MKO is an example of leftist political cults.

In many political cults of the

contemporary history violence in a variety of forms has dominated, but it is
only MKO that, as a leftist group, is charged with multitude instances of
violence working against its own insiders as revealed by Human Rights
Watch report and the memoirs of its detached members.

Implementation of Violence in the Cult of

Mojahedin
Mojahedin.ws
August 2010

Potential for violence exists in many cultic groups particularly if they are
engaged in underground activities or follow a Machiavellian philosophy of
‘ends justify the means’. Obviously, there is no easy way to predict which
group may become involved in terrorism, violence, or suicide operations
unless there is a record of already perpetrated instances of violence by the
cult even if such deeds might have been ceased temporarily for certain
reasons. Horrifying testimonies of some arrested or ex-members of cultic
groups to their connection in violent operations and self immolation activities
or being witnesses to instances of violence against the groups’ own insiders
signify that inborn terrorist and violent groups, if they make some temporal
accommodation with the outside world, may resort to indirect application of
violence, namely, utilizing outwardly peaceful and pro-democratic measures
that promote direct violence.

Cults and violence are commonly bound inextricably together in the public
mind since much public understanding about cults is accounts of violence in
a variety of forms. The shocking reports of sarin gas release into the Tokyo
underground by Aum Shinrikyö cult, the recent news of rescuing children
from a polygamist remote compound Ranch of the Fundamentalist Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and above all, the terrible and nightmarish
terrorist attack of al-Qaeda are all instances of awful truth about the violent
nature of some cults. Talking on the varying degrees of cults’ abusive and
destructive nature Thaler Singer states:

Cults are abusive and destructive to varying degrees. Some abuse only
their own members; others project the violence outward. Still others
have it both ways. Cult members, at the direction of their leaders, have
shot at law enforcement officers, engaged in drug dealing and
prostitution, stockpiled illegal weapons, practiced repeated sexual
abuse, beaten child members to death, enforced a variety of
punishments against their own, and murdered dissident members. 88

It is hard to answer the question that why some cults, when facing with
opposition and even outright persecution, react by resorting to violence. But
one thing is for certain that their violent conducts towards the outside world
is either direct or indirect:

Not only have cultic groups engaged in openly violent behavior, but they
have also engaged in other activities that have led to members' being
convicted of crimes ranging from conspiracy to tax evasion, spying on
governments, and fraud. 89

If we come to believe, as Singer explains, that espionage activities of a

political cult are considered as indirect activities of violence, then, MKO’s
claimed disclosures on Iran’s nuclear activities that may lead to nothing but
escalating global tension and even military conflict can be regarded as
instances of inciting violence. Violence is interwoven in MKO and in spite of
its claims to have abandoned terrorism, the group can only survive out of
violence and engaging in direct and indirect violent activities regardless of
the heavy cost imposed only on Iranian people.

MKO is an example of leftist political cults. In many political cults of the

contemporary history violence in a variety of forms has dominated. During
Stalin’s reign over the Soviet Unions’ Communist Party, for instance, a new
form of violence was formed in the course of harsh, internal purges. The
purges, a combination of physical and psychological violence, are yet
thought to have been the most unusual and eccentric techniques applied. It
was only after Stalin’s death that some instances of the applied violence was
revealed for the public through a number of novels and made movies.

Somehow it can be said that, among active political cults, it is only MKO that,
as a leftist group, is charged with multitude instances of violence working
against its own insiders as revealed by Human Rights Watch report and the
memoirs of its detached members. In addition to application of physical
violence as a method of internal punishment against dissatisfied and
disobedient members, there are further indirect ruthless routines of regular
self-criticism sessions, cultivating malevolence and spite amongst the
members, separating the families and much more. A more detailed study of
different forms of internal and external violence employed by MKO will give a
broader understanding of the cult.

