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- [00:01]
Carvana Customer
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- [01:07]
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According to the Guardian, a man named Abdullah Hashem was arrested on April 29, along with eight associates when around 500 police descended upon the repurposed orphanage where the Ahmadi religion of Peace and light is headquartered. That 26,000 square foot former orphanage called Webhouse, is in the sleepy northwestern town of Crewe in Cheshire, about 35 miles south of Manchester. It's a 2 million pound 5 acre property that since 2021 has been inhabited by roughly 150 followers of Abdullah Hashem, who claims to be the true and only legitimate Pope, the Successor of Jesus, St. Peter and Muhammad, and the prophesied figure in Muslim eschatology called the Mahdi, who appears on Earth to usher in the apocalypse. Now, we'll get into exactly what appears to be going on here shortly, but parallel to this is another messianic cult story that's closer to home. You have probably heard that on June 21, the Washington Post published an investigative report on the recently resigned Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. It claims that her political career and even the wording of public statements may have all been at the direction of a man named Chris Butler. Who is Chris Butler? He's the guru at the center of the Science of Identity Foundation. It's a Hare Krishna breakaway group headquartered in Honolulu, Hawaii, which Tulsi's parents joined when she was just two years old. Former members of the Science of Identity foundation call it an abusive cult and its leader, Chris Butler, a harsh and grandiose authoritarian who demands loyalty and worship and forces his followers to cater to his obsessive hypochondriac fears of being polluted, contaminated by the outside world. Tulsi's aunt, a retired University of Hawaii English professor, has said in interviews that she believes Tulsi's career and her 2020 presidential run represent the culmination of Chris Butler's four decade quest to attain political influence at the highest level. Now, there's more to this and we'll get into it. But take note. Two days after the Washington Post journalist responsible for this report, John Swain, emailed Gabbard and her press secretary and her chief of staff, who had not replied thus far to any of his previous communications about his intention to publish the story without their comments. Tulsi Gabbard announced her resignation from being dni, citing her husband's recent bone cancer diagnosis My name is Julian Walker. You're listening to Conspirituality Podcast where we investigate the intersections of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience and authoritarian extremism. Quick reminder here, you can find us on our very active shared Instagram account on conspiritualitypod and you are respectfully invited to join our Patreon. If you'd like to support what we do here@patreon.com conspirituality you can listen to all of our episodes ad free and also gain access to our ever growing archive of Monday bonus episodes. Alternatively, to just get those bonus episodes dropped right into your feed, you can join via Apple subscriptions. This of course helps us to keep the lights on here, but no pressure. Your time and attention is also much appreciated. Either way, Speaking of bonus episodes, I actually covered Abdullah Hashem and his Ahmadi Religion of Peace and light back on March 23 as a full length bonus episode that I'm especially proud of. So if you're curious to know more, go and give that a listen after we wrap up here. You may also have noticed that yesterday we re released episode 152, which is titled Tulsi Gabber Gabbard's Krishna Consciousness. It's from back in May of 2023, so that's there for you too if you want more background. Now, you may be wondering why I've paired the Tulsi Gabbard story with the Hashem story. Well, the Science of Identity foundation and the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light have something in common besides being new religious movements ripped from recent newspaper headlines. The they're both examples of just how powerfully influential cult leaders can become once they've convinced followers to be loyal to their mission and to see them as ultimate spiritual authorities who also then have influence over how they think about the real world. Sometimes this gets downplayed, but I think that's a mistake. Cult leaders gain undue influence and coercive control via a cluster of techniques, and that all lead back to the central lie of their divine or paranormal, supernatural or even extraterrestrial identity. It's still a bit taboo to say so, but it's always a lie, whether it's being used to overtly manipulate people or give subtle and benign seeming authority to a more mainstreamed cultural or religious set of beliefs. But perhaps what distinguishes the contemporary cult leader is how they weaponize familiar religious concepts and the human needs they plug into in service of renegade, completely unregulated and self serving authority, control and often personal enrichment. Let's get into the Tulsi Gabbard story first. Though she's made conflicting public statements over the years on just how central a role he's played in her life. Her guru is named Chris Butler. He's currently 78 years old. He goes by the Hindu honorific of Jagadh Guru Sidaswarwupananda Paramahansa. You'll