Cults are largely in need of obedient and submissive members whose mentality

can be shaped through a change of identity. The process of producing identity

within MKO follows the same mechanism as similar in other cults and its
orientation began with the start of the internal ideological revolution.

Cultic identity formation in MKO

Mojahedin.ws
Research Bureau
2010

To stripe somebody of his individual identity to replace it with a new identity

has been a common process in majority of all contemporary cults. This cult
identity is created by sophisticated mind control techniques and it does not
represent the whole individual. Steven Hassan stresses that “[cult] members are
taught to suppress negative personal thoughts and emotions. They are trained to
speak only positively of their involvement. When the cult member says he is
"happy," it is usually the cult identity who is talking. The cult self is doing what
it has been instructed to do”. 1

As cults have developed their own principles and rules, their reactions to the
outside world are based on some certain criteria different from that of other
political and social organizations that have to exercise the discipline of their
own in order to achieve certain objectives; however, rarely they make use of
any process to forge identities. At the present, cults are largely in need of
obedient and submissive members whose mentality can be shaped through a
change of identity and our aim here is to take a brief look at the concepts of
individual identity, cult identity and investigate the process of setting up new
identity in MKO similar to that of other cults.

We may consider the individual identity as the sum of mental and ideological
beliefs of a person and the extent to which he is affected by the environment out
of the cult. On the contrary, the detachment of the person from such beliefs and
values by means of a system controlling his behavioral, mental and
psychological aspects constitute one of the major goals of cults. Such a
replacement of values leading to a new cult personality makes the person
struggling with many contradictions to adapt his potentiality in line with cult
objectives. In other words, cult identity neutralizes the individual identity of the
members. In fact all the cultist instructions depend on such a mechanism for
actualization.

As such, cults make their best to recruit members with unstable identity and
ready to acquire cult identity due to their political, emotional and familial
discouragements in order to play the major role in the quantitative growth of
cults. Under the impact of a new identity, members easily submit to cultic
domination and whatever sacrifices for the cult causes. Eric Hoffer evaluates the
factor of devotion based on the cult identity. He believes that the relation
between these concepts may clarify the nature of members' full obedience to
cultist instructions:

To RIPEN A PERSON for self-sacrifice he must be stripped of his

individual identity and distinctness. He must cease to be George, Hans,
van, or Tadao- a human atom with an existence bounded by birth and
death. 2

Reviewing the historical cults may reveal the role of such a factor. The earliest
religious cults such as Isma’ilis (Hasan Sabbah) tried hard to instill a kind of
cult identity into members. They declared openly that members had to do
something more than self-sacrifice for leaders and consider the extent of
obedience as the main measure for a new cult identity. Therefore, they asked
their members to put the principle of absolute obedience into action rather than
pretending by merely saying it. What the leaders asked members was to have
absolute faith in the cult’s commands:

We don’t ask Fedayeen [self-sacrificers] for passion but for a sound

belief. We are to be sure that in case of issuing any order for any of our
Fedayeen, there is nothing to prevent it. 3
Cultist relations of Mojahedin, as the most typical political leftist cult, are the
same as that of Hasan Sabbah's cult. The term "spiritual journey" refers to the
negation of individual personality and development of a cultist one instead. The
theoreticians of Mojahedin resort to mystical concepts in order to justify their
procedures and approaches saying:

In spiritual journey, no question is allowed. The wayfarer has to put his

faith in Sheikh wholeheartedly and must regard him as the most perfect
person to conduct him in spiritual training, guidance and education, be his
interlocutor and obey Sheikh far from any inward or outward objection. 4

Then a quotation from Maulavi, the Persian mystic poet, is resorted to:

A wayfarer has no responsibility and should be submissive like a piece of

wood in the hands of carpenter. 5

An intellectual outlook does not bear such a procedure and also may denounce
it. Mojahedin are against any spiritual identity but have to pretend to its
reception. They analyze the mechanism of such a new identity as follows:

It is evident that such a process does not follow a logical trend. Its
dominant factor is not reason nor logic but love and emotion. Its means is
not discussion nor justification but blind obedience. Herein Masoud asks
for Mojahedin's hearts. 6

