With the ending of the 20th Century and start of the 21st Century there has been a constant War on Terrorism. Does this mean that Armageddon is near and people should prepare for the end or does this mean that there is just a misunderstand of the many different cultures and religions of this world? To understand where terrorist originate there need to be an understanding where they come from and what they are about. Know if these acts are political, religious, freedom of rights or just the belief that to destroy the world is the only way to save it. The Japanese Terrorist group Aum Shinrikyo comes to mind when you think of these situations. The Aum Shinrikyo believe in all of these issues where the reason for their cult or terrorist group. How did the Aum Shinrikyo come to cross the crucial threshold from merely anticipating Armageddon to taking active steps to bringing it about?
Taking a look at this group origination all started from the idea of one man of the name Chizuo Matsumoto. Chizuo grew up in Japan’s southern island of Kyushu. His father was a Tanami weaver in a family of 4, being the fourth son. Chizuo was born legally blind in his left eye and had partial vision in his right. This allowed him to attend a boarding school for the blind. As a child Chizuo bullied other classmates because of his advantage of having sight in eye. After graduating from a Tokyo Prep school Matsumoto tried to attend Tokyo University but was denied, this infuriated him asking himself “Why do I always lose?” His luck took a turn for the better later after meeting his soon to be wife Tomoko, in which they married in 1978. Using money from his wife’s family he opened an Acupuncture Clinic. Treating patients with herbal cures and...
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... and international preparedness as we enter the next millennium. It serves as a harsh wake-up call for the United States which until recently was rather complacent about the threat of terrorism. The activities of the cult were and continue to be of a security concern to the Secret Service for the protection of the President of the United States.
Works Cited
1. Global Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction:
A Case Study on the Aum Shinrikyo
Senate Government Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
October 31, 1995 Staff Statement
2. Kaplan, D. E., & Marshall, A. (1996). The cult at the end of the world: the terrifying story of the Aum doomsday cult, from the subways of Tokyo to the nuclear
3. Lifton, R. J. (1999). Destroying the world to save it: Aum Shinrikyō, apocalyptic violence, and the new global terrorism. New York: Henry Holt and Co..
Cults are dangerous institutions that have existed for many years, corrupting and reforming the minds of innocent people into believing outrageous doctrines that eventually result in disaster. Horrifying cases involving men such as Charles Manson, Jim Jones and David Koresh have bewildered people and raise the question: how could individuals be easily susceptible to the teachings of these men, so influenced that masses go as far as to commit the unthinkable? Individuals who are in a vulnerable position in search for an identity are attracted to cults because they offer a sense of belonging. In addition, isolation from society contributes to the functioning of a cult for it creates an atmosphere where submissiveness and obedience runs high. These two factors seem to hold true for one of the most notorious cults currently established in the United States and Canada. The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or, FLDS, is an international polygamist sect that incorporates belonging and isolation along with a dangerous mentality that have resulted in the abuse of women and children in the name of God.
Jeffrey David Simon, The Terrorist Trap: America's Experience with Terrorism, 2nd ed. (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001), 188-89.
In 2001 the United States suffered a major terrorist attack on 9/11. A week later a new attack started, the anthrax attacks. The attacks occurred over a span of weeks. Anthrax is a type of bacteria that produces spores, which can kill people very rapidly if infected. It is not always easy to diagnose due to its nonspecific symptoms. In this case it was used as biological weapon. The attacks were not known about for a period of time until multiple cases occurred. Many people and organizations would end up working on the anthrax attack investigation, which was codenamed Amerithrax by the FBI. During the investigation the FBI had to work with the science community to try and solve the case. The problem the FBI had though was these scientists could have also been responsible for the attacks they were trying to solve. These 2001 anthrax attacks would end up being one of the most expensive and hardest to solve cases for the FBI to date (Shachtman 2011). The FBI closed the Amerithrax case 8 years after the attacks occurred.
Pinker, Steven. "Violence Vanquished." The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company, 24 Sept. 2011. Web.
Cults have existed for over 2.000 years and have appeared all over the world. However, California’s sizable voluminous population of immigrants, seeking identity and acceptance, combined with the immeasurable freedom California offers, makes The Golden State the “cult capital of the world.” According to Willa Appel, author of, Cults in America: Programmed for Paradise, “Cults seek to replace a lost community and a lost idealism,” (11). Cults provide ethnogenisis for the diverse population of immigrants in California without discrimination. Many cults offer a family structure (Appel 65). Th...
