In England, Parents Are Moving Their Children Into a Doomsday Cult—With a Man Calling Himself ‘the New Pope’

According to Islamic legend, a messianic figure known as the Mahdi will appear before Judgement Day to vanquish injustice and tyranny, and usher in an era of peace across the world before the apocalypse. Abdullah Hashem, a beanie-wearing American-Egyptian running what can only be described as a quasi-Islamic doomsday cult based out of a former orphanage in the north of England, claims to be that Mahdi, and for good measure “the new Pope.” If you want to join him, you’ll have to cash in your home and give him all your money.

“We are looking for people who are willing to sell their homes and to come and be amongst the community and to follow me, [and to] not waver or want to leave once they’ve come,” Hashem says in one piece of in-house propaganda from earlier this year, wearing his black beanie so low it casts a dark shadow over his eyes. More bluntly, he compares himself to Jesus and says he wants people that will “love” him and be willing to “sacrifice it all to establish a divine, just state.” 

His organization is called the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light, or AROPL for short. It’s a doomsday cult for the social media age, with members likely running into thousands worldwide. The organization is flooding the internet with an avalanche of slickly produced yet chilling content from a ramshackle broadcast studio based out of its Grade II-listed red brick mansion in Crewe, Cheshire, 35 miles from Manchester. “Accepting this covenant is the only thing that will save you from the punishment that is about to come down on mankind,” Hashem said late last year. “COVID was merely the beginning of that punishment and a precursor. More plagues and diseases will be unearthed and unleashed upon you.”

“He is to me the most important person in the world right now.”

“I was told I was the reincarnated Zeus,” a former member who left AROPL last year told VICE. “When I visited them in Sweden, there was a miracle of thunder.”

Over the span of a decade, he sent Hashem all the money he could to support the cause, opening additional businesses and even taking out a bank loan for more than $200,000. “I needed to trust in whatever he was doing,” the ex-devotee recalls. 

Then he joined the group in Crewe, a small town in the north of England best known for a football team that’s been embroiled in a child sexual abuse scandal. “He’s asking for absolute submission,” he says. “I was tricked and scammed, and threatened when I was leaving.”

Those who uproot their lives to join AROPL in-person speak openly about the need for “submission” to succeed within the organization, and unmarried women sometimes find future husbands waiting within its membership, according to video testimonials. At least a dozen children are reportedly being homeschooled at the HQ in Crewe.

Male members, including the group’s security guards, wear dark beanies covering their entire foreheads, almost obscuring their vision, copying Hashem’s dubious style choices (his look has been branded a “2015 Zara starterpack” by online jesters). Footage also shows large groups of men eerily punching their fists into the air during his sermons, which he delivers in a room known as the “basilica” on an elevated podium in front of apocalyptic artwork.

One bizarre 2022 video—posted to the organization’s YouTube channel, which currently has 33,000 subscribers—is titled “Purifying the Camp” and tells the tale of a devotee who had a miscarriage after her husband, the prospective father, was unfaithful. “For me, this was a miracle,” the woman says.

With multiple YouTube channels, content in seven languages, and dozens of social media accounts, the organization’s reach and influence is growing even as it continues to operate at the extreme fringes of society. Recent video footage shows a small group of apparent members unveiling a banner in Vatican City, declaring Hashem as a prophet chosen by God. They were swiftly apprehended by police. (VICE first became aware of AROPL through a source who got chatting to a couple of members at an ayahuasca ceremony in the U.S.)

The group ticks every box to qualify it as a cult, says cult expert and independent journalist Be Scofield. A leader who claims to be a prophet, living with followers who’ve sold their homes to join the cause? Check. Numerous testimonials of miracles, such as resurrections and the curing of diseases? Check. Claims that the world is ending—that aliens are secretly controlling U.S. presidents—as well as more nefarious claims associated with the secretive organization and its leader, who is widely adored by his acolytes? Check, check, check.

AROPL says it is a “peaceful and progressive religion” that supports gender equality and universal human rights, highlighting that its members have been persecuted in some Muslim-majority countries that consider their beliefs heretical.

“Meeting the man of God in the flesh,” one female follower told the in-house media team, “it’s something I can’t describe, but it was the most beautiful experience of my life, I’ll never forget it.” She added: “He is to me the most important person in the world right now.” 

“There’s no other way to support God other than to come and support you,” a female devotee tells Hashem in one clip from May 2024 after he assures them he has descended from the Prophet Muhammad and urges them to “carry their cross on their back like me.” 

Followers unable to join the group in Crewe typically post social media videos “pledging allegiance to ‘the Mahdi,’” saying: “Upon this I shall live. Upon this I shall die. And upon this I shall be resurrected again.” The clips are promptly posted to the group’s TikTok account, which has 88,700 followers and operates out of its Crewe-based media HQ, which apparently also supplies content to two satellite TV channels, one broadcasting to the Middle East and the other to Africa. “We’re making sure that people out there who have access to the internet can hear the message from [Hashem],” another devotee says in a behind-the-scenes video. “We are having a very strong and steady response from our viewers.”

There are questions over local business interests that AROPL may be pursuing in the UK after allegations of dubious practices in other countries where the cult has settled. Registered in the U.S., it reported assets of $4.5 million in 2023. 

