What It's Like To...

What it's like to Be in a Muslim Cult

February 23, 2022 Elizabeth Pearson Garr Season 2 Episode 16
What It's Like To...
What it's like to Be in a Muslim Cult
Show Notes Transcript

When Yousuf Azhar first joined a religious Sufi community in Chicago, he felt more connected to his faith and to Allah. He made close friends, and followed the guidance of his ​​shaykh and mentors. Azhar and his family stayed in the community for thirteen years, and lived under the guidance of leaders until Azhar became suspicious that something was amiss.

In this week’s episode, Yousuf shares what it’s like to be in a cult – and what it’s like to leave one.

Yousuf tells us about the ways that cults pull people in, and how they trap their followers with manipulation, fear, and dehumanization. Now that he’s on the other side, he shares the importance of knowing the red flags of these groups, and how to avoid getting sucked into them. He also tells us what it’s like to gain personal and spiritual independence after thirteen years of reliance on others to make his decisions. Yousuf’s story is one of immense resilience, and is a testament to the strength of personal spirituality and self determination. 


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[Music]


YOUSUF AZHAR: I had so much outsourced all my decision making that once I left, I literally felt like a child, because I was so scared. You know, I’m a full grown man in my forties, and I was literally terrified to make any important decision on my own because I didn’t know how to do it. I just didn’t. I didn’t know how to do it at all.


ELIZABETH PEARSON GARR: Yousuf Azhar’s thirteen years with a Sufi religious group turned from a fulfilling spiritual and cultural experience to something far darker. I’m Elizabeth Pearson Garr, and on this episode of The Experience Podcast, Yousuf shares what it was like to be in a cult and what it was like to leave it. 


[Music fades out]


PEARSON GARR: Hi Yousuf, thanks for being here on my podcast. I appreciate you joining me.


YOUSUF AZHAR: Oh, Elizabeth, thank you so much for having me.


PEARSON GARR: I'm grateful to you for being here, because I'm sure this was sort of a painful period in your life. And so for you to even consider revisiting it with us I appreciate you doing.


AZHAR: I appreciate you saying that. And you're right, it was a very painful part of my life. But I like to talk about this with people, mainly because I feel like I don't want anybody else to go through what we went through because it was very traumatic for me and my family. And I feel like, you know, if people don't speak out about these types of things, then it would probably just repeat itself. 


PEARSON GARR: I think you're brave to go out and speak about it. So let's go back a little bit and talk a little about how you got into this group initially and what about it appealed to you?


AZHAR: So the way it started was I'm Muslim, I come from a Muslim background. And my family is kind of religious, they don't come from like a super duper religious background or anything, but they were kind of practicing. And when I turned 15, I decided to be religious myself, I read a translation of the Quran, and it really resonated with me. And so through the years, I came to the conclusion that I need to be part of some larger community. And I got into like political Islam. And I stayed with that for about 10 years. But what I realized was, at a certain point, it's just not fulfilling for me at all, like it was just all about negativity in the news, and just … Not that we should ignore it, but it was just kind of wearing away at me. And I was looking for something more spiritual and I knew that there's another a whole stream within the Muslim community that's much more spiritual. And so I started tapping into that, and I liked it. I was like, wow, this is great. I feel so much better. And, you know, they're telling me I don't actually have to worry about all the problems in the world. And I can kind of worry about myself and, and that really resonated with me because I needed that at that time, because I was feeling like, feeling very empty. 


And so some of my friends, they introduced me to this Sufi shaykh, so the idea of Sufi Muslims is that they're more, like I said, on the spiritual side of things, they focus more on your relationship with God, or in Arabic, we say Allah. So I heard about this particular Sufi shaykh from Pakistan and I started kind of studying him and he had lectures online and I started listening to those and I really liked him. And he has still a representative in Chicago, in Arabic, it's called Khalifa. I ended up meeting both of them and they just blew me away, especially the one from Pakistan. Like he was very, very charismatic, much older. But oh my god, he knew how to just really reach into people's hearts. So the first time I met him was at somebody's house, he came to speak, he was visiting from Pakistan. And I mean, probably 30 men there, but the whole room was just bawling. Like, like, babies, including me. He was just so intense. He was describing the Day of Judgment, and you know, there's all these very intense scenes. And I was just like, what just happened here? You know, like, this is amazing. I've never experienced anything like this. I just loved it. And the more I got to know the group, and the more I spent time with them, I just was like, ‘yeah, this is what I need,’ it's making me feel really good. And I feel like I'm improving my relationship with Allah, with God. They taught me meditation techniques that helped me focus. If I came to them with problems with my wife, let's say, at work or almost anything, they would give me advice, and it was pretty good advice, I followed it and they would help me. And so I was just like, wow, this is the best thing that's ever happened to me. So I just fell in love with it.


PEARSON GARR: It was really interesting, you said you were really hurting and kind of feeling empty at the time. And I've read about and seen some documentaries about various cults from different religions. And that seems like such a common theme that you're searching, you're needing something. And of course, that's just like a human condition, right? We all have hard times, we're all hurting and yearning at times, and I wonder if that's something they kind of look for, and then in a very slow, methodical way, almost try to kind of draw you in because they can't sort of pounce and be too aggressive. Because that would scare people off?