understand why I'll just refer to him as Butler. So he's from the original boomer generation of American gurus remixing Eastern enlightenment. Butler met the founder of ISKCON, or the International Movement for Krishna Consciousness, in 1971, and that's the group often colloquially referred to as the Hare Krishnas. Butler was 23 at the time, and Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the founder of ISKCON, had been in the USA for about six years, having arrived penniless in New York in 1965. He then founded the growing movement that would come to be known colloquially as the Hare Krishnas. And ironically, a lot of people don't know this. The appeal of this Vaishnava Hindu movement to counterculture hippies eager for Eastern Enlightenment in the 60s and 70s conceals what is in fact a very conservative and fundamentalist set of almost monastic renunciate beliefs. In any event, in exchange for advising the small group of followers that the young American surfer and yoga teacher had gathered her around him at that point to see Prabhupada as their new spiritual authority, he would receive initiation, an official initiation and an official Sanskrit name. So an endorsement of this Indian teacher. And that arrangement lasted uneasily for about six years. Butler was not especially invested in the head shaving, right? You've seen these guys, the robe wearing, the monastic devotion of it all. But then the problem was kind of solved for him because Prabhupda died and Butler established the Science of Identity Foundation SIF and crowned himself as the new master of this group. Former members have told reporters that within the group, Butler is seen as a kind of God on earth and that questioning him leads to spiritual self destruction. Butler has long preached against homosexuality in his recorded discourses, calling it abnormal, unnatural and unhealthy. He once even said that gay sex was like trying to have sex with a fire hydrant. He's also said that bisexuality leads to bestiality. Former members say that some of these comments are included in discourses that children in the sect, who by the way are all homeschooled, are forced to listen to. And these ideas are not just part of his religious teaching. The guru has long been interested in political influence. Somewhere around 1976-77 he ordered devotees to run for local political office under their government names, keeping their association with him on the DL. This was after having published a pamphlet himself in which he said that inept politicians should be removed from their seats and replaced with saintly persons. Now for a time, these candidate devotees were part of an organization called Independence for Godly Government. They presented themselves as conservative minded reformers. And in this vein, starting after they'd joined the group in the 1980s, Mike and Carol Gabbard, Tulsi's parents, would campaign successfully against gay marriage and Mike would eventually be elected to the Honolulu City Council and then to the Hawaii State Senate. Now I'm personally in contact with a family who have asked for anonymity that grew up in SIF and has since escaped. They faced being ostracized by other family members who are still involved, but also from death threats coming from members angered by any public criticism of the leader. They've also had to struggle with figuring out how to live in the world outside of a highly controlling insular cultural where the guru's word was law and devotion to him included prostrating to the large portrait of him found in all devotees homes, along with the practice of meditating on his body in a way becoming your own. It's kind of classical guru devotion, meditation techniques. All the children must be homeschooled. Everyone is required to be vegetarian. Drugs, alcohol, gambling and sex outside of marriage are forbidden, as is any public disclosure about the inner workings of the group. Both the New Yorker and Washington Post have reported that Former members say their devotion extended sometimes to eating Butler's toenail clippings in their food and also consuming spoonfuls of sand that he had made holy by walking upon. As we know, Tulsi followed in her father Mike's political footsteps. As a teenager, she actually appeared in one of her father's anti gay marriage campaign videos, which said that people marrying their dogs would surely come next. To be fair, she has since apologized for these activities and statements as her career has unfolded. Whenever asked, Tulsi has deflected or flat out denied any influence from Chris Butler or Sif, at times calling him one of many teachers that she's had, or saying, you know, he's just like a Hindu pastor, nothing more. No big deal. She and her spokespeople have at times called any criticism of her ties to the group Hindu phobia or anti Hindu bigotry. What this new Washington Post article alleges is that she may have been quite strongly controlled by her guru while in public life. The report is based on 25,000 leaked documents provided by Rebecca Sultzberg, who worked on digital strategy for previous Scabbard campaigns after having been a secretary to Chris Butler himself in the 1990s. It argues that the documents show Butler and his inner circle scripting Tulsi's media appearances and dictating legislative stances and managing her public image between 2011 and 2017, because many of these encrypted and anonymous documents relay instructions for actions to take, language