Paradise Lost

The butchery of an off-duty soldier, Drummer  Lee Rigby, just several hundred feet away from his military barracks, in Woolwich, London, raises a number of questions which could well apply to a small number of Muslim alienated young men across the continent of Europe.

From what it appears, the murderer (or both, yet to be convicted in a court of law) proud to confess the deed to every passer-by transfixed with horror by their poise - and who might care to indulge the espoused  convoluted  ideology which, in their minds, sanctions ritual murder or human sacrifice,was, onetime, a well-educated, articulate young man with a promising career ahead of him.  He appears to have found total salvation through Islam sometime either at or just before University.  Having found salvation he embraced his faith with the passion of a disciple-spreading the good news to the people of Woolwich and Greenwich.  His passion then took him to East Africa on a ‘Holy Quest’ in defence of Islam.  (Where he went is not very relevant as I am sure he would have found some ‘unjust’ cause to take up somewhere in the world-Kenya and Somalia happened to be on the radar, just in the right place at the right time for him to embrace.)

Somewhere along the line he appears to have been contacted by the Security Service who would naturally have an interest in someone with contacts in a part of the world where it is extremely difficult to get ‘feet on the ground at grass roots level’ and up to date intelligence about individuals and their activities are at a paucity.

he seems to have taken the (what appear to be) reasonable approaches from MI5 as a hostile challenge to his faith.

One of the problems here is that we quickly forget the lessons of history.

During the 1970s and 1980s and 90s there were various ‘cults’ in London which brainwashed individuals to an extent that they became totally alienated from their friends, families coming under the control of the ‘sect’ or an individual, or they just became totally unbalanced and required long-term psychiatric help and re-orienteering

far away from the influence and reach of the cult leader and it's members.

The brainwashing was quite unique and very well-planned.

One of the less destructive sects I encountered was Hare Krishna.

I would like to relate a true experience which was a sharp learning curve for myself as to how an aspect of brainwashing works-and one which I have never spoken about up until now.

I recall a Sunday in the 1970s when myself and a friend John, from our squat in Tolmers Square, visited the Hare Krishna Temple at the side of Soho Square on a Sunday afternoon.  I recall it was a sunny Sunday and I think it might have been during July or August.  Perhaps it was later-I cannot quite remember.

No, I’m pretty sure it was July or August.

I recall we went into a hall, had to stand and chant for several hours.  Endless chants which seemed to go on and on forever-it was at least 3 hours-worse than any  High Mass.!   After the sermon we were treated to ‘free’ food.

No sooner had we eaten-having been starved and ‘programmed’ in ’stress’ positions for several hours, the food took its effect.

I felt totally elated whilst eating.  Almost the equivalent of a psychedelic 'high’.
The food had no effect on John, other than quenching his appetite . 
The effect was entirely personal.  I did however correctly recognize it immediately for what it was.   A  ‘high’ from a combination of apparently harmless perfectly legal  ingredients.  Obviously The Hare Krishna movement knew far more about this phenomenon than I could ever appreciate.

So, for me, the event had a positive outcome.  I never returned to another sermon however-as I could not literally stand another 3 hours of brainwashing-even for the free food.

There were other contacts with sects across London during the 70s,80s and early 90s-many entirely coincidental and unplanned as my former school colleague had the more inquiring interest.

One of the more interesting unplanned encounter was when I was looking for a portable computer in, I think, Loot-or it’s equivalent at that time.  I met with the individual having replied to the ‘for sale’ advert.  We had a cup of coffee in a Café near Warren Street Tube Station.  (I never actually bought his computer but I did buy some software,Word Perfect amongst others I think.)

 He told me he was off to the U.S. to join with friends preparing for, yes, the end of existence.  Apparently a comet, Hale Bopp, was due to pass by the earth.  It was not really a comet, he said,  but a spacecraft disguised as a comet which would take the faithful to ‘Heaven’.

The sect was, as I learned much later on through news reports, Heaven's Gate.

I don’t know whether this individual was one of the deceased or one of the disciples left on earth to ‘preach’ the ‘good news’ and advise converts how to ritually prepare for the return of the spacecraft, as my sole interest at that time  was in negotiating a good deal for the computer advertised and I was taking only a very polite but rather (probably visibly) bored interest in his enthusiasm for preaching ‘the good news’ (of the coming of salvation.)  He, however, as I later recalled, was taking the matter  very very seriously.  On reflection, I guess he probably had sold (or was in the process of) selling everything as worldly possessions would be of no use to him where he believed he was eventually going.

