Ugandan police have arrested 12 leaders of a doomsday cult that believes floods swamping large parts of the north and east of the country herald the end of the world, state media said Sunday.
“We sent our investigation team who found cult members praying and claiming they are prophets sent by God with 18 commandments to preach the end of the world,” a police commander in Gulu town, Johnson Kilama, told the Sunday Vision newspaper.
Gulu was the epicenter of a two-decade civil war between government troops and notorious Lord’s Resistance Army rebels who claimed divine inspiration for their massacres and the abduction of thousands of children as soldiers and sex slaves.
But for most Ugandans, word of doomsday cults brings bitter memories of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments, which burnt hundreds of members alive in a church in Kanungu, near the Congolese border, in March 2000.
I find it perfectly reasonable that the coppers charged the cult leaders with being “idle and disorderly”.
So, it’s illegal to pray and claim you are a prophet in Uganda? I bet it’s the death penalty for building a church, then. Yikes.
Didn’t click the link and read the article, eh?
Was Janet Reno involved?
Either the government is run by idiots, or there is more to the story. Most churches started out as “dooms day cults”, only a few go on to massacre the faithful when the end of the world does not happen.
Killing them off cuts into the money, power, booze/drugs, and women/boys the leader is after.
“believes floods swamping large parts of the north and east of the country herald the end of the world,”
Sounds like the global warming crowd.
The terrorists have won.
Most religions are doomsday cults.
Didn’t read the article, but 18 Commandments? That’s eight more than the ten I can’t remember now.
Gosh-darnit! That offering of $86,000 Ugandan dollars I made to them will now go to waste!
I want a start and Idle and Disorderly cult, for people who would be into doomsday, and the end of the world, and mad amounts of power and wealth and dugs and sex, but are too lazy to do anything about it so they just pay lip service.
What do you reckon a date for the end of the world? I reckon the year 2100 has to be a good one (kinda puts me in the clear if my prediction is wrong)…
Oh ya, and for the record, the Ugandan currency is the Shilling:
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
1 US Dollar = 1,749.68 Uganda Shilling
1 Uganda Shilling (UGS) = 0.0005715 US Dollar (USD)
Median price = 1,701.92 / 1,749.68 (bid/ask)
Minimum price = 1,685.00 / 1,726.00
Maximum price = 1,710.00 / 1,761.00
FXConverter – Currency Converter for 164 Currencies164 Currency Converter © 1997-2007 by OANDA.com.
Bloody Fonejacker obvious didn’t do his research….
7, Most /started/ as doomsday (aka “millenarian”) cults. That includes early Marxism, with it’s early preaching that the workers would rise and strike down the Oppressors.
(But, “idle and disorderly”? Would “energetic and disorderly” be acceptable?)