Contemporary cults resort to such techniques in order to establish subordinate

identities in which their members have to replace their external ties with internal
ones. A new identity is regarded as the origin of cults' power. Therefore,
external bonds are the main barriers in the way of a new identity replaced by
cultist models. Hofer refers to such a process saying:

The chief burden of the frustrated is the consciousness of a blemished,

ineffectual self, and their chief desire is to slough off the unwanted self and
begin a new life. They try to realize this desire either by finding 'a new
identity blurring and camouflaging their individual distinct- and both these
ends are reached by imitation. 7

From a cultist viewpoint, a new identity works as a new faith to which a

member has to be attached. It may tie an individual to an ideological group,
band, political party or any ritual concept. In this regard, Hoffer writes:

Faith here is primarily a process of identification; the process by

which the individual ceases to be himself and becomes part of
 something eternal. Faith in humanity, in posterity, in the destiny of
one's religion, ation, race, party or family -what is it but the
visualization of that eternal some- tiling to which we attach the self
that is about to be annihilated? 8

The relationship between cults and producing of new identities is a complex one
and varies widely from cult to cult. But what is common is that the main goal of
producing a new identity in cults is to make insiders dependant on the cult and
to be obedient. The mechanisms the cults exploit to achieve the goal are
interrelated but each can be discussed separately since they are all prerequisites
for insiders’ persuasion and control and the final transformation of the recruits
into real cultists. It will not be wrong to say that whatever the cults do is to cut
the members off from the outside world to produce a new identity and belief
totally different from what the members previously held as right and dear. The
process finished, the insiders will adopt a new and reborn personality as Singer
states:

As part of the intense influence and change process in many cults, people
take on a new social identity, which may or may not be obvious to an
outsider. When groups refer to this new identity, they speak of members
who are transformed, reborn, enlightened, empowered, rebirthed, or
cleared. The group' approved behavior is reinforced and reinterpreted as
demonstrating the emergence of "the new person." Members are expected
to display this new identity. 9

The new personality totally split from the outside world is manipulated for a
variety of group tasks based on the objectives of the group and cult that consider
the outsiders as the enemies who have to be confronted:

The conflicts a mass movement seek and incites serve not only to down its
enemies but also to strip its followers of their distinct individuality and
render them more soluble in the collective medium. 10
As Hoffer asserts, a cultist personality is formed to be submissive to the inner-
cultic relations that have priority to outwardly demonstrated ambitions and
goals. The members undergoing overall identity change easily consent to any
means of changing behaviour and conduct. Thus, cults can successfully
accomplish their goal of binding new members to the group. Considering the
stages people will go through as their attitudes are changed by the group
environment and the thought reform processes, Singer points to psychologist
Edgar Schein’s second stages of three:

During this second stage, you sense that the solutions offered by the group
provide a path to follow. You feel that anxiety, uncertainty, and self-doubt
can be reduced by adopting the concepts put forth by the group or leader.
Additionally, you observe the behavior of the longer, term members, and
you begin to emulate their ways. As social psychology experiments and
observations have found for decades, once a person makes an open
commitment before others to an idea, his or her subsequent behavior
generally supports and reinforces the stated commitment. That is, if you
say in front of others that you are making a commitment to be "pure," then
 you will feel pressured to follow what others define as the path of purity.
11

There are also the eight psychological themes that psychiatrist Robert Lifton has
identified as central to totalistic environments and cults invoke these themes for
the purpose of promoting behavioural and attitudinal changes in the members.
The third theme, demand for purity, depicts two opposite world of black and
white; the cult being an absolutely white and clean world versus the black and
evil world of outside. Of course, the members with a new personality have no
other choice but to think and act according to cult’s ideology and drawn
strategy:

An us-versus-them orientation is promoted by the all-or-nothing belief

system of the group: we are right; they (outsiders, nonmembers) are wrong,
evil, unenlightened, and so forth. Each idea or act is good or bad, pure or
evil. Recruits gradually take in, or internalize, the critical, shaming essence
of the cult environment, which builds up lots of guilt and shame. Most
groups put forth that there is only one way to think, respond, or act in any
given situation. There is no in between, and members are expected to judge
themselves and others by this all-or-nothing standard. 12

