader and from absolute obedience to the orders of the leader. But, how leader can convince such people to commit the most atrocious acts?
In case of the MKO, in better words “the Cult of Rajavi”, the leader Massoud Rajavi manipulated his rank and file with a very complicated methodology of indoctrination. Massoud’s followers were indoctrinated that killing the innocent is inevitable consequence of fighting for the cult’s cause. Members of the cult of Rajavi were manipulated that these missions were the only way to fight for their leader. They were then glorified as martyrs.
Although the realization that MKO terrorists view themselves as soldiers engaged in a just war does not legitimize their cause or methods, it does provide some insight into their motivation. The MKO’s history is overwhelmed with suicide bombings, self-immolations and swallowing cyanide capsules just because these acts were wisely indoctrinated in the minds of members.
After the 1979 revolution in Iran, when the MKO began to fight the newly established Islamic Republic government, the MKO suicide bombers assassinated dozens of the Iranian officials and civilians. The suicide bombers were glorified in the group’s journal as suicide martyrs.
More than two decades later, suicide was repeated in the MKO history in a much more horrifying form: self-immolation. Following the arrest of the group’s co-leader Maryam Rajavi by the French Police, a dozen of the cult followers set themselves on fire in European cities to protest the arrest of the co-leader. These horrific acts in the heart of Europe revealed one important issue: The MKO is a destructive cult of personality. Self-immolators showed that they do not follow their leaders but they worship them. This was the very consequence of Massoud Rajavi’s methodology in his modern slavery.
Today, the IS and other extremist groups should be watched and destroyed but groups like the MKO seems to be more threatening because they freely have bases in Europe with hundreds of brainwashed slaves who are ready to scarify themselves for their leaders despite the group’s propaganda for human rights and democracy.
Mazda Parsi

March 28, 2016 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

Anne Khodabandeh: Deceptive Recruitment – from Canada to Colorado

A father from Aurora, Colorado managed a last minute rescue of his daughter and two other girls from the nightmare of travelling to Syria. He said he’d had no previous indication that she had been radicalised, but that his intuition kicked in when he discovered that her passport was missing and he found texts to Lufthansa airlines and a local taxi firm on her phone.

Once his daughter was home safe he learned how ISIS tricked his daughter and others over the internet.

“ISIS plays on Muslims’ emotions,” he said. “They play on the [idea] that you are living in a country where people are going to go to hell. Your parents, since they are living there, they are the same like these other people, even if your parents are Muslim. And you need to save yourself. How am I going to save myself? You need to come over here .. live under Islamic rule. We’re going to give you a house, you’re going to get married. You’re going to get to have nice kids, have a nice life … and it’s a noble cause. But all that’s wrong. All that’s wrong. There is no safe place there. People are all on the run. There’s always fighting going on somewhere. There’s no houses, there’s no nice life. There are just a bunch of terrorists. And for these females to get there, they’re just going to get raped, get killed.”

This put me in mind of a young Iranian woman I got to know in London in 1996 just as I was on the point of finally severing all ties with the Mojahedin Khalq (MEK) terrorist cult. Interestingly it was through Neda Hassani that I met my future husband because she worked in the MEK’s Westminster based PR office where he was also stationed and I was sent to work with her. How ironic it seems now that while Massoud and I were leaving, she was getting more deeply involved. Like ships in the night we passed each other by, unaware of our future destinies. Even at the time I remember trying to talk to her and explain that the MEK are not what she thought they were. But of course, the radicalisation process had already begun and she couldn’t heed my warnings.

Neda was in London for only a brief time before being dispatched to the military training camp in Iraq. Her parents had sent her from Canada after she had finished her studies and had just begun working. Neda had told me she hadn’t wanted to leave Canada and that she enjoyed her new job there. But the MEK had persuaded her parents that she would be in moral danger if she stayed in Canada, that she would abandon her Iranian upbringing and become a wild, immoral girl, taking drugs, drinking and having a series of boyfriends. Of course, anyone who met Neda could instantly see that she wasn’t that kind of person. Her parents should have been tremendously proud of this kind, thoughtful, ambitious young woman who exuded joie de vivre.