 

AZHAR: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's exactly the case. So I kind of gave you all the build up to it, but I forgot to mention one of the most important factors was in addition to that feeling of emptiness and yearning, as you said, and I think you're exactly right, that this is a human thing, everybody goes through that. What happened in my case was, my wife and I, we already had two kids, they were both really young. Our third child died at about 19 days old. He had what's called Trisomy 13. As you can imagine, I mean, that was really–


PEARSON GARR: Absolutely heartbreaking. 


AZHAR: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so that happened, right when I had just started meeting them and getting involved. And so that was just perfect timing. Because, they did help me with that. And they helped me cope with it. And that's what really pushed me over the edge. And I was like, wow, I mean, they've been helping me with little things. And then now they even helped me get through the death of my baby, like, who could do that?


PEARSON GARR: Yeah.


AZHAR: I think you're right, people do have a lot of times they're vulnerable for one reason or another. And then, bam, they show up, and you know, save the day. And you're just kind of loyal to them.


PEARSON GARR: So you joined up, and you were a part of this group, and did it really change your life, for the positive, for a period of time?

 

AZHAR:  It absolutely did. Yeah. You know, for the first time my wife and I just stopped having any arguments at all, like dead stop. The Khalifa I was working with based out of Chicago, he's a year older than I am, when the baby passed away, he's the one I went to. And for everything else, like I keep bringing up marital issues up until that point, you know, my wife and I, we had arguments and disagreements which I imagine, you know, many couples do. But in this case, anything that came up, we would go to him, and he would just listen to us and like, I'm talking about minutes, he would just listen to both sides. It was very quick. And he would just say, Okay, do blah, blah, blah, and we would just do it. Now, 90% of the time he would side with my wife. 


PEARSON GARR: Oh is that right? I was wondering, maybe it was almost sort of a male dominated culture. 


AZHAR:  No, no, no, no, but I'll tell you why though, it's a very interesting reason. What happens is that it's a lot of breaking people down. So this was just one of many ways that he broke me down. So there's a constant sense of like, oh, you're a sinner, oh, you've done this wrong you're you're like this, you're like that, and it's all negativity and we internalize that. Now in the beginning, it's great. You're just like, oh, perfect, he’s solving our problems for me, you know, I'm not arguing with my wife anymore. But over time it wears on you, right? Like, I am nothing, I'm actually nothing like, really I am a worthless human being, you know, they will, they will compare us to dung, they'll just be like, you know, dung is better than you because dung, you can use to grow plants and stuff but you guys are useless, and you guys are so terrible. They would say, you know, ‘I can't even believe your wives stay married to you guys’ and that kind of stuff. So it's constant berating.


PEARSON GARR: And then the only way you can feel better or get better is to ‘listen to us’.


AZHAR: Yeah, absolutely, not only to  listen to them, but your whole life becomes revolved around what will make the shaykh happy, but when the idea in Islam is like you're submitting to God, I mean, that's the whole point of oneness of God, I mean that's the whole essence of the faith. Yet now, here comes the shaykh, and everything in practical life in that relationship, your obsession becomes the shaykh, and what will make him happy or unhappy. The assumption is that by doing that, you know, you're going to progress and improve your life.


PEARSON GARR: Other than your work was your whole life pretty much wrapped up with this group? I mean, your social life, and obviously your religious life, and everything you did, culturally – was it pretty much this cult?


AZHAR: It sure was. What ended up happening was after I met him and formally became a student, I had been asking my wife like, ‘hey, let's move to Chicago, he's helped us so much.’ And she was kind of resisting. But then once the baby passed away– she told me later on, what happened was that she was just so devastated by the baby passing away, she didn't care about anything anyway. She was like, ‘whatever, I don’t care. Go to Chicago, anywhere.’


PEARSON GARR: Yeah. Like, I'll take help wherever I can get it. I mean, that would be a really common reaction.


AZHAR: Right. Exactly. So once we moved to Chicago, we stayed there for 11 years. And our whole life definitely just revolved around this group. Like you said, that's a good way to put it: other than work everything outside… But even at work, I was getting guidance from him, career planning and stuff like that. So it permeated, like from which car should I buy? What kind of haircut should I get? What kind of shoes should I get? Like, it was everything for me.


PEARSON GARR: So you turned over a lot of decision making to this shaykh?


AZHAR: That is exactly right. And that was one of the biggest difficulties I had when I ended up leaving. Because what I had not realized through that time, was that I had so much outsourced all my decision making to him, that once I left, I literally felt like a child, because I was so scared. You know, I'm a full grown man, you know, in my forties, and I was literally terrified to make any important decision on my own. Because I didn't know how to do it. I just didn't know how to do it at all.


PEARSON GARR: Well, also, emotionally, he had reduced you to that by telling you exactly your worth nothing. You're not equal to your wife and all of this. So it's no wonder.


