Anti-cults

by Alessandro Amicarelli — Why are some religions and religious movements labeled as “cults” or “extremist”? And what are the legal and political consequences of using such labels? Two recently published studies about how these labels have been applied to the Church of Scientology offer new insights on the matter. One, by a law professor, examines the legal side of labelling; the second, by a former diplomat, its political side. In this first article, I offer some comments on the study by law professor Germana Carobene, published in the Italian journal Stato, Chiese e pluralismo confessionale. In a second article, I will examine a somewhat parallel study by Rosita Šorytė published in The Journal of CESNUR.

The report that our French partner CAP Liberté de Conscience presented to the UN Human Rights Council recommending that the state funding of anti-cult associations, in particular the French association FECRIS, be stopped, has triggered a series of articles revealing the excesses of anti-cults. Today we publish FECRIS and affiliates: Defamation is in their DNA, an article by Willy Fautré, director and co-founder of Human Rights Withou Fronties International, which lists a series of convictions collected by FECRIS in various European courts. We do not add anything more and leave it to the reader to get a personal idea of these "champions" of the alleged victims of the equally alleged "cults" (an ambiguous term that lends itself well to the hate campaigns of anti-cults).

Rosita Šorytė — Like many others, I heard about Scientology from the media long before I met a Scientologist in person. As a diplomat, I worked in France for five years in the 1990s, and I had been a college student there before. French media were systematically depicting Scientology as a dangerous secte. In the early 2000, I worked in New York at the United Nations, and learned that to describe something as “bad” as a secte in French the word “cult” was used in English. As many of us, who take what we hear from the media for granted without questioning or making our own inquiries, I heard repeated so many times that Scientology was a “cult,” meaning something “bad,” that it was something that I thought was true.

by Alessandro Amicarelli — When everything else fails, governments that, for whatever reasons, want to discriminate religious or spiritual movements they do not like use a secret weapon: taxes. CAP-LC (Coordination des Associations et des Particuliers pour la Liberté de Conscience), an NGO with special consultative status at United Nations’ ECOSOC (Economic and Social Council) filed a written statement to the 47th Session of the United Nations’ Human Rights Council, which was published on June 21. CAP-LC notes that, “Tax weapons have been often used to discriminate against religious and spiritual minorities. This is becoming a global problem, and one the human rights community should be aware of.”

The recent diatribe on the draft law Zan between the republican, democratic and secular Italian State and the theocratic and absolute monarchy Vatican State, brings to light problems that the majority do not see, or do not want to see. The first to be mentioned, not necessarily the most important, is the fact that a Parliament and a Government that no longer represent the will of the majority of Italians, is huddling with a Catholic Church that represents only part of Italian believers (not to mention non-believers) for a bill that will affect all Italians and that has little to do with the huge and far more important health and socio-economic problems that the “Bel Paese” has been going through for a year and a half now.

by Massimo Introvigne — An introductory paper at the Special Meeting of the Freedom of Religion or Belief Roundtable Belgium “The New Flemish Legislation on Religion: A Cause of Concern,” June 2, 2021.

The new Flemish legislation on religion and the statements by politicians surrounding its introduction are yet another example of what is emerging as a fascinating, if paradoxical, social and political phenomenon: the discrimination of some non-Muslim religions under the pretext of combating terrorism based on ultra-fundamentalist Islam.

CAP Liberté de Conscience, FOB partner, has submitted a report to the Human Rights Committee in preparation for the review of France by the Human Rights Committee (132nd session in June-July 2021) recommending to stop State funding of anti-cult associations. The report may be consulted below or on the OHCHR.org website. The main beneficiary of this funding is the French association FECRIS. Or rather the French associations federated to it which, in turn, pass on these funds to their leading association: in fact, FECRIS has federated associations in 34 European and non-European countries.

by Massimo Introvigne — Considering how the French governmental mission against “cultic deviances” is routinely denounced by leading NGOs specialized in religious liberty and by governments, including the United States’, which publish reports on international freedom of religion or belief, the claim by its former president and member of its new Guidance Council, Georges Fenech, in an interview of May 20, that “all the world envies us [France] for the MIVILUDES” may appear just as an exercise in typical French dark humor.

by Massimo Introvigne — FECRIS, the European Federation of Centres of Research and Information on Cults and Sects, is an umbrella organization for anti-cult movements in Europe and beyond. It is significantly funded by the French government, and has been identified by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) as a main international threat to religious liberty. When FECRIS branches are sued, they often claim that these are futile litigations started by “cults” with the only purpose of harassing them, since anti-cult movements serve a public function, and their exposes of “cults” are protected by free speech laws.

by Massimo Introvigne — There are countless books on how new religions are born, something that happens almost every week in the world. But how do religions die? A new book The Demise of Religion: How Religions End, Die, or Dissipate (London and New York: Bloomsbury) edited by well-known scholars of new religious movements Michael Stausberg, Stuart A. Wright, and Carole M. Cusack addresses this fascinating question through an introduction and nine chapters presenting case studies. Being myself a scholar specialized in new religious movements, I find all chapters fascinating. The case studies confirm what previous research amply demonstrated. Religions do not die when their charismatic leaders die, nor when their prophecies fail.

by Massimo Introvigne — In 2020, I published a book about Scientology and the visual arts. I interviewed artists from different countries of the world who are Scientologists. I learned how in Germany artists had their exhibitions cancelled when it was “discovered” that they were Scientologists. For instance, artist Bia Wunderer had an exhibition cancelled in Berg, Bavaria, for the sole reason that she is a Scientologist. Ironically, even Gottfried Helnwein, who will later become a superstar in the art world, with museums all over the world competing for hosting his works, had an art exhibition cancelled in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, in 1997.”

