Article on Spiritual Abuse from California newspaper

There is an article in the Sacramento newspaper about Christians involved with a controling pastor and their choice to FREE themselves and leave him. Maybe someday there will be an article about people who freed themselves from Besa and Nuh and hedaya! Definitely read this.

Looking back on how the pastor expected members to ask him for advice on everything from where to shop to what to watch on TV, Sapp keeps asking herself the same questions: Why, and how?

"It's not as if you join a church one day and promise to do everything they say," Sapp said. "It happens slowly. I would have done anything for the church."

Sapp was wrestling with the fine line between obedience and what is called "spiritual abuse," in which congregants follow the demands of their faith leaders to the detriment of their well-being. The dilemma isn't new, but the increased awareness is.

Doesn't that sound like these sufi shaykhs? Read the rest of it and be amazed that the so-called "Islamic" cult of these Sufis is so much like the Christian cults that they escaped from.

Helpful articles about recovery

This is a post from a Christian blog concerning people from a fundamentalist type of Christianity but I found it very helpful as a Muslim survivor of a spiritually abusive cult.

The Daughters of Patriarchy: Spiritual Abuse

Another article from Quivering Daughters, an excellent Christian blog. This is about spiritual abuse in the family. When you survived Sufis, you understand this is an important issue, because of the children being raised in these cults.

Spiritual abuse in the family

This is also from a Christian website, but it covers what we are told about quitting the tariqa-cult - that you put your soul in everlasting danger. There are some in the tariqa, and you know who they are, who say that leaving Nuh is the same as leaving Islam - they will takfir you for quitting tariqa. I guess he is their real god. A'udu billah!

They told me if I left...

The rest of this website actually has some pretty good articles that applies to our lives as sufi cult survivors. So check it out.

"Get over it!" That is what the cult followers were saying to the survivors who were posting on Salafi Burnout and Umar lee's blogs. Here is an article on what "get over it" means and doesn't mean.

Eight signs of an aberrational group Not all of this applies to an Islamic cult, but you can read it and gain some insight as a companion to the BITE model.

The stages of leaving a cult

It's complicated a post by a woman who was married to a spiritually abusive man in a spiritual abusive version of Christianity. I think people can relate this to Besa, Hedaya and Nuh, or even to their own husbands of the tariqas.