My alarm clock

I think that right now I want to skip ahead of the crazy rules and these other things and start getting out the things that led me to see the truth of this cult. So I'm skipping ahead in time, in a way, not talking about the little things that bothered me over the years or months, but straight up to the time not that long ago when I realized what I was involved in.



So, once upon a time --



I heard some grumbling about a brother, NS, who was involved in one of their businesses. Nothing specific, more about his inability to handle money. Which murids were complaining this all the time about one another. I didn't think much of it other than "Well, another murid businessman who doesn't have his stuff straight?"



Then someone came to me. They had heard that one of NS's employees was interested in doing a project with me. This person, who was a long time respected murid very close to the shaykh and US, wanted to warn me. Not about his inability to handle money, but about the "spiritual harms" of working with him or his business. The shaykh had drawn a group of murids together and told them that the business was now "about people's egos" and not serving Allah and that "we should turn our backs on it." That meant to continue to work with them or deal with them would mean that you were risking disobedience of the shaykh. Often things would come up that would "separate the wheat from the chaff," as it were. This was one of those times.



Still, at that time it didn't resonate with me. I didn't think the man was this rampant egoist that the shaykh was making him out to me, but it didn't ring any bells for me.



NS moved away from our area. I don't know if he was still a murid at that point. The boycott stepped up. The business shut. And then something else happened.



Another murid, C, lost his job with another murid company, and we were told to avoid him and his wife. I asked why this was happening. They said that like NS, he and his wife were questioning shaykh's rules, disobeying, creating strife and that we had to avoid them for our own spiritual good.



Lost his job. Because he questioned. I realized that what the "turn your backs" with NS was about was about this. Someone told me later it's called blackballing. They were not the first nor the last to be blackballed. But it's what drew apart the drapes for me. I started to see what was going on, and I didn't like it.