I Warned Britain About a Doomsday Cult. A Year Later, 500 Police Officers Raided It.
Behind the scenes of my year-long investigation into England's doomsday cult—from an assassination plot, spies, and smears to an HBO director's risky attempt to film them.
I’m Be Scofield, founder of The Guru Magazine and the journalist behind the hit HBO series on the Love Has Won cult. I’ve spent a decade reporting on spiritual power, abuse, and the machinery that protects it. My investigations have been cited by The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, People, VICE, Netflix, Dr. Phil, Dateline and more. I’m the author of the new book The Savior Complex: How Jesus Became the World’s Ultimate Influencer.
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On April 29, 2026, one of the largest cult raids in history unfolded in Crewe, England. At 9 a.m., more than 500 officers descended on the compound of the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light. A helicopter circled above as drones hovered overhead. Dozens of police vans rolled through the breached front gate. Chaos followed as members scrambled and cried out for Abdullah Hashem, the man they call “Father.”
Video captures the dramatic moment Hashem was arrested. He is surrounded by dozens of followers, almost all dressed in black. Then police move in and nearly 100 officers close around him. A struggle breaks out, and Hashem is pulled away from the crowd.
You can almost feel the panic of the devotees. These are people who have been conditioned to see Hashem as more than a man. He is God on earth and their divine guide. He is the one who will lead them through the end times. And suddenly, in front of them, he is stripped of control. He and six other leaders are arrested. Their messianic leader is outnumbered, grabbed, and dragged away while they can do nothing but scream.
Cheshire Police said they were investigating allegations of serious sexual offenses, modern slavery, and forced marriage. Hashem was later released on bail, but with conditions: he was not allowed back to the compound or even to Crewe. All at once, his kingdom was crumbling.
How did two American men end up running a doomsday cult out of a former orphanage in an obscure town in central England? And how did men who once made documentaries exposing cults end up building one of their own?
It’s April 17, 2025, and I’m in Mooresville, Indiana, twenty miles southwest of Indianapolis, trying to understand how this story began. As I walk past the downtown storefronts, Mooresville feels like a familiar slice of small-town Indiana: quaint shops, friendly greetings, churches, American flags, and farmland just beyond the edge of town.
I had spent the previous four months digging into one of the most significant and personal stories of my career: how a man who once had a passion for exposing cults through documentaries could end up running an international doomsday cult. As a prominent cult reporter, I found myself hooked.
Walking around town, I start looking for a newspaper to pitch, hoping to drum up coverage in Hashem's and McGowen’s hometown. To my dismay, the local paper had been bought by a corporate chain—an issue plaguing towns across the country. There was very little on-the-ground reporting left.
A business owner tells me that only one local paper remains: the Morgan County Correspondent in nearby Martinsville.
I make the 20-minute drive, hoping to find a real journalist to share this once-in-a-lifetime scoop with. When I walk into the office, it feels historic and charming, with aging hardwood floors and the unmistakable vibe of a place still trying to keep local journalism alive. A man in his early forties is standing there. Nearby is a young guy who looks fresh out of college. An older woman with white hair greets me.
“You guys want the craziest story you’ve ever heard?” I blurt out.
To make a long story short, I spend the next few hours breaking down the ins and outs of how two local guys, Abdullah Hashem and Joseph McGowen, ended up running an international doomsday cult. They were enthralled, to say the least.
I sent them my nearly completed expose of Hashem and his movement. Despite threats of a lawsuit, the young college grad Jared Quigg managed to publish an excellent story just a few weeks later called ”Homebrewed ‘Kool-Aid:’ From Exposing Cults to Leading One.” He even managed to speak with a former high school teacher and assistant principal of Hashem’s, providing some insight into his early days.
Hashem and McGowen started as filmmakers. Nearby was the Regal Cinema, where Hashem first debuted his short comedy film Apache Tears in 2003. One of the stars was a 22-year-old Abbi Crutchfield, who is now a well-known comedian and TV personality, appearing on Hulu and NBC, among others. She told a local reporter the film “has a lot of twists and turns...and deals with dark matters in a light way.”
Their documentary on the Raelian UFO cult, Little Claudy, premiered in November 2006 at Indiana University, where Hashem was attending. “The duo carried digital recorders and posed as hopeful inductees making a student film,” Wired magazine reported. “What they really wanted was to tape incriminating activities of a group they suspected was coercing people to join the organization to get their money.”