AZHAR: That's exactly right. Yeah, that's exactly what it was. I was so used to, like, any decision that I have to make, I would, I would go to him, tell him the situation. And usually a lot of times through email, or very once in a while through phone call or something like that, he would tell us what to do and we would do it. And that's how our family functioned for about 13 years. It's just sort of like a muscle like you don't use it for 13 years, like what's going to happen, right? And so when I left and I started speaking about it, and people contacted me who are in the group still, one of the worries was, how are we going to make decisions if we leave him? It would be like, ‘I get it, something's wrong here, but we go to him for all our decisions, so what are we going to do if we leave him?’ I mean, that's the level of dependency.

 

PEARSON GARR: It's kind of like evil genius, how they structure this and I'm not just saying the people that you were with, but I think it's again, a common theme in cults of this, you know, break you down and then become dependent on us. And so you don't have anywhere else to turn.


AZHAR:  Yeah, 100% That is exactly right. That's exactly what our situation was,


PEARSON GARR: What is it that transpired to make you want to leave? Because it sounds like there were a lot of things that were a little demoralizing or dehumanizing. And then what happened that clicked and you thought, ‘I'm out?’


AZHAR:  Yeah. So let me answer that in two parts. The reason I stayed in spite of all the demoralizing stuff and the negative stuff was that there was a sense that we're doing this for your own good. And I just bought into that wholesale. I was like, yeah, I trust you, you've helped me with certain things, and, you know, you're religious. And they have this concept called Misbah, which means connection. And even they say, oh, it's hard to define this term, but it's this thing that we have. And so the idea is that the shaykh, and whoever they've decided, fits this description is connected to Allah. So the Misbah is connected to Allah, to God. So now what that does is that means that there's this assumption that whatever the shaykh is doing is based on that connection to God, and so it's special, like for example, if I just go to a random doctor, and the doctor gives me some advice, that's just that doctor using his or her experience and knowledge. But if I went to the shaykh, they're not only using their knowledge and experience, they actually have a special relationship with God. So it's something different, it's something sort of holy, almost. So all the demoralizing and all the negativity, and all these things, you know, when you look back, it's so obvious that they were to you don't do all these mind control things, right. But at the time, it feels like- it feels right.


PEARSON GARR: Hindsight is 2020. But when you're in it, it's different.


AZHAR: Exactly, exactly. So that's how we went along. And like I said, I had completely bought into this and it had been 13 years at this point. I remember vividly, it was 2016. It was around the time that all the Trump stuff was going on, too. For me, personally, I found that time period very stressful. So that was going on in the background. And then, I’ll just tell you the story of how it happened– my wife and I had just had our 20th wedding anniversary so I took her to New York for a weekend, came back, and so I was just kind of on this high, I was like,’ wow, this is such a great weekend, we had so much fun in New York,’ and on Monday, I'm at work and my wife calls me and she's like, ‘Hey, I just heard that the Khalifa, the representative, left the main shaykh, the main shaykh.’ And I'm like, what, that doesn't make sense. Like, it just in my mind is like, that's not even possible. Like how could that, even… unimaginable, you know? And she said, ‘No, I know, it sounds weird, but I got a call from the student of a different representative, but also a representative of the same shaykh,’ who said hey, you know, since our, you know, two representatives, have both left the main shaykh, who is the new shaykh that your representative is now following? That's getting a little confusing.


PEARSON GARR: No, I’ve got it.  it's like the guy at the top as they've left him. And so now they're saying, who else should we follow? That's kind of huge news, because you've been following someone who's been following the guy at the top for so long.


AZHAR:  Exactly. Exactly. Right. So we're just super confused. So as with any issue, we would go to the shaykh. So I called him. And then I said, ‘Hey, this is what I heard.’ And he was like, really annoyed. He was just like, how did you hear this? How– why are people talking about this stuff? But then he finally said, Yeah, that's true. I did leave him and there's some stuff that he did. And don't dig into it, don't try to find out about it, don’t ask questions.


PEARSON GARR: Ooh–Cover up


AZHAR: Yeah, exactly. Don't ask anything. And he said, it's one of those things, if you find out about it, it's a kind of thing that could make you lose your faith. And now I'm really confused, like what in the world, like my whole world’s being turned upside down here. And he said, ‘look, just hang tight, I'm going to announce some options.’ And that was it. We were done with the call. And now I'm, like, totally confused, like, what is going on? What could he have possibly done that’s so bad? This is the guy who changed my life, who I believe has a connection with Allah and you know, who's like, the gift to me from Allah? Because, you know, he's helping me get connected to Allah and all that stuff. 


So I did hang tight, I, you know, because as a good student, I was trying to listen to my teacher. So he had like, a weekly gathering that he would give a talk at at the mosque, and then he would also in those days, did a once-a-month talk at a different mosque. And like I said, we were just totally devoted, like our whole life revolved around these guys, so we went to everything, and at every single gathering I was there and I couldn't even focus on what he was talking about. I was just like, when’s he going to talk about this? When’s he going to address it? And months passed by, he didn't say a word, nothing.


PEARSON GARR: It's the elephant in the room and he's not even addressing it.


