How Media Defame “Cults”: The Case of the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light. 1. Inventing a “Cult”

A media campaign started by a bigoted anti-cultist transformed a peaceful Shia-derivative movement into the ultimate “doomsday cult.”

By Susan J. Palmer

July 28, 2025

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AROPL leader Abdullah Hashem.

After spending most of my academic career researching those controversial groups dubbed as “cults” in the media and as “new religious movements” (NRMs) in academic circles, I have become increasingly concerned about how journalists portray unconventional spirituality in the media.

Why are NRMs consistently portrayed in the media as noxious and threatening in a manner that tends to perpetuate mistrust and conflict?

My generation has witnessed dramatic reforms in public attitudes towards women, homosexuals, immigrants, non-white citizens, and transpersons—but “cults” seem to be permanently stuck in the quagmire of prejudice. Cults are popular scapegoats, and “cult leaders” are the only “folk devils” we are still allowed to hate (see Stanley Cohen, “Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers,” New York: Routledge, 2011). Will this situation ever change? In one hundred years, will our great-grandchildren cringe when they examine 21st-century media reports on Scientology, Hare Krishna, and the “Moonies”—just as we cringe today at the statements of Hitler, J. Edgar Hoover, and Senator Joe McCarthy regarding Jews, African Americans, and Communists?

I tell my students that “cults” are nascent religions. It is natural (and inevitable) that inspired mystics or schismatic reformers will continue to generate these tiny buds of new religious movements. Very few will mature to become great dynasties, like the Mogul Empire or the Holy Roman Empire. New religions are like weeds in our garden. Society’s gardeners will attempt to pull out weeds to make room for cultured plants and familiar religions. However, some weeds may be cherished flowers in other lands, and those deemed “invasive” might be edible or have healing properties.

Recently, a new religious movement called the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light (AROPL), which resides in Crewe, a quiet Cheshire town, has been bombarded by a series of hostile, defamatory media reports. AROPL is a Shia-derivative movement and should not be confused with the Sunni-derivative Ahmadiyya movement, currently under heavy persecution in Pakistan.

This began last April when “Meet the Doomsday Cult Taking Over the World” appeared in GuruMag, an anti-cult online magazine. It was followed by articles in The Guardian, “Children in Crewe Living with ‘God’ in Former Orphanage,” and “‘Dad, Imam, God’: Children Living with Self-Declared Pope in Former UK Orphanage.” Similar stories appeared in “The Daily Mail” and “The Telegraph.”

British sociologist James A. Beckford pointed out that the function of a reporter is to passively reflect the news, to report it from the sidelines. But when “cults” are involved, he notes, journalists will often take on a proactive role as “moral gatekeepers” (“The Mass Media and New Religious Movements,” “ISKCON Communications Journal,” 2(2), 1994, 17–24). Journalists have been known to exceed their mandate by instructing judges on how to decide verdicts for controversial prophets, or by prompting social workers to intervene in the cult’s business. They have even convened with law enforcement agents in the planning of raids—and sometimes their prejudicial and stigmatizing reports have the power to erode the democratic principle of the presumption of innocence.

And this is precisely what the AROPL community is experiencing now—fear-mongering journalism intended to incite public concern about children trapped in a “doomsday cult.” The word “orphanage” in the titles of “The Guardian” does not help, as it conveys the dismal impression that the poor kids are parentless.

But this is nonsense. First, AROPL purchased a large building that once functioned as an orphanage. Today, it houses AROPL’s headquarters, media center, and family apartments.

The former orphanage (emphasis on “former”).

Second, it is misleading to label The Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light a “doomsday cult.” It is indeed a millennial movement, but within the framework of Catherine Wessinger’s typology of millennial movements. It fits the optimistic “progressive millennialism” type rather than the more pessimistic “catastrophic” type. That means, instead of expecting the world to be destroyed by supernatural agency, AROPL members expect that through human effort (with a bit of guidance from God via the Mahdi), humanity will avoid self-destruction and succeed in building a utopian “Divine Just State.”