On the morning of August 12, 1995, Arnie Lerma’s house was raided by lawyers of the Church of Scientology two armed Federal Marshals. A...
The “Gentleman of Western Learning” presents arguments centered around the political ideology of pacifism and can be seen as the “idealist” of the book, advocating ideas out of his time, seemingly to be a man of vision in today’s context. He proposes the abolishment of the Japanese military and believes that a moral defense built through the virtues of liberty, freedom, equality and fraternity would be more than sufficient to safeguard the nation’s shores and interests (Pg. 51). His cause for unilateral disarmament is indeed noble, though sadly, a pipe dream in his era.
..., to note that there seems to be no adverse effects while a person is in a cult, as their levels of stress goes down and they seem happier. Overall, the cult mentality is one that continues to be an enigma to society today.
Thirty-six years ago, on Nov. 18, 1978, 913 members of the People’s Temple Cult committed mass suicide in the Guyana jungle, under the direction of the Reverend Jim Jones. Most of the victims seem to have taken their own lives by ingesting grape Kool-Aid laced with cyanide, while a few had been shot. The grisly event was triggered by the ambush of U.S. Rep. Leo J. Ryan and other Americans who were attempting to investigate mistreatment of Rev. Jones’ followers; the cult apparently felt threatened by the potential repercussions of the ambush (Layton 3). In 1993, about 80 members of David Koresh's Branch Davidians died after cult members set fire to their own compound following a standoff with federal authorities. And within the past years, 74 members of a group calling itself the Order of the Solar Temple have gone to their death in Canada, Switzerland and France. In the most recent Solar Temple incident, Didier Queze, 39, a baker, his wife Chantale Goupillot, 41, her mother and two others of the faithful exploded themselves into oblivion in St.-Casimir, Quebec; they had attempted to take their three teenaged children with them, but at the last minute the three drugged teens dragged themselves out of the explosive-rigged house and hid in a storage shed. Members of the Solar Temple cult believe that the explosions that cause the fragmentation of their earthly bodies will propel them to Sirius, a star in the constellation Canus Major (Lacayo 44). And, of course, most recently thirty-nine people in matching clothes, members of the Heaven’s Gate cult in Rancho Santa Fe, California, were found lying peacefully in their beds at their rented hillside mansion, hands at their sides, dead. Cult members had taken their own lives on the weeken...
Cult activity has been on the rise over the past few decades. With it there has been an increase in the fear surrounding it. From this fear, society has learned much about cults, how they get members and what to look out for as far as cult recruiters go. Society as a whole has also learned what can be done to deal with cults.
There have been many horrible crimes that have been committed by suspected members of certain cults. There have been crime cases such as , murder, kidnapping, assault, and sexual-assault. It has also been reported that there have been terrorist attacks leading to certain cults that made death threats in the past. In the days following the subway gas attack on March 20, 1995, as suspicion fell on the Aum, most people outside of Japan learned for the first time of this rather obscure Japanese religious sect. To most, their criminal actions of March 20th were out of character for a religious group. Yet, a closer review of the Aum's history show that this group's character had a common thread of criminality leading back to almost the date it was legally chartered. They include murder, attempted murder, kidnappings and burglaries. These incidents, most of which only became known to the outside world in the aftermath of the Tokyo attack, have led many to conclude that Japanese authorities should not have been surprised by either the subway attack or its perpetrators.
The cult was mainly composed of men and women both. All members had crew cuts and were between the ages of 26 and 72. Although many members lived together in a mansion in California, they came from all parts of the country. Many were from California, but members also came from Arizona, Colorado, Texas, Florida, New Mexico, Minnesota, Utah, Ohio, and Florida. There were approximatly 39 members who lived in the 1.3 million dollar Rancho Santa Fe mansion. They operated a web site for their cult called “Higher Source”.
Khashan, Hilal. “The New World Order and the Tempo of Militant Islam.” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. Volume 24, Issue 1 (1997. 5), 5-24.
McLaughlin, Greg, and Stephen Baker. The Propaganda of Peace. Bristol, UK: Intellect Ltd., 2010. Print.
Underground combines two collection of interviews. Part one is a grouping of interviews with victims of the sarin gas attack. Part two is a collection of interviews with former and current members of the religious sect that perpetuated the attack. The author, Murakami Haruki, took up the assignment in part to understand his own cultural identity after almost a decade of living abroad. While the book is made up of narratives from individuals of widely varying backgrounds, the stories share common themes, and together, they reveal many intriguing aspects of the Japanese psyche and the values of Japanese society and culture as a whole.