Instead the MEK tricked them into believing that their harsh military camps in Iraq were the ideal place to keep her safe from bourgeoise Western corruption. The MEK, they were told, promoted women and gave them responsibilities above men. Neda, they were told, would be at the forefront of a noble struggle to free Iran and that she would remain celibate until ‘after the revolution’.

As long-time peripheral supporters of the MEK, Neda’s parents had no idea of the reality behind the lies and propaganda. They had no idea of the cultic abuse taking place in Iraq turning ordinary people into disposable brainwashed gladiators.

The next time I came across Neda was in a photograph for a magazine article taken in Camp Ashraf showing her sitting on a tank with another combatant looking relaxed and happy. The writer had clearly been easily fooled by such appearances and wrote in glowing praise about the women there. This was in direct contrast with another article The Cult of Rajavi by Elizabeth Rubin in The New York Times magazine on July 13, 2003. Rubin had also visited Camp Ashraf but was not fooled by the MEK’s talk. She graphically described the cultic conditions in the camp, and the bizarre behaviour of the group and its members, especially the women.

This article was published one month after Neda Hassani’s death. Neda died from her injuries after setting herself on fire in London to ‘protect’ MEK second-in-command Maryam Rajavi. Rajavi, who had been arrested on terrorism charges in Paris only days before, ordered several members to commit self-immolation to force the French government to let her go. Neda’s family found a poem to Maryam Rajavi written the night before she died which said “Against the flow of savage winds, I give my spirit to protect you”.

What kind of brainwashing does it take to get a young woman who has everything to live for to kill herself so that someone else wouldn’t have to face criminal charges? As a leader of a terrorist cult, Maryam Rajavi had already ordered the deaths of thousands of Iranians and Iraqis. This was business as usual for her. But Neda’s death wasn’t even for the cause her parents believed in. They sent her to Iraq to struggle for the freedom of the Iranian people, not the freedom of a vain and cruel woman.

Former members of cults like the MEK are familiar with the deception and psychological manipulation exerted on the members. They now see that young people in Western countries are being deceived in much the same way by ISIS.

Fortunately for the young women in Aurora, at least one parent was vigilant and courageous enough to rescue them. I like to think that Neda’s parents very quickly became aware of their mistake. Certainly when her mother was asked if others should follow her daughter’s example she told reporters: “I hope not, I hope not”.

I don’t know what lesson can be drawn from this except that every society needs to learn about deceptive recruitment and cultic abuse. People – young and old – who know how deceptive psychological manipulation is used will not succumb to its persuasions.

Anne Khodabandeh (Singleton), Iranian.com,

February 10, 2016 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

The Cult of Rajavi keep members as “Non Person”

Morgan-Davies, daughter of the cult leader, said she wanted to escape from being the “non-person”. She was under her father who “was just obsessed about control”. Morgan was the “slave” daughter of the Maoist cult leader Aravindan Balakrishnan who jailed her for 23 years for her imprisonment and repeated sex attacks on two followers, according to the Guardian.[1]

Every day, the world comes across revelations about abusive cults that indicate how much the world is exposed to the threat of cults. The most crucial characteristic of a destructive cult is its power to isolate people from the free world. In the isolated atmosphere of the cult, leaders have the opportunity to commit the most horrific abuses against their victims.

The No Exit report of the Human Rights Watch on the human rights abuses committed in the Mujahedin Khalq Organization, published in 2005, presents various examples of violation of human rights under a strict cult-like control. 2[]

Prior to the HRW’s report, Elizabeth Rubin visited the group’s then headquarters in Iraq Camp Ashraf in 2003. Eventually, she wrote a detailed report for the New York Times under the specific title “The Cult of Rajavi”. She described the camp as “a fictional world of female worker bees” and “a factory in Maoist China”. [3]

The above mentioned reports and many other reports and evidences on the life inside the MKO point out common features of cult leaders that aid them abuse their victims. As Morgan Davis told reporters about her father, “The people he looked up to were people like Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot and Saddam Hussein.” [4]

One of the victims of years of sexual abuse by Balakrishnan, also said she was “traumatized, shocked and horrified at what he habituated me to and against which I had no defense. I will live with this torment for the rest of my life.” [5]

