International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 8, 2017 71
Destructive and Terrorist Cults: A New Kind of Slavery: Leader, Followers,
and Mind Manipulation
By Masoud Banisadr
Reviewed by Ron Burks
Research Institute on Destructive Cults (RIDC
www.ridc.info). 2014. ISBN-10: 1502384795
ISBN-13: 978-1502384799 (paperback). 504
pages. $20.00 (Amazon.com) $5.00 (Kindle).
In the first three days after September 11, 2001,
I spoke to several former Wellspring clients who
lived in the New York City metropolitan area.
They had all been triggered by the question
everyone was asking: “How could anyone fly a
plane into the side of the building just because
somebody told them to?” As former members of
cults, they knew very well how a normal person
could eventually get to that place—and think
they were obeying God.
Then I took a call from an investigative reporter
from The Portland Oregonian. He introduced
himself as having covered the entire affair at
Antelope, Oregon, where Maharishi Mahesh
Yogi had formed an enclave that almost took
over the local government. The reporter said,
“The more I dig into this thing, the more I feel
like I’m covering the same story. What do you
people think: Is this Al Qaeda really just a cult
masquerading as Islam?”
Masoud Banisadr is in a position to know. Long
before 9/11, he joined a group whose leader,
Massoud Rajavi, was trying to use propaganda
and violence to overthrow the Shah of Iran and
establish the Mojahedin-e-Khalegh (MeK) as the
means of bringing democracy to Iran. He made
his escape from the group in 1996. He had been
an unlikely terrorist.
In Destructive and Terrorist Cults: A New Kind
of Slavery: Leaders, Followers, and Mind
Manipulation, Banisadr debriefs his experience
using Lifton’s criteria of thought reform. In
chilling detail, he shows how a “liberal, middle-
class, semi-intellectual” was made into “a
dogmatic, cultic zealot, ready to die for the
leader” (p. 6). Indoctrination could not make
him into a killer, but he became the public voice
of a group that used intimidation, violence, and
murder, believing it was for the good of Iran.
He describes a terrorist organization as one
“whose ‘only tactic, or at least its main tactic for
reaching its goals is an act of terrorism’” (p. 10).
He adds that “the terrorist organization is either
a destructive cult or that it has no choice but to
become one ...to survive. ...to combat
terrorism, we have to tackle the problem of
destructive cults” (p. 10). The author’s insights
into how Al Qaeda came to bring the world not
just 9/11, but multiple 9/11s, which continue
today, suggest that the differences between the
author’s group and Al Qaeda or Daesh, the so-
called Islamic State, are likely to be cosmetic.
Yes, MeK, Al Qaeda, and Daesh are cults.
I share my journey through this book as a former
member of a church whose pastors used our
commitment to the cause to control our lives in
personal matters not related to what, at first,
were the core principles of the group. Banisadr
demonstrates the astonishing similarities
between the control tactics of psychologically
harmful groups with which we are all familiar
and those that perpetrate mass murder on a
global scale. My experience became less like
reading a very good book, which this one is, and
more like watching a train wreck in slow
motion.
Banisadr's group, “distorted popular beliefs and
exploited social injustice to radicalize its
members, [and to] give them the semblance of
legitimacy” (p. 10) in its grooming of members
to become suicide bombers or to take part in
attacks against trained standing armies,
effectively sending them to their deaths.
Terrorist groups do not need to use thought-
reform techniques to recruit. Black and white,
for-us-or-against-us statements in political
speeches in the West after 9/11 sounded to
Muslims, moderate and radical alike, that the
Destructive and Terrorist Cults: A New Kind of Slavery: Leader, Followers,
and Mind Manipulation
By Masoud Banisadr
Reviewed by Ron Burks
Research Institute on Destructive Cults (RIDC
www.ridc.info). 2014. ISBN-10: 1502384795
ISBN-13: 978-1502384799 (paperback). 504
pages. $20.00 (Amazon.com) $5.00 (Kindle).
In the first three days after September 11, 2001,
I spoke to several former Wellspring clients who
lived in the New York City metropolitan area.
They had all been triggered by the question
everyone was asking: “How could anyone fly a
plane into the side of the building just because
somebody told them to?” As former members of
cults, they knew very well how a normal person
could eventually get to that place—and think
they were obeying God.
Then I took a call from an investigative reporter
from The Portland Oregonian. He introduced
himself as having covered the entire affair at
Antelope, Oregon, where Maharishi Mahesh
Yogi had formed an enclave that almost took
over the local government. The reporter said,
“The more I dig into this thing, the more I feel
like I’m covering the same story. What do you
people think: Is this Al Qaeda really just a cult
masquerading as Islam?”
Masoud Banisadr is in a position to know. Long
before 9/11, he joined a group whose leader,
Massoud Rajavi, was trying to use propaganda
and violence to overthrow the Shah of Iran and
establish the Mojahedin-e-Khalegh (MeK) as the
means of bringing democracy to Iran. He made
his escape from the group in 1996. He had been
an unlikely terrorist.
In Destructive and Terrorist Cults: A New Kind
of Slavery: Leaders, Followers, and Mind
Manipulation, Banisadr debriefs his experience
using Lifton’s criteria of thought reform. In
chilling detail, he shows how a “liberal, middle-
class, semi-intellectual” was made into “a
dogmatic, cultic zealot, ready to die for the
leader” (p. 6). Indoctrination could not make
him into a killer, but he became the public voice
of a group that used intimidation, violence, and
murder, believing it was for the good of Iran.
He describes a terrorist organization as one
“whose ‘only tactic, or at least its main tactic for
reaching its goals is an act of terrorism’” (p. 10).
He adds that “the terrorist organization is either
a destructive cult or that it has no choice but to
become one ...to survive. ...to combat
terrorism, we have to tackle the problem of
destructive cults” (p. 10). The author’s insights
into how Al Qaeda came to bring the world not
just 9/11, but multiple 9/11s, which continue
today, suggest that the differences between the
author’s group and Al Qaeda or Daesh, the so-
called Islamic State, are likely to be cosmetic.
Yes, MeK, Al Qaeda, and Daesh are cults.
I share my journey through this book as a former
member of a church whose pastors used our
commitment to the cause to control our lives in
personal matters not related to what, at first,
were the core principles of the group. Banisadr
demonstrates the astonishing similarities
between the control tactics of psychologically
harmful groups with which we are all familiar
and those that perpetrate mass murder on a
global scale. My experience became less like
reading a very good book, which this one is, and
more like watching a train wreck in slow
motion.
Banisadr's group, “distorted popular beliefs and
exploited social injustice to radicalize its
members, [and to] give them the semblance of
legitimacy” (p. 10) in its grooming of members
to become suicide bombers or to take part in
attacks against trained standing armies,
effectively sending them to their deaths.
Terrorist groups do not need to use thought-
reform techniques to recruit. Black and white,
for-us-or-against-us statements in political
speeches in the West after 9/11 sounded to
Muslims, moderate and radical alike, that the
