Editing Cultism (section)

=== Aum Shinrikyo ===
'''Aum Shinrikyo''' (オウム真理教, ''Oumu Shinrikyō'', literally 'religion of Aum Supreme Truth'), is a Japanese new religious movement and doomsday cult founded by Shoko Asahara in 1987. It carried out the deadly Tokyo subway sarin attack in 1995 and was found to have been responsible for the Matsumoto sarin attack the previous year.


Aum Shinrikyo is a syncretic belief system that draws upon Asahara's idiosyncratic interpretations of elements of early Indian Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism, as well as Hinduism, taking Shiva as the main image of worship; it also incorporates Christian millennialist ideas, the theory and practice of yoga, and the writings of Nostradamus. Its founder, Shoko Asahara (born Chizuo Matsumoto), claimed that he sought to restore "original Buddhism" but employed Christian millennialist rhetoric. In 1992, Asahara published a foundational book, declaring himself to be "Christ",Japan's only fully enlightened master, as well as identifying himself as the "Lamb of God".


Asahara's purported mission was to take upon himself the sins of the world, and he claimed he could transfer spiritual power to his followers and ultimately take away their sins and bad deeds.While some scholars reject Aum Shinrikyo's claims of Buddhist characteristics and affiliations with Japanese Buddhism, other scholars refer to it as an offshoot of Japanese Buddhism, and this was how the movement generally defined and saw itself.


Their teachings claimed a nuclear apocalypse was predicted to occur soon, as the result of a conspiracy involving Jewish financiers, Freemasons, and war profiteers. The United States would lead a Western nuclear attack on Japan in 2000 or 2006, and WWIII would start. It would be fought with particle beam weapons. According to Robert Jay Lifton, an American psychiatrist and author:


Asahara described a final conflict culminating in a nuclear 'Armageddon', borrowing the term from the Book of Revelation 16:16"


Humanity would end, except for the elite few who joined Aum. Aum's mission was not only to spread the word of salvation, but also to survive these End Times. Asahara predicted the gathering at Armageddon would happen in 1997. Kaplan notes that in his lectures, Shoko Asahara referred to the United States as "The Beast" from the Book of Revelation, predicting it would eventually attack Japan. Asahara outlined a doomsday prophecy, which included a Third World War instigated by the U.S.


Arthur Goldwag, author of a book on conspiracies and secret societies, characterizes Asahara as someone who was influenced by conspiratorial writings about Jews, Freemasons and the British royal family.


In the opinion of Daniel A. Metraux, Aum Shinrikyo justified its violence through its own unique interpretation of Buddhist ideas and doctrines, such as the Buddhist concepts of Mappō and Shōbō. Aum claimed that by bringing about the end of the world, they would restore Shōbō. Furthermore, Lifton believes, Asahara "interpreted the Tibetan Buddhist concept of phowa in order to claim that by killing someone contrary to the group's aims, they were preventing them from accumulating bad karma and thus saving them".