A Global Threat: Religious Cults and Terrorist Organizations

In this book, the main aim is to understand the potential dangers caused by cult-like religious groups that can be described as religious sects that shows similar features as of cults, as a result of certain structural features, namely their organizational structures, secrecy, and absolute obedience to a leader, which make them ideally suited for terrorism. These three features are essential elements for an efficient terrorist organization. When cult-like religious groups transform into terrorist organizations for various and unexpected reasons, they become serious problems for state security. Most often, however, law enforcement agencies discover and destroy terrorist organizations during their foundation periods, when they are stil lacking in terms of organizational structure, secrecy, and absolute obedience to a leader. In order to show the potential dangers of cults, one case study will be analyzed. That case study is going to be about the sect of Aum Shinrikyo. As it was stated before, the Aum Sect has chosen as case example for this study because of the fact that, the Aum Sect is a text book example of cult-like religious group that transformed into terrorist organization.