In its past four decade history, MKO, as a leftist terrorist cult similar to a
handful of other cults, has been allegedly associated with numerous
recorded or unrecorded instances of tragic deaths, either in the course of
terrorist operations, tortures, suicides and commanded self-immolations. The
highly publicized cases have convinced the public that MKO is among one of
extremist cultic groups that are highly dangerous. Although there may be
little global understanding about the real nature of MKO, since now it is
engaged in a widespread phony pro-democratic campaign, it is a cult that
fails to exist outside of the violence mainstream. For a better understanding
of the modes and targets of violence within MKO, the discourse can be
outlined as the follow.

1. Terrorist victims as the main targets of violence

2. Sever reprimand of disobedient and dissident members
3. Hostile repercussion against ideological sinners
4. Cultic, suicidal operations

Terrorist victims as the main targets of violence

There is a general belief that cults are dangerous either to themselves or

others. But the most dangerous ones are those that employ violence not only
against the world outside but the inside as well. MKO, unlike other Iranian
opposition, has never refrained preaching violence for the accomplishment
of internal and external objectives. In its primitive form of utilizing violence
soon after declaring armed struggle against the newly formed Islamic
government in Iran, MKO started a new method calling it Engineering
Operation, a barbarous method to revenge their loss in the power struggle.
The group began to kidnap innocent Iranian civilians and exposed them to
merciless tortures that led to their death.

To give a report of its operation teams only in a one-year period, considered

a hallmark of its military operations in 1987, the organization published a 54-
page booklet entitled Resistance on the Rise that contains a detailed account
of more than 20 terrorist operations perpetraited by its teams in various
Iranian regions and cities. In these attacks, Mojahedin’s operation teams
killed and wounded hundreds of Iranian innocent civilians. Although the
teams targeted many Iranian authorities, whom Mojahedin believed to have
a key role in safeguarding and preserving the Islamic regime, nothing could
justify brutal butchering of innocent women and children and arson attacks.

To present a record of Mojahedin’s atrocities against immaculate civilians

and to depict plights of people survived from the group’s felonies, Antoine
Gessler, the celebrated Swiss reporter, in 2005 published A Shared Pain.
Through a display of grievous photographs and the victim’s testimonies, a
variety of violent tactics employed by MKO to establish freedom and
democracy for Iranians are well illustrated.

Sever reprimand of disobedient and dissident members

MKO settlement in Iraq while two neighboring countries were still at war
completely split it from the world to develop use of unethically manipulative
techniques of persuasion and control to advance the Rajavi’s cultic
objectives. MKO’s camps soon turned into physically and psychologically
abusive environments that harmed members and required them all never to
question, criticize, disobey or distrust the Rajavis known to be the ideological
parents and who were self-promoted to a status similar to that of a celestial
being.

Being totally backed by Saddam, MKO did not hesitate to benefit the
notorious Abu-Ghuraib, as well as the inbuilt lockups, to silence the opponent
and disobedient members and even let them experience its unbearable
condition for a while. Mohammad Hussein Sobhani, a former member of the
group is one among many whom experienced the torments of the both
prisons. His memoirs are published in a volume called Abu-Ghuraib Prison.
There are much more physical and psychological techniques to reprimand
them.

Scourging the dissidents was most common within the organization. Critics
and dissidents were trounced by cables not only to punish them but also to
instill ideological teachings into them. Human Rights Watch report under the
title of No Exit, which was published to give a report of human rights abuses
inside the MKO camps, is an explicit evidence of aggressive practices in the
group. Explaining the process of repression on the insiders, Norooz-Ali
Rezvani, an ex-member, has averred:

In Rajavi’s system, none of the utilized forms of physical and

psychological violence is observed to be a means of punishment and
torture and not a bad thing at all. That is because all is done to retrieve
leadership’s rights. They believe that we [members] have violated
leadership’s rights by rejecting to submit to Rajavi’s absolute leadership
which justifies shedding our blood. Above that, the hasher they did the
punishment, the closer they could get to the leader and, thus, the ranks
closer to leader showed more violence in castigating the dissidents and
 prisoners. Of the most common means of penalization in most prisons is
pounding prisoners by cables; Rajavis prisons were no exception but
one. There they would use it on prisoners’ heads as well as a technique
of thought reform. They believe that it is the thought rather than the
body that makes the dissidents. The deepest wounds would heal after
long but the spoiled thought never heals but has to be reformed so the
head has to be pounded to destabilize psychological balance. Once
Rajavi ironically said, when I rejected his revolution, to pound my head
in a mortar so I could come to my mind to accept sister Maryam’s
revolution. 3

The organization that is making strenuous efforts to posture a pro-

democratic alternative for Iranian regime fails to respect the least
democratic principles in its own internal relations and affairs that are
absolutely concealed from the notice of the outside world. Nobody has the
right neither to question the organization nor to doubt the accuracy of the
made decisions. The members live under an atmosphere of severe
repression and their only choice is to submit to whatever they are
commanded to do; otherwise they have to suffer the backwash of their
dissidence and disobedience:

Mojahedin repeatedly talk of democracy but there could be seen no sign

of democracy in the camp wherein I was kept. Hardly anybody willed to
stay since they were under severe pressure and even thrashing.
Morteza Yusefi, for instance, was not physically fitting for the enforced
trainings and stopped them. They hit him with batons in his sleep. It was
so horrible. There was no answer for the questions and it was the
beginning of rethinking about the cult I was living in. The dissidents
would be called the agents of [Iranian] regime and as I would ask a lot,
they called me Iran’s intelligence spay; they tortured me and deprived
me of sleeping. 4

The life was even harsher for those who announced their separation and they
would come under severe harassment. The condition of the ideological
sinners is one of the most unusual among many existing cults.

Hostile repercussion against ideological sinners

As stated, of the most peculiar instances of cult violence practiced in MKO is

done against ideological sinners. That is to say, following the internal
ideological revolution, all the members had to submit to its principles
unquestionably. To detect signs of any possible deviation, a variety of
unprecedentedly odd and queer approaches were worked out. A regular
weekly session called ‘weekly cleansing’ is an example. Any member has to
go through this cleansing process to be purged of any extended vice and sin
that challenges the Rajavis initiated ideological revolution and, consequently,
distances a member of sister Maryam’s rightful ideological path.

Far beyond being regarded devised processes of preserving the values of the
internal ideological revolution, these sessions are regular, public mind
controlling gatherings. Through these ideological cleansings, members are
under a never-ceasing watch to be found with the flaws they have hardly
noticed in themselves for which they will be reproached in the presence of
other members whom will have no escape from the strict criticism and have
to suffer severe self-criticize. Giving explanation on these sessions, an ex-
member imparts:

In this gathering, all the members have to prepare a written report of

whatever sexual fancies they have had in a weekly period about female
members, actresses, models in papers and TV advertisements, and even
feminine pictures on the cans and boxes and read them aloud before
other members. These sexual fantasies were called ‘Facts’ and anybody,
even if he was invulnerable against such fantasies, had to fabricate a
few, at least 30. It is hard to explain what happens to someone who is to
suffer the shame of standing before his other comrades and talk of
daydreaming he may have never fancied unless one is exposed to the
circumstance. 5

Ali Qashqavi, another ex-member, spent
Iraq. Although he was not familiar with
organization, he had to totally submit to
He could not believe that man’s natural
great sins and liable to suppression:
only five years in MKO’s camps in
the initiated revolution within the
the principles he could not accept.
instincts could ever be considered

From the time I arrived in Iraq, the atmosphere of suspicion in the

camps shocked me. Our leaders asked us for total devotion, heart and
soul, to the organization. They remote controlled us, like robots. They
told us, 'If you have sexual fantasies, even a dream, you must report it
in writing in order to exorcise it’. 6

