Guess what they have in common…  

Internet "terrorists," according to Introvigne, "demonize" or "dehumanize", publish "false statements", launch "conspiracy theories" and draw up "hit lists" of individuals, though he does kindly add that this is not necessarily finalised to homicide. Now it is interesting to see exactly which "terrorists" Introvigne has picked out for his study, among the many hundreds of cult-critic sites on the Web: 

• Garry A. Greenwood, who wrote a book about Mahikari. No apparent connection to Introvigne or CESNUR, critical or otherwise. 

• Franz Schaefer's Unofficial Opus Dei Page. Since Introvigne has boasted in an article he wrote for Cristianità of having had an Opus Dei critic physically expelled from a CESNUR conference simply because Opus Dei is not a "new religion", one might wonder why Schaefer is mentioned at all. Could it just be that Schaeffer hosted our CESNUR Critical Page on his website? 

• Tilman Hausherr, a well-known Scientology critic, who however has also written an amusing FAQ on cult apologists, which mentions Introvigne among others. 

• Roger Gonnet, a French Scientology critic, author of "La Secte - Secte Armée Pour la Guerre. Scientologie - Dianétique, Chronique d'une "religion" commerciale à irresponsabilité illimitée" (Editiones ALBAN, 1998), who has often criticised Introvigne and who has published extracts from our CESNUR Critical Page.

• The Italian Allarme Scientology website, hardly "terroristic" since it merely provides documents on Scientology, with very few comments. But it happens to have been the first website to host our CESNUR Critical Page. 

• Watch Unto Prayer, an Evangelical website which has nothing to do with "cults", but picked up and published some extracts from the CESNUR Critical Page. 

• Kelebek, our site on East-West relations which now hosts the CESNUR Critical Page. 

• The Islamic site Ummah Net, which mirrored the CESNUR Critical Page. 

• Xs4all, website of the extraordinary Dutch libertarian Karin Spaink, who mirrored the CESNUR Critical Page. 

Yes, that's right, you guessed what eight out of the nine sites have in common. 

Introvigne tells us very little about each site, merely listing whatever seems unpleasant about each. 

Greenwood is accused of distortion, gross exaggeration, racism and character assassination. 

Schaefer, we are told, aims at "demonizing" Opus Dei and uses "inflammatory" speech. 

We are simply advised that there is "controversy" about Scientology, but Tilman gets a page-sized paragraph for his "demonizing" of Mr Miscavige's business empire. When Introvigne wants to say something really nasty, he always has a third party say it: the fact that Tilman makes information on the US transnational corporation available to the German public "mirrors the rhetoric used by National Socialists to attack Jews", Introvigne has somebody else say. 

Introvigne then moves on to Watch Unto Prayer. This site has nothing to do with any of the others, and is of course totally unknown to cult critics. The owners of this site once collected and published a good deal of primary material on the network of American right-wing politicians who pushed through the infamous "Religious Freedom Act", a project which also marginally involved CESNUR. This site once quoted us (Introvigne's typically multiplies this one-time mention of one CESNUR-critic, saying that Watch Unto Prayer is "frequently quoted in European controversies […] non-Christian anti-cultists such as Miguel Martinez have co-operated with it and expressed support"). 

I have no interest whatsoever in Watch Unto Prayer's theology, and have clearly written so. Introvigne however devotes a very long paragraph to analysing precisely this theology. His paper explains a lot of curious things about the Archangel Michael, the Stuart family and the Priory of Sion, whatever that may have to do with "terrorism." 

e-mail