AZHAR: Exactly, exactly. And I'm just like, what is going on? And I finally couldn't handle any more. I was just like, I just can't take it like my mind's going nuts, just just filling in, you know, the gaps, obviously, there's a vacuum, so we're just like, what could it be? And I didn't know– it was so much anxiety, not knowing what's causing all this. Finally, I did start asking, I did start digging. And I talked to some friends who I was really close to. And what they told me was that there was accusations against the main shaykh, of having inappropriate interaction with his female students, like physically touching them in inappropriate ways and stuff like that. And, you know, this is not, I mean, in any situation, that would be horrific, but for us, it was even more, it was more of a contrast, because these guys are like, they're hyper strict about segregation, even. Forget touching and anything, forget even the clothing and women covering up, they won’t let you sit in the same room, not even close to each other. Like it's just really, really extreme male-female segregation. And then to hear something like this with his married– so these women are married, and they're married to his own students. 


PEARSON GARR: Oh, my gosh.


AZHAR: So, it's so shocking.


PEARSON GARR: Yeah. And such an abuse of power.


AZHAR: Exactly. And he would, and he would tell him things like, you know, if I kiss you, you know, you're going to get closer to Allah. And if I touch you here, I touch you there, that kind of stuff. You know, you just want to vomit when you hear these kinds of things, and I couldn't believe it. So anyway, that's what led to me getting out of it.


PEARSON GARR: Can you describe your feelings and the emotions that you had to work through when you heard that and then how that led to your decision to change your life?


AZHAR: This was harder to deal with than my baby passing away, let me put it that way. So as hard as it is, you know, you lose a baby, you know, it's sad, but it's sort of the idea that at end of the day you're like, this is this part of life and this happens and it is extremely sad, but you can deal with it, you can cope with it. But dealing with like, there's this guy I thought... who for 13 years I was just madly in love with and just devoted to, to find out that he's a fraud, I mean, that shook me up so badly. I was depressed for about a year, I was very, very depressed. I would go to bed every night, just wishing I was dead, I was just like, I cannot even handle. 


PEARSON GARR: Oh, Yousuf.


AZHAR: Yeah, I was just like, I can't handle it, it's too painful to even think about. It really hurt. And you know, my wife was in the same boat. I mean, she was probably not as much as me because she didn't interact with the representative the way I did, although she did interact a lot with his wife, which is a whole separate subject, the whole dynamic of the shaykh or the representatives’ wives, abusing the women. When I say abused, I mean, like, all the stuff that they do to the guys like breaking them down, and, using them and manipulating them, there's like a parallel effort going on through the wife of the shaykh, or the representative. So she was going through her own thing. And you know we compared notes, we had our circle of friends that we trusted all within the group, and we're all you know, comparing notes with each other. And some friends had more access to information than other ones. So I learned that like, this guy is terrible, like, it wasn't even just a sexual stuff. It was also financial fraud, it's so devastating to think about that– my whole world has been turned upside down, I didn't know what really to do. 


So what I eventually did do, was I thought, okay, I don't know what's right and wrong anymore, so I'm going to just start with zero. And I don't even know what I believe because, you know, being a Muslim, if this is Islam, what these guys are teaching, you know, they were all the clothes of, you know, being religious people and all that stuff, if that's Islam, I don't want to be Muslim. That's really not what I'm interested in at all. And so I thought, okay, I'm just gonna kind of go back and start from zero. So I thought, Okay, do I even believe in this? Do I believe that there is a God? Do I believe that, you know, the Quran and the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him? And I decided, yeah, I do. Like, it does make sense to me, and I feel like there's, you know, it resonates, and it does add up. So I thought, Okay, I'm gonna stay Muslim. But I'm 100% against this shaykh-student thing, Sufi thing, that's going on here, because I realized that the model gives too much power to the shaykh over the student, so if the shaykh for any reason becomes corrupt, he could just ruin so many lives, because all these students think that they have to blindly obey the shaykh and it's disrespectful if they question anything, and I mean, that's just come to the culture of the group and all these groups. And on the flip side, you know, the student is putting themselves at risk by doing this, and they're going against the basic principle of Islam anyway, which is that you're submitting to God, you're not submitting to a person.


PEARSON GARR: They've intentionally inserted themselves as these layers in between, so you will become submissive or subservient to them, and then they claim they have the connection to God. Whereas you can just have that connection to God, on your own.

 

AZHAR: That is exactly right. They actually do it in a very clever way. They would say, look, as the spiritual people, our goal is this whole idea of annihilation of yourself, but in annihilating yourself, you're actually going to a higher state because now you've connected to Allah, or something along those lines. 


PEARSON GARR: I'm again, having these echoes of other religious cults that I've learned about. I'm no expert, but just the little bit that I've learned– to use religion in that way, to manipulate people with religion, is so cruel. Because your spiritual life is such a personal, important part to many people, and then to to use that as an extra element of power, and manipulation and then sort of, of torture just seems… I mean it’s smart, but it’s cruel.