to use, and even include a 173 page document from 2014 titled TWG Issues, which included extensive policy and strategy notes. But even though none of this ever identifies Butler as the source, the journalist John Swain did a lot of legwork here, cross referencing and analyzing to make sense of the available data. Swain found many statements by Tulsi Gabbard in the public record that were word for word matches with what she is being told to say in the documents, and so too with tweets that she made and even with the other politicians that she entions in those tweets. She's been told specifically who to do that with. Statements and bill proposals correlate with specific notes and instructions, as well as phrases that she either used verbatim or paraphrased slightly in at least 32 media interviews, and this included on topics ranging from veterans affairs to foreign policy instructions like urging the bombing of ISIS in Syria. The documents also show how Sif used dozens of coordinated fake social media accounts that boosted her posts and went to war on her behalf in the comments. And so there are shared chat logs which show all of this coordination. They also show moments of feedback to her on her media performance, things like telling her not to do that weird eye thing anymore, or saying that she's sounding too scripted and too mechanical. There's even a transcript from an apparent 75 minute preparatory meeting before a big interview that ends with now all you need is a good night's sleep, knowing that no matter how badly you fuck it up, me and Krishna still love you. So it's not a massive guess to speculate who that might have come from. Because the documents only cover 2017 and earlier, it's not possible to say for sure if this scripting of her career continued during the rest of her time in Congress and then during her work in the Trump administration. However, some of the stock phrases and the wording of statements from the documents that cover that earlier period did continue to come out of her mouth in ways that suggest a continuity of influence. With regard to the origin of the anonymous encrypted advice, Swain found several clues regarding Butler's abbreviation nickname within the group, as well as references to things like one of the houses he reportedly lives in, his having been a teenager in Hawaii, which is not true for other senior members that could be the source of this advice, as well as actual transcripts of Butler rants that are included as part of the communications to her metadata also showed a domain name which is used by Butler's office. Washington Post also did an AI stylometric analysis that looked at Butler lectures when compared to the documents to examine phrasing, idiosyncratic word choices and biographical details. And all of this indicated, according to Claude, that Butler was the most likely source when compared to other SIF senior members. Without being able to say for sure. The documents also show Gabbard being shepherded toward becoming a Trump ally even after having backed Bernie Sanders in 2016 and then endorsing Hillary now. For their part, the Science of Identity foundation has denied all of this. They say it's just another example of Hindu phobia. They call Sulzberg a disgruntled former employee who was trying to extort money from the organization, and when asked about that, she said in fact she had demanded $250,000, as they say from them to cover damages to herself and her own children after having been arrested for taking in a runaway who had claimed that her SIF associated parent was abusing her. She says the arrest was a setup in retaliation for her whistleblowing on alleged coverups of physical and sexual abuse within the group, so we'll see how that plays out. Meanwhile, in addition to what we already know about Butler's beliefs and politics, we also know that in lectures to his followers he has said things like the intelligence agencies of which Tulsi as Director of National Intelligence oversaw 18 during her tenure. He said they're filled with demonic, power hungry madmen who want to use psychic powers to control people. His well documented anti Islamic stance may also explain the at the time hard to understand move of Tulsi, a Democratic congresswoman cozying up to the brutal dictator Bashar al Assad in 2017 while she was receiving instructions to lobby for the bombing of ISIS in Syria. As for Tulsi, her last big action prior to leaving the DNI job has been to rekindle debunked Russian talking points about Ukraine being home to US funded bioresearch labs doing gain of function research. And that tracks to some extent with Chris Butler's on the record Covid skepticism. Now, to be clear here, the Washington Post does not claim it has a signed memo from Butler saying I control Tulsi Gabbard, but it reports a large cache of encrypted memos, emails, transcripts and then matching public statements, pseudonyms that were associated with social media operations, domain name metadata, insider testimony, and then the stylometric analysis that together all point toward Butler and his inner circle exerting unusually detailed behind the scenes influence over Gabbard's congressional messaging and her strategy from 2011 to 2017. Now, it's worth reading the full piece. If you want more detail, I've included it and other sources in the show notes for you. I personally won't be surprised if Gabbard is called to testify before Congress or the Senate as to the role that Sif