In the following tweets, I would like to publicly share my experience as a Cult victim in Al Safara (Cult Group) for 20 years, noting that the abusive practices of the cult I will share are systematic and not personal.
I am Ali Rajab, a Bahraini doctor residing in the UK and working for the National Health Service (NHS) as a Trauma & Orthopedics doctor in the South West of England.
I will share my experience to draw attention to the systematic abuses committed by the religious fanatic cult on their victims. My goal is to mobilize action to aid the cult’s victims and grant them safety and freedom of choice.
The ongoing controversy surrounding the cult is well-expected due to their secretive strategies. Thus, genuine information about the cult must be made available to the public.
For this purpose, I openly encourage other cult victims to share their experiences and expose the human rights abuses committed against them.
Although the cult disguisedly operates under the umbrella of an NGO, the secretive community submits utmost allegiance to a person who claims to receive regular and direct orders from a revered messiah (Imam Al Mahdi) who is believed to have existed in the centuries ago.
The person names himself “Doorway to the Lord (the shia messiah)” and conveys the orders of the messiah to the members, training them on practicing extreme secrecy and expecting complete obedience to his demands.
Like other doomsday cults, they prepare for the imminent end of the world. We, as cult members, were conditioned to await orders to participate in the final war for world justice.
This mental and psychological brainwashing could, unfortunately, prepare members for unforeseen extreme actions if commanded by the “Doorway to the Lord.
After living as a victim of this cult for the last 20 years of my life, facing gruesome human rights violations, and fleeing my homeland to guarantee my safety.
I feel morally responsible for enabling other victims who have had their lives hijacked to live freely without being subjected to control and coercion.
Al Safara Cult victims are deprived of their right to freedom of choice in almost all aspects of life. Decisions like renting an apartment, buying a car, studying abroad, marriage, traveling for tourism, communicating with outsiders
and deciding what narrative to use in conversations with others is centrally given by the cult leader who orders/supervise the beliefs, behaviors, and customs of all the other members. Any actions that defy his orders are seen as disobedience to Al Mahdi(The Shiite Messiah).
If his orders are defied, the cult leader supervises reprisals, including physical abuse, house detention, emotional torture, and economic deprivation of the victims.
One of the alarming widespread violations in the cult is the imposing of forced marriages between cult members and their families
Although academic research is being conducted on the cult group and its origins, investigative journalism and human rights organizations must pursue an independent and impartial investigation into the gross human rights violations committed by the cult against their members
The Safara Cult hinges on pressuring members to practice maximum dependency on the orders given by the cult leader. All members are psychologically brainwashed to feel incapable of living an individual life outside of the cult’s norms.
These feelings are usually associated with a worshipful attitude toward the cult’s authoritarian leader and his orders. For instance:
We as cult members were denied the right to get vaccinated during the pandemic until the government mandated the vaccination to attend work/schools/universities/malls.
All members are forced to sign an oath of allegiance to the cult leader, which affirms their complete obedience to the leader without questioning/refusing his orders.
The oath includes aspects aimed at maintaining the secrecy of the cult and ensuing its members do not carry out basic actions in life without the approval of the cult leaders.
I questioned the oath in 2014 and was degraded, humiliated, punished, and deprived of basic allowance. I was psychologically tortured for questioning the orders of the cult leader, who claimed to receive orders from Al Mahdi.
Some victims resorted to suicide attempts as their last option to exiting the cult. I escaped the country to secure my safety while others were physically assaulted, captured, and put under house arrest for over six months, deprived from basic means of communication and education
My primary concern and drive towards sharing my experience as a victim of the Al Safara Cult group is not strictly driven by a stance on their beliefs but by the extent to which they have instrumented those beliefs to terrorize cult victims.
They deprive victims of their freedom of choice, practice reprisals, conduct gruesome human rights violations as well as psychological and mental torture to ensure complete obedience to the “Doorway to the Lord”
My decision to leave the cult was costly at all levels, but today I enjoy the most precious gift in life. The freedom of expression,conscience, belief, and the communicating with noncult individuals without my narrative being monitored, pre-approved fearing reprisals and torture.
All ex-cult members are subjected to smear campaigns, threats, violence, and other actions to silence them. For that reason, the cult did not restrict the threats and acts of violence against my brother.
The cult filed cases against me for spreading fake news and defaming members of their umbrella society in a reactive silencing measure similarly taken by other cult groups around the world.
Today, after being terrorized by the cult for 20 years, their actions will not slow my momentum to end the suffering of other cult victims and ensure their basic human rights and fundamental freedoms are met.
I call on all, not to adopt my position without certitude, but to assess the evidence and prove there is no space for doubt in my claims. It’s more than necessary to conduct a thorough independent media investigation of the Al Safara cult in Bahrain
underpinning and revealing their cross-frontier network of NGOs and businesses and determining whether they are engaged in activities of an illicit or criminal nature, violations of human rights
such as maltreatment of members, psychological torture and manipulation, emotional abuse, unlawful detention, the encouragement of aggressive behavior, propagation of smear campaigns, and sending anonymous threats to ex-members of the cult.
Any media investigation of the cult must consider the deceitful nature of the cult’s propaganda and (outside narrative). After 20 years of being a victim of the Al Safara cult group, I could assertively claim that during those years of secretive activities,
we've mastered the art of feigning to be what we were not and mastered the art of pretending to believe and feel what we do not believe in or feel. I am not too proud of the art we were trained to master in the cult group.
Finally, I call upon the relevant authorities dealing with the Al Safara cult to acknowledge that we were “victims” rather than “members”
Since we were systematically subjected to mental torture and psychological manipulation tactics that lured us into complete submission and obedience to the “Doorway to the Lord”.
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