AZHAR: Yeah, no, I agree with you, 100%. And that's part of what hurt me so much, was that these people, this is what from one extreme of like, I think you're the best thing since sliced bread, to all of a sudden now you're really evil people, because you exactly what you said: you're not only dishonest, you're not only sinning and all this stuff – you're deliberately manipulating the religion, the very thing that people came to you to enhance in their life, you're using that to control them for your own benefit. And what do you even get out of it? Maybe finally you get some money, you get some power, you get some control over people and stuff. But, I ended up talking to a couple experts on this cult, actually, after I left and after I found my way back to California. When I described both these people– I mean the shaykh and the khalifa for the representative in Chicago– both of them independently said the exact same thing, which was that they're malignant narcissists. 


PEARSON GARR: Malignant. Oh. 


AZHAR: Malignant narcissists. When I described the way they, you know, control people, and they get basically get slave labor out of them… that description seems to be very accurate.


PEARSON GARR: What has become of them? Is the group still running, and were there any repercussions for the for the shaykh with the sexual misconduct and financial misconduct? Did anything happen?


AZHAR: Kind of, you know. So the sad thing is that I think that the general trend that I've– from the limited knowledge I have– is that when these groups get exposed, the people who know about it, some portion of them leave, but they just keep going, they just find new people to bamboozle and they keep going. So I think that's the case here. With the main shaykh in Pakistan, what I've heard was like, roughly half of his students just left him. But that means still, you know, that a huge number of people stayed with him. And those people just defended him blindly. They were just like,no, this is all a conspiracy, it’s not possible, he could never have done these things. They just like, reject anything. 


PEARSON GARR: Why do you think people stay? After all, there's a lot of evidence and this is not again, just from your experience. I watched a documentary on Nexium which was sort of a kind of religious-ish cult and it was the same thing some people left and they were trying to tell the others in there, look what's going on, this guy is abusing people, it's mind control and all that, and others just kept defending him, this leader. I find that so fascinating. What is it? Is it almost like people have been brainwashed, or you’ve believed something for so long, you can't imagine that that can't be true?


AZHAR: I think so yeah, I have thought about this a lot. So I'll give you a few examples. In my own circle of very close friends in Chicago, I told a lot of them, I was like, hey, here's what happened, here's what I found out. And I thought they're gonna be like, oh my God, that's terrible. I'm out of here. 


PEARSON GARR: Yeah. 


AZHAR: But that was actually not the normal response. By far, the majority of people were like, you know what, I get it, but you know, he's helping me out, I'm just gonna stay with him. And I was just blown away, like, what are you talking about? Why would he stay with somebody that you know is doing these things that are wrong, you know? Until I thought about, like, why would they do that? I think there's a few reasons I could think of. One is that some of them actually do have a lot to lose by leaving because they've already gotten rank from him. They have their own students, they have the title of shaykh themselves. So they're giving up all that. I mean, they're basically saying, this whole construct that gives me legitimacy and gives me this sort of power,  I'm telling you that this is all BS, and I'm just a regular person. So they would have to be demoted.


PEARSON GARR: Ah, they're so far in that it would sort of ruin their… It's a house of cards. And they're living in it. 


AZHAR: Yeah. Exactly. That's exactly right. And now and to be fair, there were other people who were very honest. The other thing I noticed was that, I think for a lot of people, it was just too painful to accept this new reality. Like, for example, let's say there's somebody who's having trouble with their kids, having other stress in their life. And then on top of that Yousuf comes along and I say, ‘hey, guess what? Your shaykh is also a scoundrel, and he's a fraud.’ They came to the shaykh because they have stress in their life in the first place. And they're, they're looking for some peace, and that becomes a source of stress. One of my closest friends who was in the group, we joined at the same time and everything, and I and I kept him abreast of everything, almost in real time, as I was learning it. I later found out he wasn't really listening to anything. And in fact, he told me to my face, ‘it's your fault that you went through everything you went through, because you should not have dug. ‘When you heard that there was a problem, you should have just said I don't want to hear about it.’ It’s just shut off from that, cut off all that information. 


PEARSON GARR: Wow, almost, if you put your head in the sand, then nothing is happening. Like if I can't see it, it must not be happening.

 

AZHAR: Exactly, exactly. And that really, really shocked me and hurt me. Because I just couldn't believe …because I know his background. He doesn't come from that kind of background to be that way. But I didn't know that he was in it in that way, that he could not even process this right. Like if he didn't trust me, who was he going to trust? But he just put all his faith into these guys. 


PEARSON GARR: It's hard probably because you've it shakes your entire foundation of everything you think that you believe. Now you're having to reevaluate all of it. 


AZHAR: Exactly.  


PEARSON GARR: I can imagine how difficult it is to step out of it. Like you said, that was your whole life, it was your social life, and you said, it upended your spiritual confidence, you had to kind of start from zero again. I mean, that had to be so challenging. You did it, but what was that process like? You even moved across the country…

    

AZHAR: So I had internally sort of decided that, like, I've done with this Sufi shaykh-student business, and my wife knew and my close friends knew. But I did not have the guts to tell the representative in Chicago. Now, it was really sensitive, because we were renting our house from him. We lived around the corner from him. Yeah, I mean, this is how embedded I was in this thing. Our children were his children's friends. Our social circle 100% was just his students. So it was, we were just so – I don't even know how to describe it – we were completely embedded into this group there in Chicago. 