Infiltrating a cult? That’s right up my alley. I spent a month inside Bentinho Massaro’s cult in Sedona in November of 2017. Since then I’ve exposed dozens of cults around the world.
As I continue researching in Mooresville, I learn that in 2007 the local Indianapolis arts-and-entertainment paper Nuvo ran a piece on Hashem. The Raelians were suing him and his university over the documentary.
I’m delighted to discover that Nuvo is still operating—although it’s a shell of what it was in its heyday. I meet with two women who write for the paper at an eclectic bar in southwest Indianapolis. I explain the story in depth, and they are also blown away by the fact that a local kid grew up to run one of the largest doomsday cults in the world.
A few weeks later, Nuvo publishes a piece on Hashem and the movement. But it is short-lived. McGowen is incensed at the local coverage and sends them a threatening email saying they will sue. Not wanting the drama, the editor pulls the piece.
I published “Meet the Doomsday Cult Taking Over the World” on April 21st, a few weeks before Nuvo and the Morgan County Correspondent dropped theirs. I published from Hashem's and McGowen’s hometown—the cherry on top of the story.
The following day something extraordinary happened—just days after the pope died, Abdullah Hashem claimed he was the new pope. The rightful pope. In a remarkable video released on his YouTube channel directed at Christians, he proclaimed, “The earth swallowed the false pope.” Hashem continued, “He was killed by the breath of the mere believers chanting,” he stated, referring to his own Ahmadi followers in Rome who had been chanting his name in front of the Vatican.
Within just a few days, the Christian influencer world had exploded with podcasts racking up millions of views covering his proclamation. Many declared Hashem the Antichrist. It was yet another example of my stories being propelled further into the headlines by bizarre circumstances.
Within three days of publishing the piece, I had two offers from major production companies to option it for a docuseries. I chose a company with a stellar track record of shows on Netflix and major streamers.
But a few months prior to this, I had been working with an HBO director—we were trying to develop the project.
Then something crazy and unexpected happened.
Hashem stayed one step ahead of me—and it nearly got this director killed.
In December 2024, I had stumbled upon the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light through researching Massimo Introvigne—a sort of arch enemy of cult experts. He and other “cult apologists” have spent decades defending the worst cults in the name of religious freedom.
Introvigne’s support of the group made me suspicious. He had previously written an entire book and published numerous blog posts defending Gregorian Bivolaru, who was raided and arrested by hundreds of police in France. Bivolaru is now the subject of a riveting cult docuseries on Apple called Twisted Yoga.
If Introvigne was backing this group, I knew they could be trouble.
My suspicions only deepened during one of the panels at Introvigne’s annual CESNUR conference on religion. That’s where I heard an Ahmadi member say something deeply cultish.
“We believe you have to believe in him to attain salvation, but you also have to have obedience to him so we can create a utopian society for everyone on earth,” Caroline Hoeren, the group’s head of legal, said.
Whoa.
Whenever someone’s salvation depends on obedience to a charismatic figure, it’s a red flag. Creating a utopian society for everyone on earth? Major alarm bells.
I spent weeks following this seed. Sure enough, I uncovered a flood of cult-like statements, bizarre claims, and Hashem’s terrifying doomsday prophecies. I spent countless hours mining his videos for material.
One video I found showed a Muslim man named Syed debating an Ahmadi religion member on the group’s theology and claims. I reached out to him, and I learned he had been looking into the group for some time. He proved a crucial link as he connected me with ex-members.
I spent the next month deeply researching Hashem, interviewing people and digging into his previous life as an anti-cult documentary filmmaker.
By the end of January, I had pitched the story to an HBO filmmaker with a 13-minute sizzle reel I had developed. She was blown away but encouraged me to keep digging.
For the next six weeks we developed the story pitch deck and logged contacts, sources, and archival material. I uncovered the suspicious disappearance of a follower named Lisa Wiese. She had fallen out with Hashem and the group, but he told her before she left that she needed to do one more thing: travel to India and help open a new center. Hashem sent her with his right-hand henchman, Ali Muhammad. Five days later he returned from India. Wiese was never seen again.
