Islamist Manipulators in Latvia and the Refugees

Vesti Segodnya, 17:00, 9 November 2015 · Igor Meiden

Scandalous reports about an influx of migrants from Africa and Asia, about how much they will be paid here and where they will be housed, have pushed aside a far more frightening possibility: in Latvia, people could easily be recruited into ISIS, to fight in Syria and to carry out terrorist attacks against the “infidels” of the Baltics, the newspaper Vesti Segodnya writes.

The recruiting would be done by professional manipulators using exactly the same techniques as the leaders of totalitarian cults.

All terrorists are welcome

You may be surprised to learn that Latvia has more than 800 officially registered religious organisations, not counting hundreds of illegal ones. They include old, long-known cults built on Christianity, New Age structures (an eclectic mix of Western and Eastern beliefs), suspicious “healing” brotherhoods and harsh commercial cults. Until now, however, Latvia has effectively had no large Islamic organisations; there is only the mosque at 104 Brīvības Street. Yet with the refugees, others may come as well, far harsher and more radical people, as the security services have warned many times. The Security Police, in fact, monitor even the people at that mosque. Normunds Mežviets, head of the Security Police, has repeatedly spoken about the danger posed by some of those who go there.

Not long ago, on the TV programme “900 Seconds”, Mežviets said that the Muslim community in Latvia can on the whole be described as moderate, and that most Muslims are fully integrated into society. But in his view, every year the Security Police see more radical local Muslims who are in contact with Islamists abroad. Among the risks, the head of the service named the admission of refugees: first, the possibility that some of them are linked to terrorists cannot be excluded; second, some migrants, facing negative attitudes from Latvians, may become radicalised.

The head of the Security Police also acknowledged that some members of Latvia’s Muslim community are currently on the territory of the “Islamic State”, and that information keeps arriving about more people wanting to go and fight in the ranks of ISIS…

Still, Mežviets is hardly a specialist in totalitarian cults and aggressive religious organisations. Vesti Segodnya spoke with Svetlana Krilova, a researcher at the Latvian Committee for Combating Totalitarian Sects (its co-chairs are Professor Oleg Nikiforov and Viktor Yolkin). Viktor himself is now preparing to defend his doctoral thesis at Moscow State University on destructive cults, while Svetlana is carrying out two studies at once: a sociolinguistic one at the University of Latvia and a psychological one at one of Moscow’s leading universities, the Higher School of Economics.

“One of the most pressing problems right now is the influx of refugees, and the media have already reported that there may be ISIS members among them,” says Svetlana Krilova. “And the recruitment schemes used by representatives of aggressive currents of Islam, ISIS in general, are very similar to those used by the manipulators of the largest totalitarian cults.”

God, served on a plate

“To begin with, it is important to understand why people join both cults and radical currents of Islam,” our interviewee continues. “We are not talking now about people in Middle Eastern countries, who are very easy to manipulate because most of them are completely uneducated, have not read the Quran, and can simply be fed patterns of behaviour that suit the leaders of organisations like ISIS. What matters now is something else: the brainwashing of Europeans. When I was at school, and then at university, I often saw people who had got into cults. They were far from the least intelligent people: educated, strong-minded, and still they fell under the influence of one organisation or another. I saw how their lives changed, and I heard terrible stories from their relatives…

“And another question: how did the leaders of local totalitarian organisations (or local representatives of international structures) manage to attract even people who could easily find reliable information about any cult? So it is not only the foolish and uneducated who can be drawn into an extremely dangerous organisation? Then how? What drives a person to join a cult, and which values (spiritual, physical, material) are they looking for? Some people think there are fewer totalitarian religious and commercial cults now than twenty years ago. No! Dangerous organisations are working powerfully now, just as in the early and mid-1990s and during the 2008 crisis. In the hardest periods, when there are huge economic squabbles, wars and political instability, radical organisations fill their ranks; in this case we are talking about ISIS.

“Religious leaders offer what you are looking for. Looking for friends? Here they are, and all so positive. God? Please! And so on. In the 1990s people were frayed and scattered, and Herbalife, for example, immediately offered to ‘pull them together’ and improve their health. During the 2008 crisis, Scientologists with their teaching of dianetics became especially active: they offered everyone to ‘find themselves’, ‘tested’ people’s health with various gadgets right on the street, invited them to psychology courses that would free them from any dependency. Then and now, all kinds of Indian-Latvian teachers operate successfully too (offering every kind of laughter therapy, group sessions for finding ‘the god within’ and so on), along with various dubious cults based on Christianity and everything else the world has to offer. And now the situation is made worse by the arrival here of followers of formidable currents of Islam.