So anyway, so my wife was very, we were both very upset. But for her it wasn't as emotional as it was for me. So she emailed him, she said, ‘look, we have a lot of questions, we don't know what's going on here, we're hearing all this stuff.’ So he said, ‘okay, let's have a conference call with [us] three’ meaning Yousuf and my wife and him. So we jump on this conference call. And honestly, I'm still hoping that somehow he can explain everything and everything will be okay. But he doesn't. In fact, he makes it worse. 


It was a bunch of excuses, it didn’t make sense, and that just confirmed for me that he was that something is wrong, that I absolutely should leave these guys. So at the end of the call, I said, ‘look, I love you like my father, and you've done a lot for me, but I can't do this anymore. And I'm not part of this anymore.’ And it was really hard for me to even say that. And so he said, ‘Okay, I'm okay with that.’ And, you know, he was clearly like, you gotta do what you got to do something along those lines. I was like, whew, that was relief. And then the next day, he contacts me and he wants to talk and so we talked privately for about over an hour. But by now, even by the very next day, I was so relieved and so checked out. Like he didn't matter what he told me anymore because I because he knew that I was out. So he gave me all these explanations about… he kept telling me to you know, keep the conversation private. So I'll try to honor that but the gist of it was that he was not saying anything to me that was convincing at all.  


PEARSON GARR: Not to simplify it too much. But it it kind of sounds like an abusive relationship where one person has been controlling and abusing whether it's emotionally or physically abusive, and then the other person, you know, real finally realizes it, or if says, you know, I'm leaving, and then the abusers like, well, actually, no, and tries to talk you back into staying in the relationship, but the other one, you've already checked out, 


AZHAR: Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's a great metaphor. And I’ll tell you something really funny. I'm sort of fast forwarding a little bit. But at one point, after this happened, we had another meeting, me and my wife and, and the representative from Chicago.. So in that meeting, he himself said something really funny, which is that he basically used the metaphor of a divorce. And he said, like, you know, once a person is divorced, can they ever love again, he said, something like that. So he himself used what I think was a good metaphor. It was like that, it was like a divorce. And I was like, I'm done with this relationship.


PEARSON GARR: And then how did, how did your kids take it?


AZHAR: Yeah, they're probably the biggest victims of all this. They took it really, really hard. Because once all this stuff cleared up, that it became crystal clear what was going on, I decided we have to get out of here because we're so embedded in this cult and I just got to get my family out somehow, but I didn't have any way to do it. Luckily, this job opportunity came up in the Bay Area. And then they offered me a contract role, but they're like, you got to start immediately. And so my poor kids, they knew some of what was going on, but they you know, they're younger, and they don't really even care about these things a whole lot. But they do care about is their friends, and they of course care about leaving Chicago, because to them that's home. Out of the blue I'm like, ‘guess what, our family's moving back to California because I got a job there.’ And they're like, ‘What?’ And you know, they were in total shock. They were furious. Very, very upset. They're leaving what they felt was their home, they grew up there. They're leaving all their friends which they're really really close to. And so that was the hardest part. 


So one of the other things that happened was that this representative in Chicago, he tried to put a lot of doubts in my mind about leaving. He didn't want me to leave – he would say, like, ‘oh the company you're going to is evil’ or ‘how are your kids going to take this’ or ‘if you have child in high school, you cannot move in the middle of the year.’ And I could kind of see through all of it. The one thing that really got to me though, was he said, ‘well, what about your oldest daughter? You know, what about in her situation? How is she going to react to all this?’ And the way he worded it was so clever. It puts so much doubt in my mind. And I started thinking, What is he? I don't even know what he's talking about? Is there something about her that I don't know? Is she in communication with him secretly, I don't know about it, does my wife know something? Like you just start all these doubts in my mind. And then, and then, unfortunately, I start thinking, Oh, my God, she's gonna commit suicide. She's gonna go, maybe he knows something that I don't know. Yeah, that's it. But then I was just like, but I have to do this. Like, I don't know. Because part of me was like, He's just BS’ing. And he just tried to trick me. But part of me was like, but what if he's right? What if there is something 


PEARSON GARR: Oh, that’s so terrifying.


AZHAR:  Oh, my God, it was so horrible. And so I actually had an anxiety attack because of that. 


PEARSON GARR: I’m so sorry.


AZHAR: I had a lot of stomach issues for about three days. Yeah, it was bad, it was really, really bad. And my kids, you know, they're settled now, we've been here four years now. And the good thing is my wife has a ton of family in the Bay Area. And so they're very good, kind, loving people. So you know, they just took us right in and supported us. And we lived actually with them for a bit because we didn't have a house right away. So that helped a lot in healing. But it was very tough on the kids.


PEARSON GARR: So how's your oldest daughter doing now? Is she settled in? 


AZHAR: She's much better. Initially, she was very upset with me – she didn't know any better. She just thought like, she just believed everything. We'd have been telling them all this time that these people are so wonderful, and then all of a sudden they’re not.


