Lessons I Learned From Being in a Muslim Cult for 13 Years
By: Yousuf Azhar
Tags: Muslim, Exploitation, Control, Cult, Abuse Survivors

INTRODUCTION

No one thinks they are in a cult while they’re in a cult. It’s easier than you think to fall prey to a corrupt shaykh/teacher. We assume that people who don religious garb are honest and sincere in wanting to help us. When we let our guard down and cease to assess them critically, we open ourselves up to abuse and exploitation. That’s what happened to me. Alhamdolillah, I was able to get out of the Muslim cult I was in. After spending a few years thinking about the lessons I learned, I decided to compile them for the benefit of others. I pray no one goes through the emotional torture I went through when leaving the cult I was in.

LESSONS

The moment you get comfortable NOT critically analyzing something is the moment you are setting yourself up for abuse. People who justify their inconsistent behavior are lying to you. If you find yourself justifying the wrong actions of your shaykh/teacher, you need to realign your loyalty to the truth and call out your shaykh/teacher. Unlike true prophets of Allah, abusive shaykhs/teachers EXPECT reward from you for their help through your donations and your service to them or their causes. If a shaykh/teacher tries to cut you off from information other than the Shaykh’s/teacher’s, know that your shaykh/teacher wants to control you. When the students of the shaykh/teacher consider it praise-worthy to be personal servants of the shaykh/teacher, then that shaykh/teacher is corrupt. If your shaykh/teacher insists that all your major life decisions go through him, he wants to control you. Corrupt shaykhs/teachers exploit your imagination against yourself by putting doubts in your mind about anything outside the shaykh’s/teacher’s group. If the shaykh/teacher always wants to be a “father figure” in your life even though you are an adult, he wants to control you. A simple way to check if a shaykh/teacher is corrupt is to find out the behavior of his wife. If she openly exploits her students, demands extreme displays of respect from them and is attached to extravagances, then know that she is doing this by observing the private behavior of her husband (the shaykh/teacher). If the shaykh/teacher consistently criticizes material wealth and pressures his students to donate their wealth to him while amassing wealth himself, then know that he is a hypocrite. When people are at a low point in their lives due to some calamity or difficulty, they turn to religious figures for comfort. Corrupt shaykhs/teachers hunt for people who are at a low point in their lives so they can win their trust and then control them. If you find yourself doing more dhikr of your shaykh/teacher than Allah, then know that your shaykh/teacher is a type of shaytan. A true shaykh/teacher makes you remember Allah simply by looking at them. A corrupt shaykh/teacher makes you remember them even when you should be remembering Allah. If you worry more about what your shaykh/teacher will think about your behavior than whether Allah ta’ala will be happy with your behavior or not, then you have taken your shaykh/teacher as your god. Corrupt shaykhs/teachers claim a special connection with Allah, but this is actually a trick to control you. If you believe that your shaykh/teacher has a special connection with Allah and that they can confer that connection on you, your shaykh/teacher can now control every aspect of your life. Corrupt shaykhs/teachers demand extreme segregation between men and women for their students, but don’t practice it themselves. The representative of a corrupt shaykh inherits the sins of the corrupt shaykh through practicing them himself. The corrupt shaykh/teacher cares only for his own personal interests so he is ready to sacrifice you and your family for his causes. The corrupt shaykh/teacher will insist that students sacrifice every penny they own for the shaykh’s/teacher’s causes, but will himself squander money on entertainment and whims. The corrupt shaykh/teacher will not hesitate to hide truths from his students if he feels it will diminish his authority. The corrupt shaykh/teacher will create imaginary statuses (such as connection to Allah or vicegerency) to reward loyal students by conferring it to them and humiliate inadequately loyal students by withholding it from them. The corrupt shaykh/teacher projects a false image of his own piety.

-He will freely misinform people by claiming he stays away from cell phones, social media and YouTube, but then use it himself by going through his students or getting an iPad mini with cellular data service. The corrupt shaykh/teacher never encourages his students to keep him on the straight path and correct his mistakes. Instead, he demands extreme displays of respect and doesn’t tolerate criticism. The corrupt shaykh/teacher expresses no remorse for sending a student on a multi-year effort to research a business idea that will support the shaykh’s/teacher’s causes, but that ultimately turns out to be a completely impractical venture. The corrupt Shaykh’s/teacher’s wife will use their students as free labor and express no remorse for wasting their time as they sit waiting to run their errands only to find out they changed their mind and didn’t need it anymore. After spending years with a corrupt shaykh’s/teacher’s group, you start imagining that the whole world thinks like your group when they don’t. People outside the corrupt shaykh’s/teacher’s group can easily see the abusive nature of the group even if the group members can’t see it. Once you realize they shaykh/teacher is corrupt and try to tell others in the group, assume they won’t understand unless they see it for themselves. Students of the corrupt shaykh/teacher will blame you for leaving instead of blaming the shaykh/teacher for his deceptions. The corrupt shaykh/teacher trains his students to blame themselves for every single fault they see in the world especially the faults of the shaykh/teacher. The corrupt shaykh/teacher will emphasize the importance of spending the last 10 nights of Ramadan in itikaf until he wants his students to raise money for his project in which case he forces his students to spend the last 10 days of Ramadan fundraising for his cause. The corrupt shaykh/teacher won’t bother trying to answer challenging questions about the group logically. Instead he will just say that if the light bulb is on (meaning that the shaykh/teacher is following outward sunnah), it must be connected to the power source (Allah).

CLOSING

I hope that you can keep these lessons in mind as you live your life. May Allah ta’ala protect you from being used and abused especially by people who claim to represent the beautiful deen of Islam. Fee amanillah.

For some more context about my experience with the Muslim cult, please also check out my interview on in shaykhs clothing.

And for more on spiritual abuse or cult exit help please visit https://inshaykhsclothing.com/.