Cultic, suicidal operations

MKO can be considered as having followed a sectarian detour from its once
political activities to an obviously fanatical and cult behavior. Tragic self-
destructions have proved to be sad truths about destructive cults to achieve
their anti-social demands. The shocking self-immolations and prolonged
hunger strikes in June 2003 to protest apprehension of the group’s leader
and to deter French justice illuminated the darkened cult-like nature of MKO
for the west besides its already uncovered violent and terrorist potentialities.
Although Maryam Rajavi and her entourages, charged with the terrorism,
were released on bail, France was alarmed of the group’s added threat.
Many believed that it was decadence of a metamorphosed terrorist cult as it
was the same with other doomsday cults:

Tom Heneghan of the British press agency, Reuters, asked himself if he

was watching a sect in full collapse: "The images of men and women
spraying themselves with petrol before setting themselves on fire in the
streets of several European capitals has shed dramatic light on the last
days of the main armed opposition to the Teheran regime.” 7

Surprisingly, while the public was still under the shock of being witness to
individuals voluntarily turning themselves into human torches, the jubilant
MKO members purred into the streets celebrating freedom of their guru. The
then French Government spokesperson, Jean-Francois Cope, considered
these self immolations as "obviously, extremely dramatic" adding that:
“Alas! It also tells us a great deal about the mindset of their leadership". 8

Committing such appalling, cult-like self-immolations endorses MKO’s

restoring to complexities of a cult. Although the ideology in itself does not
necessarily suggest application of violence against others, self-destruction
practices are known to be the most influential approach undertaken by the
cults. Overt practices of violence against other individuals spread
psychological terror among a society while acts of self-destruction, besides
spreading psychological terror, endanger emotional and social health. In
other words, when someone consents to commit self-destruction in so
appalling a way, no doubt he is capable of wiping out masses in cool-blood.

Following cult codes, Mojahedin owns a prearranged, deliberate list of

volunteers who have registered for self-immolation wherever and whenever
the organization deems it appropriate. Alireza Jafarzadeh, a Mojahedin’s
media spokesman, in a letter published in one of Mojahedin’s newsletters,
prior to his demands to be registered as a volunteer of self-burning, stated:

Truly, the ignorant have not fully made out the sharpness, shrewdness
and decisiveness of a Mojahed Khalq element more because they have
failed to acknowledge Massoud. They are too narrow minded to know
what a storm Rajavi’s order might give rise to, and that this generation’s
will might leave them in a dark world of absolute desperation. 9

Far beyond the threat of terrorism that can partly be curbed through
implementation of anti-terrorist measures, cult violence exposes further
threat to societies since it goes unnoticed living next door. None of the
French citizens, among whom Mojahedin members were living, ever thought
of seeing these seemingly amiable, pro-democratic campaigners set
themselves on fire unexpectedly. So, is there any guarantee, with the given
instances of cult violence, that even if MKO is removed from the terror lists,
on the ground of claims to have ceased terrorist operations, it will not resort
to unconventional cult practices as the most antisocially influential
approach? The answer is plain if you have no doubt that MKO has rendered
up the soul of its struggle to aggression and violence.

References:

1. Thaler Singer, Margaret; Cults in Our Midst: The Continuing Fight

Against Their Hidden Menace, p. 88.
2. Ibid, 89.
3. Rezvani, N. Neo-scholastics in Rajavi's cult; interview with a detached
member, 1996.
4. The memoirs of Hassan Khalaj; interview with Nimrooz magazine.
5. Memoirs of Massoud Uoladi on Ideological cleansings.
6. Victor Charbonnier; The People's Mojahedin of Iran: A struggle for
what?, 2003.
7. Antoine Gessler ; Autopsy of an Ideological Drift, 2004, p. 136.
8. Ibid.
9. Alireza Jafarzadeh’ letter; Newsletter of the Union of the Muslim
Student Associations, No. 127, 11.