PEARSON GARR: Of course, she’s your kid.


AZHAR: Yeah, exactly. And so but no, she's much older now. She's 19. And she started doing her own research. She finally also came to the conclusion that yeah, that absolutely was a cult. And, she actually exposed something in which I didn't even know. Which was that, on the women's side, I didn't realize that his wife was doing similar stuff to the women, including the younger kids like my daughter. And what I didn't realize was that my daughter lived in constant fear. She was always scared that whatever she did, it wouldn't be approved by that Khalifa’s  wife, and she just had that constant, you know, stress. And I was like, Oh, my God, I had no idea that you were going through any of that. So that really hurt a lot to find that out. 


PEARSON GARR: But also affirmed your decision to get out.


AZHAR: Exactly. 


PEARSON GARR: You know, I mentioned before how brave you are to speak out about this. You've spoken out on Facebook as well. But the flip side to that is… have you gotten any threats or reaction from people either still in the cult or just members of the community? It seems like a scary thing to do.


AZHAR: That's a really good question. I have actually not gotten any threats directly at all. However, what did happen was multiple people told me that the shaykh in Pakistan– he's comfortable using black magic. He himself personally do black magic on people, but he has students who will listen to him. And if he has an “enemy”, he'll have them do black magic stuff on people. And I was like, you know what? First of all, if everybody's scared of this, then who's going to speak out against and expose their corruption? So I'm not going to stop. That was my first thing. Second thing is I just talked to some scholars, they said, it's not a big deal. There's specific prayers you can do and that protects you from this kind of stuff. So I just did that, and then I didn't worry about it. So that was about it. 


PEARSON GARR: The funny thing about his threat with the black magic is, it's so desperate, because it's like, if you're not putting your faith in him anymore, why would you believe that he could have any power over you, with the black magic or anything else? 


AZHAR: No, that's exactly right. And I think that is what it is, it's all part of this whole overall, false sense of power and influence.


PEARSON GARR: Are there any practices that you learned while you were with them that actually are still helpful in your life today?


AZHAR: Yeah, there are. So that's a really good topic actually, is just the whole idea of like, if you learn something good from somebody who's messed up, you know, should you still benefit from it? And the position I took was, yes, I should. Because I believe, like, if you learn something useful or beneficial from anybody, why not just use it? So a lot of things were useful, like one of the biggest things was their meditation. It always helped me and it was one of the things that attracted me to the group, and I still try to do it. It helped me focus better, it helped me be more creative, actually. Because the idea is like, you just get some quiet time, and you just kind of focus on your heart and focus on thinking about Allah. And that's also very relaxing. So I tried to maintain that. They actually did have really good advice on how to treat your wife well, how to raise your kids a certain way. Not everything, but a lot of things were good. So I tried to maintain those types of things. And you know, the spending 13 years with them, it took me a long time to get out of a mindset of – because what used to happen was, especially when I first left, and I was very became very conscious of this, every little thing that would happen would remind me of some kind of saying or guidance or teaching from them. And it was really annoying, because I couldn't do anything without remembering them.


PEARSON GARR: It's no wonder though, because that was your life for so long.


AZHAR: You're right. And so I had to consciously kind of like retrain myself and say, like, okay, this thing I accepted, fine. It's good. Or this thing, no, I don't believe in that anymore, 'm done with that, I'm not doing that anymore. And so now it's not like that. But in the beginning, it was really tough, like everything would remind me of those guys.


I'm sure it was really challenging, not just physically moving your family and adjusting to a new job, but just emotionally and spiritually readjusting.


AZHAR: I got this contract job opportunity in California. And then I told you know, as I mentioned, I told my kids, they took it really hard. But we did it. We moved everything, all our stuff to California. I started the job, that was its own stress, because it was like, I'm coming from one industry (healthcare, IT industry) which is very, very different, into like Silicon Valley Tech, which is a totally different pace. So I had that stress, and then also I had dealing with my kids transitioning and getting them into the right schools, getting them settled in, and it was a really really tough period. For about a year solid, I would say, it was really difficult. 


PEARSON GARR: And then your own emotions. You had mentioned that you also felt depressed, and it was hard for you. So it's hard to be a dad, and an employee and all of that on top of taking care of yourself.


AZHAR: Yeah, no, that's exactly right. With all that going on. And I'm still sort of, at that point, [I] was still getting over this whole, like separation and stuff, but it was transitioning to, okay, I've accepted that these guys are messed up, I'm thankfully out of that scenario, so the healing could start, which was great. 


But then it started turning into like, man, these guys are terrible, they're ruining so many people's lives, and I need to do something about that. You know, they didn't know what to do then anyway. But that's kind of what it transitioned to was like kind of that worry of just like God, they’re hurting so many people and I know about it, and I feel like I need to do something about it, which I later found out was the there's a term for it's called the “savior complex,” where the person who leaves the cult feels like they have to save everybody else. So then, later on, I learned I was like, okay, I can't save the world, I can't do everything. So I have to kind of just accept that, you know, I can help whoever I can actually access. But things are really good now. Just the idea of waking up and understanding how things actually are, is a great feeling. And so I'm really grateful that I got pulled out of this group that I was duped by for so long. 