The concern became more real when former members told me Hashem had asked them about killing people for him. I was even given a screenshot of a message conversation where Hashem told a follower, "Or you will kill her,” referring to a different woman in the group.
The HBO director had managed to make contact with Joseph McGowen early on. Over the weeks, she had befriended him, saying she was interested in learning more about the group. She posed as a neutral observer, wanting to explore the movement. He agreed to allow her to come and film them in Crewe.
In March she made the trek to Hashem’s illustrious cult compound in central England. But things didn’t go as planned.
After entering the gated community and walking into the compound, she and her film crew were asked to sit down. Hashem opened a laptop and hit play. It was an audio recording of me speaking to sources.
“There’s an HBO director exploring developing this story,” I say on the recording. “Would any of you be interested in participating?”
Hashem had a spy on one of my calls where I interviewed sources—probably the one with four people, including someone’s friend and a translator.
I can imagine the director’s terror: trapped inside the gated compound while discovering, in real time, that the cult knew she was colluding with me. Things could have become very dangerous quickly.
I learned all of this through a series of chaotic middle-of-the-night messages from her. She told me she had fled the compound, said the group was scary, and was flying back to the States. Filming Hashem and McGowen was essential for her to move forward with the project. When that fell apart, I published my story and moved forward.
Things would soon take another dramatic turn.
I hatched a plan to rival Hashem’s spy: I’d send a spy of my own into his cult.
A month after I published, I was contacted by a journalist named Maeve McClenaghan with The Guardian’s investigations unit. She was interested in the story and asked to connect with ex-members.
The production team I was working with was cautious, as newspapers often have their own documentary wings and often look for ways to steal story IP. But I went ahead and collaborated, providing my research and access to sources so as to shine as much light on this story as possible.
On July 1st, McClenaghan published her piece, “‘Dad, Imam, God’: Children Living with Self-Declared Pope in Former UK Orphanage.” It mostly rehashed my original reporting.
The next day a front-page story on Vice followed. I had also spent weeks assisting the reporter with my research and sources. On July 4th, The Telegraph published a story followed by The Daily Mail, which published a story soon after.
Getting a story that I broke covered by The Guardian, Vice, The Telegraph, and the Daily Mail was a huge victory for cult awareness.
Enter the burger.
Just a few weeks after the mainstream news coverage, the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light organized a now-infamous “Beanies and Burgers” event on their front lawn. They hired a food truck to pass out free burgers to locals and extend an olive branch—perhaps to counter the bad press.
Despite locals having mixed feelings about the group, one local left, feeling they were great. He made a post on Facebook praising the group. Members of the cult quickly seized on the opportunity, and hundreds liked and shared the post.
“Were you paid to go to the event and post positively about it?” I messaged him.
He explained he wasn’t, stating that he wanted to form his own opinion rather than rely on what was being said online. “It seems harmless enough,” he told me.
I spent the next few days convincing him the group wasn’t what he thought. I sent him my article, which he digested. “Absolutely bonkers,” he replied. He could see it was like another Waco-type cult.
At first I wanted him to delete his post so it wouldn’t encourage people to join. But then I had a better idea.
I said he should infiltrate the cult.
“I could never,” he said, claiming his wife wouldn’t allow it. “I couldn’t do a video pledging allegiance. How embarrasing.”
I told him that since the cult already liked him, he could put out some feelers to attend a meeting or two.
“And report back to you as a secret informant?” he asked.
I told him yes. He said he’d send a TikTok message to the co-leader Joseph McGowen, whom he had met at the Beanie and Burgers event.
“I feel like James Bond now. I’m excited for this little undercover mission,” he told me.
Over the coming months I worked with him closely, guiding and advising him as he eased into the group. He played the part well, making a genuine-looking pledge video and reading the group’s “holy” book, The Goal of the Wise. He offered a testimonial saying how the book has “profoundly impacted” his life and how grateful he was to be in the group. The Ahmadi religion shared his quote and photos of him with other believers on their social media.
Soon my spy was regularly hanging out with members and eating meals with the group in the compound. He described to me the internal landscape of the giant orphanage. He even sent me a photo of him with Abdullah Hashem and shared personal messages he exchanged with him. My source addressed him as “Father”—and Hashem would reply, saying, “I love you,” with some words of encouragement. “Don’t let anyone or anything bring you down. Dedicated your life to the cause.”