It is important to note that just because a group has been labeled pejoratively as a “Doomsday Cult” by an ignorant, bigoted journalist, there is no reason to assume their children are mistreated. UK citizens enjoy freedom of belief. Religions, by nature, tend to be irrational. Thus, for AROPL members to believe in a living Mahdi is no more crazy or “cultish” than Catholics believing in the virgin birth, or in Christ rising from the dead and ascending unto Heaven. Or Jews believing in the Burning Bush. If anti-cult journalists hope to prompt child protection investigations into Crewe’s “Doomsday Cult,” then social workers should also descend on the UK households of Mormons, Seventh-day Adventists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, not to mention all the British families who own a New Testament Bible that contains the Book of Revelation.

One puzzling feature of this media-targeting of an NRM is that we find a rare collusion (or at least a convergence) between the forces of the “counter-cult” and the “anti-cult.”

I first became aware of this distinction when I read Massimo Introvigne’s amusing article, “The Secular Anti-Cult and the Religious Counter-Cult Movement: Strange Bedfellows or Future Enemies?” (“Update & Dialog,” October 1993: 13–22). He points out that “counter-cult” groups voice theological concerns about heresy and blasphemy, and worry these upstart “cults” will sully the souls of their youth. In contrast, the agnostic “anti-cult” groups espouse psychological theories about “cult brainwashing,” and their concern is to warn of exploitation or “harm” to the followers.

It should be noted that AROPL’s leader, Abdullah Hashem, has never claimed to be Allah as “God” (as in “The Guardian” title). Instead, he claims to be the Mahdi of our time—the second in a succession of Twelve Messengers from God, according to the Shia tradition. Counter-cult Muslim clerics view this claim as blasphemy, whereas anti-cult activists interpret it as an exhibition of narcissism and megalomania typical of “cult leaders.”

The Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light is a new religious movement that emerged around fourteen years ago from the Twelver Shia Mahdi tradition. Their leader, Egyptian-American Abdullah Hashem (b.1983), is a harsh critic of mainstream Muslim scholars and politicians.

He claims in his book, “The Goal of the Wise,” that the Holy Qur’an is missing key verses; that the Kaaba is in Petra, not Mecca; and that Muslims have been observing Ramadan on the wrong month. Hashem welcomes LGBTQ people into his community, and his believers have been arrested in Malaysia for supporting the LGBTQ rights movement. AROPL women have discarded the hijab to display their long flowing hair and hold leadership positions alongside men.

Police arrest AROPL believers expressing their support to the LGBTQ community in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, July 29, 2023.

Not surprisingly, AROPL is highly controversial in the Middle East. Fatwas have been issued in Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Algeria, Turkey, and Morocco. Sunni and Shia leaders alike have denounced Abdullah Hashem as the “Antichrist.” Even after moving to the UK, where the judges couldn’t care less about Islamic theological innovations, where religious freedom and human rights are taken for granted, AROPL has been threatened by local Muslim clerics, who are posting videos in Arabic on Youtube, urging their flock to storm AROPL’s gated property, drag out the leader, and perpetrate medieval-style violence like decapitation and beard-shaving.

In the Spring of 2025, the defamatory articles appearing in “The Guardian’ and “GuruMag” are being cited by fundamentalist imams in Britain, and their hate speech and death threats have become magnified. The CCTV camera at AROPL’s front gate captured masked men shouting, “We’re coming for you tonight, you f*ing rapists!” (“GuruMag” was the first to accuse AROPL’s leader of rape. Before that, he was just “Shaytan” or the “Antichrist”). For the first time, AROPL’s children must be kept indoors because drones fly over the lawns where they play. “Strange bedfellows” indeed!

AROPL’s spokesperson and legal expert, Hadil El-Khouly, told me, “We are accused of being a violent cult. But we have never been charged with a crime. We do not advocate violence, we work for world peace—and yet we have been targets of violence, and of death threats. Our members have been beaten and killed. One boy was shot in the head by police in Kenya just last week.”

AROPL’s security team, consisting of stalwart Middle Eastern men in bulletproof vests, is directed by Caroline Hoeren, a German woman (they jokingly address her as “Boss”). When she called the police and the mayor of Crewe to report this threat, they offered her advice on how to beef up AROPL’s security system.

Source: bitterwinter.org