J Gordon Melton, executive director of the Institute for the Study of American Religions at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told The New York Times that 40 to 45 new religious movements emerge each year in the United States’ (Wiki NRM).
One of the more notable, newer ones is Ahmadi, Religion of Peace and Light (AROPL), birthed in 1999 (which has no connection to another, older breakaway Muslim sect, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, also known as Ahmadis)
The new kid on the block lays out what it thinks is its unique selling point:
‘The movement’s literature states that it is the new religion foretold by the Holy Household of the Prophet Muhammad to emerge in end times, that it is the one true universal religion and that its members are God’s chosen people’.
End times – tick, only true religion – tick, chosen people – tick. Not so unique, straight out of the playbook used in the USA, the only difference being the holy household.
As you do when meeting by accident a divine being or angel or the Twelfth Imam, you start a new religion. But the equivalent to the People’s Front of Judaea was split by the Judaean People’s Front which became the AROPL. Fast forward, the AROPL’s current leader, according to the Religion Media Centre (RMC), is an Egyptian-American who claims some sort of lineage back to Muhammad.
It has, of course, its ‘sacred book’ published in 2022. The RMC says that one of the beliefs held is that currency is a scam and when the Divine Just State happens people will ‘contribute what they can and have their needs met by the community’. RMC says also that AROPL ‘believes that 99 per cent of every religion is wrong’. It has some David Icke-type beliefs and a relaxed attitude towards some positions the fourteen hundred year-old parent considers inviolable. This makes Ahmadi heretical in some states.
AROPL would have passed under our radar completely until it found itself the subject of some unsavoury reporting in the media. The concept of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ isn’t always adhered to in media generally and social media in particular. The Guardian and other media, at the tail end of April, correctly used ‘allegedly’ and we note the story headline without making any judgmental comments on the incident reported: ‘Crewe religious group raided by police investigating allegations of serious sexual offences’.
The allegations follow a familiar but sad pattern found many times before in large and small religious sects. Or should we say cults? The Guardian writes that the raid on the Cheshire headquarters carried out by five hundred police occurred because of a complaint by a woman, previously a member, of rape and sexual abuse. Arrests took place on suspicion of trafficking, sexual offences, forced marriage and slavery.
If legal proceedings follow, then whatever the outcome, the sense of persecution this will engender will only serve, sadly, to reinforce the adherents’ loyalty towards something that lures with false rhetoric. It cannot ever make their lives better.
DC
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