One morning I got a message from him where he alerted me to a secret event that would be coming up called the “Supremacy of God” conference. He sent me a photo of his golden ticket to the event. Only a highly select group would be allowed to attend—Ahmadi religion members, some local politicians, including the mayor of Crewe, and a few media organizations. But otherwise, it was top secret.
When I learned who the key speaker at the conference was, I was stunned. It was none other than the arch-enemy of cult experts, Massimo Introvigne.
If the Beanies and Burgers event was an attempt to counter the negative press coverage, the “Supremacy of God” conference was also an effort to improve their image and to attack their critics, with me as the main target. A major “new religious movement” was under heavy scrutiny, and the troops quickly assembled to defend it.
The event took place Aug. 20 and 21 behind closed doors at the University of Buckingham's Crewe campus. Among the participants were some of the most divisive and infamous cult apologists: Massimo Introvigne, Holly Folk, Gordon Melton, Susan Palmer, and Eileen Barker. Watchdog groups and cult survivors have long criticized them for downplaying abuses in groups like Scientology, Aum Shinrikyo, Jonestown, and the Children of God, the latter of which faced widespread allegations of child sexual abuse. These scholars deny the existence of cults and say there was no brainwashing in places like Jonestown.
This wasn’t their first collaboration with the Ahmadi religion. In March 2024, many of the same scholars led by Massimo Introvigne appeared inside the sect's gated compound to speak at their event. Videos depict Hashem leading them through the highly secure facility, their eyes wide with awe at their surroundings. Members of the cult also spoke at Introvigne’s yearly CESNUR conference.
These cult apologists have an absurd fascination with “new religious movements”—regardless of how destructive or dangerous they are. Introvigne and his fellow cult defenders push an extremist form of religious libertarianism.
Given how secluded the event was, I could only get small updates from my source, and he could only attend the last few hours after work. He informed me the conference featured talks on a range of subjects about the groups’ beliefs, their persecution, and media coverage.
Just before the conference, Introvigne published around six hit pieces against me, by himself, his wife and Susan Palmer. They attacked me as “delusional,” “ignorant,” and “bigoted.” The smear pieces claim I “experience psychotic episodes” and rely on extraterrestrials as my “primary sources” for reporting. They also say I “take credit” for violence against cults I’ve reported on and allege I’ve lied in my reporting.
These attacks extended into a presentation at the Supremacy of God conference by Introvigne’s wife—she attacked me and my reporting and another journalist who had been covering the cult.
Everything comes full circle, I suppose.
I had first stumbled upon the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light through Introvigne’s promotion of them—now his wife and his cronies were writing hit pieces against me and attacking me in public conferences.
I was dumbfounded by the whole ordeal. To see third-party academics, who are supposedly neutral scholars of religion, engaging in a coordinated smear campaign on behalf of a cult is unique and beyond bizarre.
On August 24th, I published a devastating response to these cult apologists doing the dirty work for Abdullah Hashem called “Meet the Shadowy Scholars Supporting England’s Doomsday Cult.” I revealed the extent of their support for dangerous cults in their past—it was an abysmal track record.
In the first four months this story I had stumbled upon had already experienced wild twists and turns—international media coverage, beanies and burgers, my spy infiltrating the group, the Supremacy of God conference, and a number of hit pieces from cult apologist scholars. Through it all, I kept researching the group and developed a more intricate understanding of them.
I had hoped that if the media and public still had any doubts about the grandiose claims Abdullah Hashem makes, my next piece would address them. I continued poring through video content, their written articles, and Hashem’s holy text, The Goal of the Wise.
On September 8th, I published “17 Shocking Beliefs of England’s Doomsday Cult.” It described a litany of bizarre claims by Hashem: he is the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, America is the Antichrist, democracy is evil, extraterrestrials control U.S. presidents, Donald Trump is the reincarnation of Nero, Vladimir Putin is Julius Caesar, and Pope Francis is the apostle Paul. He also claimed he is the only one on the planet that can interpret religious texts. His sacred text also describes bear-sized alien rabbits who rule a distant planet and speak English, heroin as a gateway to other worlds, magical animal cures, and a disturbing sexual theology around the Last Supper.