and Chris Butler have played in her political career. For my money, an Intelligence Oversight Committee investigation should be the next step. This is clearly a developing story. We'll see how it shakes out in the coming months. Stay tuned. Speaking of developing stories, let's get back to the other cult leader recently in the headlines. As I mentioned earlier, the five acre web house residence of Abdullah Hashem and about 150 of his followers was raided by around 500 police on April 29. Nine people were arrested and charged on human trafficking, rape and forced marriage. Another 13 were arrested on what the police are calling public order offenses. But who is this guy? Well, the 43 year old Abdullah Hashem dresses like a refugee From a late 90s MTV Unplugged concert dark jeans and sweatshirts, form fitting jackets with too many zippers and snaps and clasps, a close cropped beard and shoulder length dark hair that's kind of graying, but it's topped off with this black beanie that he's always wearing. It's pulled over his ears and often low enough over his forehead to keep his eyes hidden in shadow. His male followers, and actually some of his female followers too, emulate his dress like you can see them in the audience of his carefully staged YouTube lectures given in the room of this former orphanage, designated in a grandiose reference to Catholic holy sites as the Basilica. It has dark yellow walls that are lit up with golden pools by multiple lights right up against them, so that everything else in the room is still dim and dramatic. And there are alcoves along the sides of the basilica containing fittingly perhaps statues presumably of Ahmadi religion of peace and light holy figures. The ceilings are high and a rich blue tapestry hangs against part of one wall. And then there are these professionally printed black banners that say Ahmadi religion of peace and light hanging on other walls. Sometimes there are also these dark colored paintings that seem to illustrate religious or historical themes and they have heavy gold leafed frames. And in some of the videos there are a number of pure white statues and pillars and busts that look Greco Roman, some have Egypt headdresses. And the guru overtones are completed by Hashem having this incredible oversized throne like upholstered armchair behind him as he speaks standing up. Sometimes what looks like that same set will also have an elevated lectern or a pulpit that he speaks from, often with very big PowerPoint imagery and text being displayed behind him. So we've established some of the setting of this guy and his group and his performance. Right. Other videos are shot on a truly bizarre postmodern set which features two large dark oxblood red leather tufted aristocratic chairs facing each other, but they're awkwardly far apart on this bright blood red carpeting for any sort of practical conversation. And then there's this matching tufted footstool seemingly discarded into the foreground of the shot, and a completely out of place life size pure white bust of the chest and shoulders and head of someone roped off with a red velvet rope in the background, kind of centered. The walls of this chamber are covered in uniformly shaped and colored depictions, all in the same style of what I can only imagine again are religious figures and saints and what have you. In contrast to the deep reds of the carpet and the furniture, the lighting is really artificial. Light blue. And it seems to come up both from the antique molding on the walls to shine on additional religious scenes that are painted Sistine Chapel style directly onto those upper walls. And then the light's also coming from these large rectangular windows, which also have blinds covering most of them, so that there's this weird blue glow shining around the edges of the light. Okay, I'm painting you a picture here of what I've discovered by checking out this guy's YouTube channel. These are the video sets, and they're really unique, different than anything else that I've seen recently on YouTube. So all of this creates the setting from which Abdullah Hashem has broadcast from the Webhouse and crew over two satellite TV channels and 48 social media accounts in five different languages. And the messaging is consistent. He is the divinely appointed successor of all Abrahamic prophets. Anyone interested can consume hundreds of hours of his esoteric reinterpretations of scriptures that prophesy his appearance. He claims that Muhammad referred to him directly on his deathbed. But beyond this, there's a range of even more bizarre teachings. He claims that on other planets, giant bunny rabbits keep humans as pets. And that before Adam and Eve, there were alien races who inhabited the Earth. And some of their still present descendants are here in manifestations of cryptids like Bigfoot, you know. The U.S. he says, has also been controlled by the Illuminati because George Washington was secretly really Bavarian Illuminati founder Adam Weishaupt. And George W. Bush was actually the grandson of English occultist Aleister Crowley. The more typical Islamic jinn, kind of evil demon figures who tempt us seem to be described by him as extraterrestrials in spirit form. And he says they can be controlled magically by whomever holds Solomon's ring, which, as it turns out, is he himself. Abdullah. And that's not all. His followers seem to sincerely believe that he has several special powers that prove his divine identity.