The other rape victim described Balakrishnan as “such an evil force” and said she suffered fear and nightmares. “He wreaked havoc on every part of my life before and after I left,” she said. “He literally shattered my life.” She said she had never managed to fully rebuild her family relationships. [6]

This is the very characteristic of the leader of the MKO too. Although Massoud Rajavi tries to cover the abusive nature of his cult under the mask of a pro-democracy political organization, he is usually symbolized by dictators including Polpot and Saddam Hussein. Professor Paul Sheldon Foote from California State University writes: “the During the American hostage crisis, the MEK participated and called for the executions of the Americans. Rajavi is anti-American, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist. His aim is to become the Pol Pot of Iran, even if the MEK must become a tool of the American government to achieve his aim.” [7]

Massoud Rajavi’s similarities with other dictators originates from his cultic attitude towards his followers. Thus, his character can also be compared with that of Aravindan Balakrishnan and other cult leaders like Ziona who is another example of such cult leaders whose greed for women is endless. He rules a polygamous cult in India.

Ziona, 70, is the head of a local Christian religious sect”Chana”, which allows polygamy and was founded by his father Chana on June 12, 1942. The sect believes it will soon be ruling the world with Christ and has a membership of around 400 families. Ziona has 39 wives, 94 children, 33 grandchildren and 14 daughters-in-law. Ziona is feared and worshiped by all in the village. What’s even more strange is that Ziona’s followers firmly believe that he will one day rule the earth with Jesus. [8]

Now, let’s get back to Massoud Rajavi. He runs a polygamous cult, according to the testimonies of former female members of the MKO. Batoul Soltani is one of the female victims of Massoud Rajavi whose revelations about abuses committed in the cult has become a credited source for cult experts. . This is Wikipedia’s account about this victim of the Cult of Rajavi:

“Batul Soltani (born in 1965) is an Iranian politician who is former member of the leadership council of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI. Soltani is a political activist and critic and a former twenty-year member of the Mujahedin leadership council. In December 2006, she escaped from the Camp Ashraf. In interviews regarding the Rajavi cult as an example of cultic behavior and mind manipulation. she has spoken about the sexual exploitation of the women in this cult after the her escape. She continued by pointing to numerous cases of Rajavi’s exploitation of the women of this cult and said: “Massoud Rajavi was using many of the divorced women in this cult, who had been forced to separate from their husbands to satisfy his sexual desires.” [9]

Batoul’s shocking revelations about what is going on inside the MKO camps is available on Nejatngo website in details. Her bitter experience of living in the Cult of Rajavi is confirmed by other female defectors of the group including Zahra Mirbagheri and Nasrin Ebrahimi who also left the group in the past decade.[10]

Isolated from the outside world, Massoud Rajavi tries to keep his victims as non-persons whose rights and even whose existence are ignored. The news of violation of human rights, sex abuse, child abuse, manipulative control and etc. in cults, as recent as 2016, is a warning for the world community that the threat of cults is not over. More than three decades after the tragic ending of the cults in Jonestown, Guyana and the Waco, Texas the authorities of countries should still beware of such a menace. They should be even more cautious than before because these cult members who have been under severe mental abuse have the potential to simply turn into extremist terrorists like Al Qaeda and ISIS.

Mazda Parsi

References:

[1] Booth, Robert, Maoist cult leader jailed for 23 years as ‘slave’ daughter goes public, The Guardian, 29 January 2016

[2] https://www.nejatngo.org/en/posts/79

[3] Rubin, Elizabeth, The Cult of rajavi, the New York Times Magazine, July 13, 2003

[4] Booth, Robert, Maoist cult leader jailed for 23 years as ‘slave’ daughter goes public, The Guardian, 29 January 2016

[5] ibid

[6] ibid

[7] Sheldon Foote, Paul, American Demons, paulsheldonfoote.blogspot.com, November 13, 2011

[8] ZeddMonsang, Strange polygamous Christian Cult, The More the Merrier!, The Zephyr Diaries

September 29, 2012

[9] Wikipedia

[10]https://www.nejatngo.org/en/tag/womens-rights-abuse-by-mujahel

February 4, 2016 0 comments

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