I had been working on a second article as well that I published a few days later. I had noticed there was only one “news” site that was covering Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light, and it was doing so favorably. I uncovered that the site called EU Reporter was essentially a pay-to-play outlet—in 2021, Politico exposed EU Reporter for running undisclosed paid campaigns on behalf of powerful companies. I also uncovered they were publishing identical articles from the Ahmadi cult’s blog but claiming they were written by EU Reporter to project independence.
So the cult paid a fake news website for favorable news coverage that the cult wrote, which the EU Reporter portrayed as independent and neutral reporting. Absolutely wild.
The bizarre revelations continued. I was soon onto another story about how the group had allegedly planted one of its own inside Crewe’s local government. According to former members, longtime follower Zafer Faqir had taken a job in the council’s planning enforcement department, giving the cult advance warning of inspections and a way to prepare the compound before authorities arrived. The former members also told me that Hashem had planned this move from the beginning.
The next story blew everything out of the water.
On September 22, I published “Inside an Assassination Plot of England’s Doomsday Cult.” A former member named Yasir told me a man in Dubai warned him that someone had been hired to attack or kill him. The hitman told me he had been offered escalating payments: one amount to slap Yasir, more to break his legs, and roughly $82,000 to kill him. He said he had been given photos of Yasir’s apartment building, car, license plate, and personal images that appeared to come from inside the group—all of which he forwarded to me.
Another source who used to live in the compound soon came forward to me and provided in-depth insights. I was able to map out the entire compound—publishing an image that detailed where everything was inside. The source described a tightly controlled world of surveillance cameras, confiscated phones, children’s dorms, unpaid labor, and a basilica where Hashem preached beneath portraits and statues. Even more disturbing were the allegations of so-called “poison tests” of loyalty, sexual abuse, and a system designed to break followers psychologically and keep them obedient.
By December, the story had become even more urgent. I published “‘Ready to Die’: England’s Doomsday Cult Prepares for the End” after finding internal talks where senior members openly praised obedience, sacrifice, and dying for the cause. Followers were told to prepare for “moments of sacrifice,” to give their lives for God, and to see the group as the only ark of salvation before a coming “flood of blood.” It was no longer just weird theology or online prophecy. The rhetoric had turned darker, more militant, and more dangerous.
Between April 21 and December 11, 2025, I published eight stories on Abdullah Hashem’s doomsday cult. I began in his hometown, worked with local media outlets, and helped journalists internationally bring the story to a much larger audience. Each investigation uncovered another layer: grandiose messianic claims, alleged abuse, alleged infiltration of local government, paid propaganda, threats, surveillance, and increasingly violent end-times rhetoric. In return, I was harassed, smeared, and accused of lying. Then, a year after I first published, more than 500 police officers breached the gates.
On May 20, 2026, Connor Naismith, the Labour MP for Crewe and Nantwich, stood during Prime Minister’s Questions and told Keir Starmer that his community had been left in “deep shock and concern” following allegations of serious sexual offenses, forced marriage, and modern slavery against members of the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light. He asked the prime minister to join him in thanking Cheshire Constabulary, Cheshire East Council, and other agencies for their response. These were the same kinds of allegations I had first reported in April 2025.
It was a remarkable moment, especially given how hard the group had worked to present itself as a persecuted minority religion and a misunderstood part of Crewe’s civic life. Local officials had attended its events, anti-racist activists had stood beside its members, and academics had defended it in the language of religious freedom. Hashem’s movement had learned one of the oldest tricks of public legitimacy: stand near respectable people and let the association do the work.
Then, just as I was writing this piece, The Guardian published a major story on Lisa Wiese—the missing German member whose disappearance and suspected murder I had first reported on months earlier. Wiese vanished in Kerala, India, in March 2019, after traveling there with Hashem’s right-hand henchman on his instructions. Seven years later, her family still has no answers. Her ex-husband now hopes the raid in Crewe will force authorities to look harder at what happened to her.
By late May, the story had reached the floor of Parliament. The former orphanage had been raided, Hashem was barred from returning to Crewe, and the allegations former members had been trying to tell the world about could no longer be dismissed. After a year of warnings, threats, smear campaigns, and denials, Britain was finally being forced to look behind the gates.
As always, great piece. What I did not know is that Hashem has been barred from returning to Crewe. This is significant.
Amazing work, Be...once again!! 🥰🙏🏻