“His claims also include a theory that a species of giant rabbits who wear clothes and speak are in control of a faraway planet.”

Hashem and his right-hand man Joseph McGowan have been on a truly remarkable journey. They were once filmmakers who themselves gained media attention for exposing an alleged alien-worshiping sex cult back in 2006. What happened between then and now is unclear, but it seems they drank some foul-tasting Kool-Aid, got lost in a bit of a YouTube tailspin, then developed dual cases of extreme Main Character Energy.

Hashem, who has 53,000 followers on Instagram, originally founded the group in Egypt but following the Arab Spring they moved to Sweden in 2017, where they were raided by authorities and judged to be a cult. This drove them on into the UK: the last bastion of religious freedom. AROPL draw followers from across Europe, the Americas, and the wider Middle East, where local sects have formed, following the same gnostic, heretical ideology under the authority of “bishops” appointed by Hashem. 

“He sees a black cat, he says this is a jinn [a supernatural Islamic genie spirit],” another former follower wrote on a blog after leaving the group. “He sees a cloud of smoke, he says this is a jinn or angels… If we see a satellite moving at night in the sky he says it is a star that he moved himself.”

Despite the farfetched claims, which also include a theory that a species of giant rabbits who wear clothes and speak are in control of a faraway planet, the group has been subject to some fringe scholarship that has lent it a degree of legitimacy. “Hashem … is part of the esoteric tradition of Islam believing in reincarnation (including of humans into animals and even rocks and stones) and karma, and also in the possible transmigration of souls either before or after death from one body to another,” reads one paper co-authored by academics from Italy and Poland. 

“The matter of whether Hashem is the antichrist or not is one some Christian YouTubers are already debating.”

“Today, believers in the UK … form a community that is a germ and an announcement of the Divine Just State. As the first Christians and the first Muslims did, the believers share all their properties in common under the stewardship of the [leader], keeping only what is needed for subsistence as private property, and follow his directions.”

But when members require anything more than what is needed to literally survive, they might be left disappointed. “They preach goodness but spiritual manipulation is very common,” alleges another former devotee. “He would ask the believers to donate everything but when we needed a small financial help they denied. They have no mercy for their soul family.”

The group is very much open to new members, however. On June 13, two senior members fronted a video full of references to satanic and demonic forces and urged Palestinians to leave the Holy Land and join Hashem. “All they need to do in order to make God happy with them and reach salvation,” a follower who calls herself Alexandra Al-Mahdi said, “is to accept the Mahdi and be guided by him.”

It’s unclear if there is enough space to house many more members than the 100 or so already living and working for free in the former orphanage in Crewe, but the matter of whether Hashem is the antichrist or not is one some Christian YouTubers are already debating. One recent video, which has gained more than 750,000 views, warns that it could all be a CIA psyop.

“Either he’s a delusional cult leader, he is the antichrist, or he is who he claims to be and he’s telling the truth,” guest “Kwaku” told the Ward Radio Show on June 6. “He’s saying he’s the chosen one of Islam right now, a lot of the Protestants and Christians on YouTube are freaking out and are saying this is the antichrist. And he’s leaning into the meme. Like, holding the podium with the camera angle up with the red background, all in black.”

There have been more menacing online critiques, including some which have appeared to threaten the use of violence against Hashem and his acolytes. In materials provided by the organization’s lawyers, figures appear to have attempted to break into the Crewe compound over the past two years. In March, Amnesty International condemned the arrest of four AROPL members in Egypt, who now face dubious charges of  “joining a group established in violation of the law and constitution.” Members have also been persecuted in Algeria for “denigrating Islam”; in Iraq, where devotees have suffered “repeated imprisonment and government raids, gunned militia attacks on their homes, and prominent religious leaders calling for them to be killed”; and in Turkey, where they have been labeled heretics and infidels.

However, in the eyes of his followers, Hashem is the Mahdi, the last divinely guided savior before the end of days. To critics and ex-members, he’s a manipulative cult leader preying on the vulnerable with a potent mix of spiritual absolutism, esoteric fantasy, and social media savvy. Whether he’s a prophet, a conman, or something even more dangerous, one thing is for sure: In a world rife with uncertainty, online disinformation, and longing for meaning, Hashem is getting at least enough power and attention to boost his ego and his coffers—and the consequences, both spiritual and material, are all too real for those who may fall under his spell. 

As far as Hashem is concerned, he’s convinced that he is awakening the masses. “You can tell when somebody is overtaken by one of these species because their eyes [will be off],”  he said in a video last year. “This is one of the easiest ways that somebody can identify if somebody is possessed or is inhabited by an extra terrestrial mind or consciousness, or if the person is a shapeshifter.”

In a statement, the organization told VICE: “The Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light is a peaceful and progressive religion based on Shia Islam but which believes in equality between men and women and supports human rights for all. It is transparent and open and treats its members fairly, as thousands can attest. It is opposed by fundamentalist movements and Islamic governments and is recognized as a persecuted religion by European and U.S. governments, the UN, and Amnesty International. It operates entirely lawfully and for the benefit of its members and its mission. Any suggestion of unlawful behavior is categorically untrue and the AROPL is not aware of any such investigations or complaints.”

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