Not too many years ago someone I knew ‘appeared’ to have ‘discovered’ Islam. I do of course slightly err as the individual was born a Muslim.

At University (a very prestigious and internationally known university) the individual got involved with the Schools' Islamic Society which convinced him he was not a ‘true’ Muslim.   The way of course to be a true Muslim, according to his indoctrinator(s), was to reject all of the values of this ‘Kafir’ civilization - amongst whom he had the misfortune to be born (as he was so informed) - and return to the true path of Islam.

I also suspect he was suggested a number of religious ‘tasks’ by the indoctrinator  to ‘prove’ himself a ‘true’ Muslim.  (This is just speculation and should not be taken as fact as I have no proof that such was the case.)

What this individual I thought I knew (up until the time he ‘found’ Islam) has in common with the (apparently self-confessed) perpetrators of the Woolwich butchery  was the fact that they are all highly educated and articulate but because of their alienation from society and need for acceptance or quest for salvation, all  appear to have found this in religion.

One, someone I knew, by a rigid adherence to Islamic principles. 

The others, whom I only know through the pages of newspapers and television reports, chose human sacrifice-murder by ritual butchery.

When I knew this individual  (now a successful University graduate) before he was 'turned' (indoctrinated)  I had absolutely no indication that he was ‘susceptible’ to brainwashing.  Indeed I would have thought that, because he was exceptionally brilliant, academically, he would have been the last person to be vulnerable to falling as a prey to predators in this regard.

It’s  remarkable how many members of sects susceptible to brainwashing are exceptionally brilliant (academically and professionally) individuals and have (or had) the potential to achieve and offer society a bountiful of talent and skills, but for the wrong path taken.  Whether they just fell through a mental chasm into an abyss at a time in their lives when there was nobody within sight nor sound to hear the desperate lonely cries for help or whether there was just always a mental dam waiting to burst when the wrong buttons were pushed,only a deep understanding of mind, reason and motivation can reveal. If the latter is the case then that vulnerability is universal, given the wrong conditions.

(I have never classed myself as exceptionally academically brilliant, but about average, and this may be one reason I was never easily susceptible to being ‘programmed’.)

The point here is that I make a connection between the brainwashing by cults in the 1970s,80s and 90s  and the brainwashing of the ‘lost’ youth of today-to both political and religious extremism.

When you add in factors such as ‘Holy War’ it’s the equivalent of saying, in the 13th century, either support The Pope or be an Excommunicated leper throughout Christendom where nobody, by Papal decree, could offer you shelter nor sustenance on the pain of Excommunication for themselves and their own families-the medieval equivalent of an Islamic ‘Fatawa’ or 'Jihad' pronounced by an Ayatollah,Imam or prominent Islamic cleric in our present modern time, the 21st century.

Other than the Witchfinder and the Inquisition, nothing was more feared throughout Christendom than being cast beyond  eternal salvation and removed from the protection of the Holy Father in Rome.
But for the Reformation across Europe, we would still exist in that world of darkness, uniformity and ignorance today.

Indeed even in Ireland, up until the 1960s, Excommunication was worse than death itself-for some individuals.

Let me relate another issue.

As a Catholic child in Ireland I went to church every Sunday with my Mum and Aunt.

As a child, I took it as a matter of fact that both the Priest-and all of us in the congregation-ate the body of Christ and drank his blood.  ‘This is my body and this is my blood’ the Priest would say turning to all of us and inviting us to share the body and blood of Christ.

So, in effect,I reasoned, we all went to church every Sunday to cannibalize Christ.

There was not an inkling of a thought of eating anyone else in the congregation nor drinking their blood-only that of Jesus.

We all ate His flesh and drank His blood-and this still happens every Sunday in Catholic Churches throughout the world.
This was a great source of pride for me until my boastful comments to Jewish and Protestant childhood friends when comparing our rituals drew such looks of horror (not to mention the very stern rebukes from my Mum, a devout Catholic) that I just dropped the subject.