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Follower of Abdullah Hashem
We found the riser of the family of Muhammad Abbas Sadiq, and this is what we saw.
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Podcast Host
I saw actual angels fly across the the skies to testify for him.
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Follower of Abdullah Hashem
I saw prophetic dreams where he revealed secrets that later came true. I witnessed and experienced his prophecy of my son's impossible birth coming true.
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Podcast Host
I witnessed him use me as a
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Follower of Abdullah Hashem
vessel to bring my dad back to life. I saw him cure me of an illness that the doctors couldn't cure.
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Podcast Host
I saw him sustain countless people like Jesus did for many years.
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Follower of Abdullah Hashem
I witnessed he made the moon disappear.
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Podcast Host
I saw him have power over the jinn like Solomon. I witnessed him manifest a person out of nowhere. I saw him resurrect my wife from the dead.
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Follower of Abdullah Hashem
I witnessed him cure me from my infertility. I saw him turn leaves into living animals. I saw him make every living minute of our lives with God. A miracle.
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Podcast Host
Not bad for a guy from Indiana. Born to an American mother and an Egyptian father, He started off as a young documentary filmmaker, and at the time he was really interested in exposing cults. He went undercover with his fellow filmmaker friend, who's still with him, by the way, is one of his loyal followers now, to infiltrate the Rhealian cult. Remember, I've covered this on my Roots of Conspirituality series, the Rhelians. They're led by Frenchman Claude Vorion. And he claimed, after saying he was visited by an alien spaceship while walking out in nature, that he was the kind of earthly ambassador to the alien civilization who had actually sent all previous, previous prophets to help humanity evolve to their level. But within three or four years after infiltrating and then making this film that didn't really get much exposure, and then being sued by the Raelians for, you know, defaming them and. And for entering under false pretenses, within three or four years of that all happening, Hashem had moved to Egypt and was well on his way to trying to convince others that he himself was the Shia Islamic divine prophet, or savior of our times. And then between 2015 and 2021, the group that was forming around this new prophet would move from Egypt to Germany to Sweden and eventually to England. And each time they moved, they would say it was because they were being persecuted or discriminated against. Meanwhile, Hashem was building this international following via his media endeavors, and many have apparently heeded the call to send in donations to fund his movement. Members who live at the web house are, of course, the most dedicated inner circle. And some reports say that they have sold their houses and donated their money to him so they could come and live on the property. There are also whispers of a blood ritual initiation and of blood being gathered from that initiation in a ceremonial replica of the Ark of the Covenant. Some followers also say that they were given former followers. In this case, they were given loyalty tests that included breaking certain sexual taboos under the orders of Hashem. All of this led, as I actually predicted it might in my bonus episode, to this massive police raid and arrests on charges of human trafficking, slavery, rape and forced marriage. The bail conditions for five of those charged, including the holy man himself, say that they cannot enter the city of Kroo at all, that's where their headquarters is or contact the victim that these charges have stemmed from. They've also been given anti Semitic slavery and trafficking risk orders which severely prohibit any actions that might be seen as controlling the travel, the finances or the identification documents of any other individuals. So that's about it from me today. These are wild examples I wanted to just touch on of how the undue influence of cult leaders is a real presence in our modern world and in the headlines over the course of the last month or two. From a classic boomer generation Hindu styled recluse pulling the strings in the halls of American power to an elder millennial updated Shia Muslim prophet hipster with a theatrical flair for New Age reinvention and global digital communication mastery getting nicked in England's Northwest for slavery, trafficking and sex crimes. You can get even more fascinating detail and backstory on Abdullah Hashem via our Patreon bonus that I mentioned. It's titled the New Age Muslim Apocalyptic Prophet. And also check out the re release of our Tulsi Gabbard episode which you will find just behind this one in your feed. I'll see you soon.
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Carvana Customer
Foreign.
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Sponsor Voice
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