The French government, in the person of its minister Marlene Schiappa, took a very questionable decision by choosing to increase funding to the "anti-religious police", the controversial ministerial mission called MIVILUDES, now under the ministry of the Interior. Bribing this anti-religious body with French taxpayers' money means directly funding the infamous FECRIS (European Federation of Centres of Research and Information on Cults), which has always been financed largely by MIVILUDES. Let us remember that FECRIS, through its federated micro associations scattered as metastases in dozens of European and non-European countries, has been trying for decades to negatively influence the policies of the governments of these countries with regard to freedom of religion and belief.

For thirty years anti-cult groups and individuals such as Ursula Caberta, Executive of the Task Force on Scientology at the Hamburg Internal Affairs Authority, have generated a climate of persecution against Scientology and various other religious groups by wasting public funds. That task force ceased its activity in 2010, but Ursula Caberta continued to work as a government consultant until 2013, and even afterwards she persisted in spreading intolerance and prejudice far beyond the territory of Hamburg, thanks also to the disinformation campaigns spread by its anti-cult associates, such as the French state funded FECRIS (European Federation of Centres of Research and Information on Cults) which still hosts Caberta's theories on its website.

by Rosita Šorytė — Bernadette Rigal-Cellard is the most well-known specialist of new religious movements in the French academia. She is Professor of North-American Studies and Religious Studies at the Université Bordeaux Montaigne, where in 2005 she founded the multidisciplinary Master Program “Religions and Societies.” She has also studied the relations between religions and literatures, the religious landscape in the United States and Canada, and the transatlantic religious relations between North America and France. In a recent article in Implicit Religion, she tells, not without humor, the story of how, when she entered the “forbidden” domain of the study of Scientology, she started being attacked by anti-cultists.

by Massimo Introvigne — It is customary in Australia to publish stories about religion for Easter, and The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, both owned by Nine Publishing (the company that resulted from the merger between Nine and Fairfax) obliged by publishing aggressive articles against the Church of Scientology. The articles are a digest of anti-Scientology rhetoric, insisting on what has recently became a curious fad among anti-cultists, the idea that Scientology is “shrinking fast,” what one of the best Australian scholars of new religious movements, Bernard Doherty, has recently called the “historically naïve predictions of its demise.”

by Massimo Introvigne — “Dans l’ombre du covid, la tentation sectaire”: “In the shadow of the COVID, the cults’ temptation.” This was the main title in the front page of the Lausanne daily Le Temps for March 26, reporting on interrogations filed by politicians of different parties to the Grand Council of the Canton of Vaud and the City Council of Lausanne. The politicians quoted recent documents produced by the French governmental anti-cult agency MIVILUDES, that we reviewed and criticized in Bitter Winter. They asked whether the same “cultic deviances” (dérives sectaires) were not at work, taking advantage of the COVID-19 crisis, in the Canton of Vaud.

by Massimo Introvigne — Imagine if Cheng Quanguo, the CCP Secretary in Xinjiang who is under sanctions in the United States for his crimes against humanity, appeared in the West claiming he is persecuted by the Uyghurs and their friends in the democratic world, and hailing his concentration camps as model practices other countries should imitate. Or, in the 1930s, if Heinrich Himmler and Joseph Goebbels had lectured at a conference in Paris introducing themselves as victims of a persecution by the Jews, their American supporters, and the scholars who had written against Nazi anti-Semitism. Comedians who would propose this as a satirical show would be accused of bad taste.

by Massimo Introvigne — In late Winter last year, Shincheonji, a religious movement few non-Koreans had ever heard about, became a household name overnight as the ultimate “plague-spreading cult,” after one of its members was identified as an (involuntary) “superspreader” of COVID-19 in South Korea. Shincheonji and its leader, Chairman Lee Man Hee, were accused of having obstructed the anti-COVID-19 effort by not cooperating with the health authorities. Chairman Lee himself was arrested.

The French and Taiwanese experiences are not isolated. The tactic of using the tax system (very often already oppressive for all citizens) is used practically everywhere. Stigmatizing the target of one's aggression a tax evader has the obvious purpose of making him unpopular and justifying the limitation of his rights. Today we publish this interesting analysis by Christine Mirre, deputy director of FOB sister company CAP-LC (Coordination des Associations et des Particuliers pour la Liberté de Conscience), a United Nations ECOSOC-accredited NGO.

The practice of deprogramming is one of the sad - and sinister - topics denounced by FOB and other friendly organization and part of the battle for the respect of freedom of belief. Recent reports recounting the abuses suffered by believers of Shincheonji in South Korea, have brought the practice back into the public eye. In a ruling issued on November 27, 2020, the Hiroshima High Court confirmed that the abduction and detention of believers for the purpose of coercively "de-converting" them, is a crime.