Have we moved away from the ‘true’ ritual?  Are cannibals more ‘in touch’ with the purity and essence of sacrifice than us ‘heretics’?   Will ‘God’ look more kindly upon them for not ‘deviating’ from the true ritual on the Day of Judgement?  Will it be them who are saved and us who are cast into the fires of eternal damnation?  Whose view of the ‘real’ world is an illusion?
This is the confusion which sets some individuals ripe for indoctrination with a charismatic individual presenting entirely logical reasons why only one path is the road to salvation.  It is always, of course, the indoctrinators path.
More oft than not it turns, not onto a path of redemption, but onto the road to hell.

I recall many years ago when I was in Madagascar and as a very special sign of respect (I had saved a life) I was invited to have the rare privilege of having evening meal with the ‘ancestors’.

This involved sitting down with disinterred corpses (especially dug up and whose skeletal remains were seated at the table) as we ate a meal.

(I later found out that this was indeed a very rare privilege for a foreigner and reserved for the very few.)

Whose view of reality is the right one?

The Priest and congregation ritually eating the body and drinking the blood of Christ or supping a ritual thanksgiving Elders meal with disinterred corpses?

Which will be redeemed and who will be eternally damned? The murderer with blood on his hands in the name of Allah or the serial blood-drinking and flesh-eating congregation of ritualistic cannibals going along for the ride?  Somewhere between the Priest, the Imam or Indoctrinator offering tickets to paradise and absolution for all crimes, however heinous and evil, committed in this world if carried out in the name of Allah or another deity, my hosts in Madagascar and tribal Papua Guinea, lies the truth.  

It’s not a very pleasant sight to behold.  But here we all are with all our rites and rituals, prostrate before our Creator, seeking eternal salvation and damning all unbelievers to the eternal fires of hell.
We live in a ‘knee-jerk’ society where instant justice is demanded by a vengeful public-and the politicians and courts are only too happy to oblige to serve their own ends.

Other than the satisfaction of revenge, no problem is solved with this solution.

Apart from anything else, for so long as unbalanced individuals are in the state of ‘brainwash’, as far as he or she or they are concerned, this ‘punishment’ (of whatever nature) is simply yet another ‘test’ of faith at the end of which will be eternal salvation and paradise for the true and faithful.   So not one iota of the problem is solved by solely incarcerating these individuals without the psychiatric help and observation which may save other lives at some other time. 
There may be some satisfaction in making the general public ‘feel’ safer-in that a ‘danger to society’ has been ‘removed’.  But none of the underlying key issues have been addressed.

The matter, at a basic level, is very simple:you cannot fight Allah, God, Jesus or Buddha.  Their ‘armies’ are in the minds of the faithful.  Their victories on earth are only symbolic of the paradise to come.  Their defeat on earth, if it results in their demise, opens the gate to their heaven and eternal salvation.  As far as they are concerned, any act on behalf of their ‘God’ is redeemable and will be forgiven as it is, in their mind (or justification) carried out as a ‘soldier’ of Allah or ‘Christ’.   Their ‘paradise’ is not of this world-so what happens to the body is irrelevant.  The more important issue is eternal salvation at the right hand of The Father.   This is for me all too reminiscent of the disciples waiting for the comet  to pass by earth.   Most of the (chosen) Heaven’s Gate Sect disciples willingly committed mass suicide-since  the shell (the body) is not required where they were headed.   From their point of view this is perfectly understandable.  What’s  more difficult to fathom is how very highly intelligent and well-educated individuals decide that absolutely everything  in this world (including their children) require ‘sacrificing’ for eternal salvation and that, somehow, their God or Allah or Supreme Being is demanding of and will be happy with such human sacrifice (or as they might say, ‘offering’) as they make their way as 'beamed up' passengers on the journey 'home' through Heaven’s Gate.

Will we ever fathom the logic of butchery in the name of religion,a scientific ideology, self-sacrifice or ritual blood-letting for a political, religious or philosophical reasons?  I think not.  Will society feel safer by incarcerating such individuals?  I think so.  Will that belief in safety be justified?  I think not.  
So after these individuals, who committed a terrible offense in Woolwich against any God of love, peace, goodness and understanding they purport to believe in, are summarily dealt with by the courts and public ‘confidence’  in ‘civil’ society restored, people will again resume their normal lives content in the belief that justice has finally prevailed with the triumph of good over evil.

If only matters of Heaven and Hell were so easy to resolve.

Patrick Emek

28th May 2013

12.00 noon