Varya Karaulova’s example is a lesson for others

“Because of an unstable economic and cultural situation, it can be hard for a person to find support, to feel solid ground under their feet, for living a meaningful life and making the right decisions. Social uncertainty often leads people into religious cults. A destructive group, imitating the satisfaction of needs, uses the person for its own ends. It is important to remember here that anyone, at some period of their life, can lose their footing! Nobody is insured against unforeseen events. But it matters where we look for support in difficult situations and whom we allow to influence us. The first person who knocked on our door at the right moment and offered help? Or do we look for that support in something bigger and act thoughtfully, whatever happens?

“At first the poor soul does not suspect where they have ended up, and then suddenly their life starts to change sharply. The brightest example here is the story of the Russian woman Varya Karaulova. She was a perfectly well-off person, intelligent and educated; she was studying at a university. And of course she could easily have found any information about ISIS on the internet. She had seen all the horrors that ISIS followers commit. But for some reason she joined the organisation. Varya came under someone’s influence on a social network. But why? Of course, it is hard to say anything with a hundred per cent certainty yet… Still, we can confidently assume the following, by analogy with other cases of people joining cults.

“Why do people end up in cults, for example during an economic crisis? Many lose their jobs and their faith in the future, and then organisations of a certain kind offer a ‘bright tomorrow’. And now people are sinking ever deeper into the cult of consumption (which is scarier than any religious one!). They work for years and years, thinking only of their careers so they can buy more, and more, and much more, but… at some point they realise that they are completely empty (what am I living for? To buy a new car? To keep changing mobile phones and clothes in pursuit of fashion?). They start digging in their souls, and that is precisely when totalitarian organisations, and in our case Islamists, offer them a ‘divine helping hand’.

Swapping Christ for Allah

“As far as we know now, Varya was influenced through social networks. Unfortunately, for many parents and older people the internet is a closed zone. How can they warn their children? Alas, it is almost impossible. And then… Varya’s parents learned that she had become a ‘radical Islamist’ only when she had already left to fight in Syria. And if you think that only Varya was worked on like this, you are very much mistaken. I am convinced the same work is being done through social media with residents of Latvia. You don’t need a fortune-teller to tell you that!

“Suddenly a ‘new friend’ appears on a popular page on the network, in our case from ISIS, and says to a confused young person (an experienced psychologist can tell at a glance who is confused, and how badly): yes, your life is a mess, but there is a way out: join people who will understand you. Of course, nobody will tell the young person right away that they will be given a rifle and sent to fight. At first they are invited to open up a new world, to try something that was not there before, to find inner harmony, to understand themselves and discover the true god, in this case Allah.

“Recruiters, I repeat, are exceptionally good psychologists. They know that many young people are lost in the consumer world and do not really connect with the ‘traditional Christian’ God. Scandals involving church figures, corruption and sexual ones, follow one after another, which inevitably casts a shadow on religion and faith as such, because it concerns people, the clergy, through whom ‘God speaks’. A young person is not strong in theological questions and cannot always separate one thing from another (here is a priest mired in terrible sins, and here are faith and God), so they begin to doubt Christianity altogether. And this is where the Islamists offer their own.

“Incidentally, girls and boys are approached differently. Young men can be ‘seduced with feats of valour’, and girls, especially lonely ones, with the promise that in the Islamic world they will find what is dearest of all, a family, because there the families are normal ones, unlike in Christian Europe.

“One person is promised a family, another God, a third a job and a career; a fourth is dissatisfied with the situation in his own country, where the government does nothing for the people, and may try to look for something in the East, for example in Syria (and quite a few people are already doing so).

“What advice can I give? The main help that we, and the media, can provide is ‘prevention’: informing people so that they know what awaits them in a given organisation and what it really is. Friends, be extremely careful, keep a clear eye on every step. It is especially important now to listen to yourself and to gather information if you see something suspicious on a social network.”

Contact

If you have questions, call the Latvian Committee for Combating Totalitarian Sects on (+371) 26644195 or write to antisekt@inbox.lv.

Source: Vesti Segodnya (archived copy, in Russian)

Translated from the Russian original with the help of AI. Read the original (in Russian).