PEARSON GARR: I'm so glad and you have such a great perspective because you do realize there are some things that you learned that you can still incorporate into your life now. And things aren't just black and white, like the people there aren't all bad, who are still following and I think you have a really generous perspective on the whole thing.


AZHAR: Thank you. Thank you. That's very kind of you to say. Yeah. I think that is a really important point is to not make it black and white, because that's not real life. People aren't black and white either. You know, there's good and bad and everybody and, and I think it takes some maturity and some effort to figure out what is good and what's bad, but I think it's important to do that.


PEARSON GARR: What are some tips or warning signs you'd give to somebody who might encounter something like this?


AZHAR: The number one thing is what one of my friends told me when I was in the middle of figuring out what to do. So at that point, I was still in Chicago, I had just learned about all this stuff. In my mind I was like, I need to leave these guys. But I was surrounded by just other cult members. And so I was just feeling like, God, there's nobody I can talk to just who was from outside who I can just get a straight answer from. By coincidence, one of my friends, an old old friend from college– really nice guy, also religious and everything– but I trusted him and have a lot of respect for him. He happened to be visiting Chicago, I think, for work. So I said, ‘hey, can we meet at this one mosque? I want to talk to you about something,’ and he was really nice. We sat and talked. And he told me a lot of good things. But the thing that stood out the most, and that really helped me a lot… he said, ‘look, the one thing you have to do is you have to always retain your intellectual independence.’ So that phrase, “intellectual independence,” that was sort of like what clicked, I was like, that's what I was missing. That's what I've been doing. I outsourced my intellect to these guys. And that was my mistake. So that's the number one tip I would share with everyone: always retain your intellectual independence. 


When you notice that there's a charismatic leader, whether it's religious or not, I think it's just across the board. If you notice somebody like that, you have to trust other people. Like you can't go to medical school every time you want to, you know, get some medical treatment or something like that. You have to trust the doctor, you have to trust your plumber. That's okay. But by doing that, you're not saying hey, you do all my thinking for me. You're just sort of saying like, okay, I need this work done, or I need this, whatever it done. I'm just trusting you. 


PEARSON GARR: Advice from an expert is one thing.


AZHAR: You're getting advice. Exactly. So when you see that the person is trying to actually control you, that's the red flag, run from that. And in the case of the Sufi group, and I imagine a lot of religious groups are like that, they're pretty open about it. They're pretty, like, ‘hey, you can't disrespect the shaykh.’ That part is sort of understandable, but by disrespect, they mean, like, don't look at him in the eyes, don't ever have even a doubt about him. If you see him doing something wrong, then assume that your eyes are lying to you, and that he's not doing anything wrong. I mean, that's the kind of stuff they would say,


PEARSON GARR: Wow. And that's yeah, that's huge for the end result of what happened, you know, don't trust your own eyes, therefore, we can get away with whatever we want to get away with.


AZHAR: Exactly. So I think those are all things to look for. Another thing I noticed was that they love to compare themselves to the main holy figure of that religion. So for example, I know Christian cults, the leader will kind of think of himself as Jesus or kind of try that connection. In our case, it was the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. And I found that really, really not only offensive. And so I think, if you find that in any group where there's sort of like putting the leader at the level of the, whoever the main figure is of that religion, that's probably like a bad sign.


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PEARSON GARR: Well, I really appreciate you sharing all this with me, Yousuf, because it's really fascinating, and heartbreaking, and it's interesting, and there's so many emotions that have gone on, and then it's enlightening, and I'm happy that you're in a good place now. So thank you so much.


AZHAR: Thank you, thank you so much for doing this. Yeah. It was really nice to talk to you about it. And as tough as it is, and it is tough, like I mean, you were experiencing some of those emotions as we're talking, but I think hopefully there's a greater good where, like, I really hope that other people will see that like you can't just blindly trust anybody who comes along with a smile and you know, promising salvation. 


Thank you so much. 


AZHAR: You're welcome. 


PEARSON GARR: I’m deeply grateful to Yousuf for sharing such a personal and painful journey. As he mentioned, his hope is that by doing so he’ll save others from going down a similar path. Here are some of my takeaways from our conversation:

  1. It’s okay to rely on others for advice, but always retain your intellectual independence.
  2. When you get deceived, it hurts. It can be depressing. But you can move on and move forward.
  3. Situations aren’t completely black and white. People aren’t all good or all bad. It’s up to us to figure out the layers of gray. 
  4. If you learn something good or useful from people who are messed up, you can still incorporate it into your life.
  5. When you know better, you can make better decisions for yourself, but you can’t save everybody.


A heartfelt thank you to Yousuf Azhar for sharing his experiences with me. 


Please visit our website, theexperiencepodcast.net, to listen to all of our past episodes, find out how to follow us on social media, and sign up for our newsletter. And if you’re enjoying this podcast, please rate and review it, and subscribe! And tell a friend.


I’m Elizabeth Pearson Garr. Thanks for joining The Experience!


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