The process of producing identity within MKO follows the same mechanism as
practiced in other cults and its orientation began with the start of the internal
ideological revolution. All the members undergoing the revolution process have
admitted, unveiled by the ex-members, their identity change, and the result was
development of a long distance between their organizational and personal
identities. It was instilled into them that their identity would be prompted based
on the extent of adherence to the ideological system of the group and denial of
any personal identity. In a written testimony by a member of MKO, he is
somehow proud of his new identity that believes has granted him a new insight
into his within and without:

Personality, egocentrism, self-reliance and individualism are all souvenirs

of the bourgeoisie’s worthless humanism that distanced me from the
organization as far as its degree of its impact on me. I was unworthy and
this barred me to drink the pure, life-giving instructions of the organization
and was leaving me alone in a desolate waste-land with no way out. I was
enslaved by dominant ambiguities within me. When I failed to overcome
the ongoing struggle inside me, I was even more vulnerable to the outside
misfortunes and could not even face them. 13

The member’s confession well depicts his identity destabilization and what
psychologists call an identity crisis. He looks back at his own world and values
to find out that he has been wrong in the past. This process makes him uncertain
about what is right, what to do, and which choices to make and of course, as he
admits, only the cult-like instructions of the organization can lead him to what is
inspired to be the right path. Consequently, he takes on a new organizational
identity which he considers a change for the better. In the process, he, as the
member of a cult, detaches from his most dear ideas and attachments which he
discovers to have been nothing beyond a barren waste-land for the identity
reborn, a utopia in the horizon he fails to dismiss easily. Masoud Banisadr,
another separated member of MKO, in his memoir relates of the time when sat
tearing whatever attached him to the past under the commands of the
organization:

This time I attacked my old photographs from my own childhood till

marriage and up to then, my parents photographs as I wanted to deny all of
them, my father who was perhaps responsible for my bourgeois tendencies
and my mother who was responsible of my own ‘mild’ and ‘gentle’
behaviour known as liberal ones. Anna seeing me taking all those
photographs and albums, with anger, was quietly crying, then when I
attacked our marriage Album she start crying louder, and asked me to stop
it. She said those are not just yours . . . but I was not listening to her and
took everything and put them in a rubbish bag. 14

Quoting Lifton’s forth theme, through a cult’s instructions, members are told
whatever connects them to their former lives is wrong and has to be avoided, a
fact well affirmed by MKO’s ex-members:

Through the confession process and by instruction in the group's teachings,

members learn that everything about their former lives, including friends,
family, and non-members, is wrong and to be avoided. Outsiders will put
you at risk of not attaining the purported goal: they will lessen your
psychological awareness, hinder the group's political advancement,
obstruct your path toward ultimate knowledge, or allow you to become
stuck in your past life and incorrect thinking. 15

That is why MKO refer to members’ solubility in the organizational identity as

a “reborn” or “identity salvation”. The organization, being transformed into a
cult, pursues the same cult mechanism of altering the members’ personal
identity to produce a new identity.
References:

Steven Hassan's Releasing the Bonds: Empowering People to Think for

Themselves. FOM Press, 2000.
1. Eric Hoffer; The true believer, Harper &. Row, Publishers, New York,
1966, p.60.
2. Paul Amir; The Lord of Alamout, p.45.
3. Niyabati, B. A different look at the ideological revolution within MKO,
p.32
4. ibid, p.40
5. ibid, p.15
6. Eric Hoffer; The true believer, Harper &. Row, Publishers, New York,
1966, p.94.
7. ibid, p. 62.
8. Margaret Thaler Singer; Cults in Our Midst, JOSSEY-BASS, 2003, p. 78.
9. Eric Hoffer; The true believer, Harper &. Row, Publishers, New York,
1966, p. 112.
10. Margaret Thaler Singer; Cults in Our Midst, JOSSEY-BASS, 2003, p. 76.
11. Ibid, 71.
12. Mojahed, no. 252; Abdol-ali Maasoumi’s letter to the ideological
revolution.
13. Masoud Banisadr; Memoirs of an Iranian Rebel.
14. Margaret Thaler Singer; Cults in Our Midst, JOSSEY-BASS, 2003, p. 72.