A Shah Alam woman started a cult believing WW3 will start in Sabah. 3000 people joined.

You’re just lying in bed one night, scrolling past pictures of adorable cats and memes on Facebook, and suddenly, you see this makcik on your feed recruiting an army for World War 3 in Sabah. You chuckle thinking it must be a joke by some nutjob trying too hard to make the headlines of Majalah Hiburan… until you find out she has like 3,000 followers.

That’s right, a Kelantanese lady, Sitta Annur, went viral on social media in early 2021 promoting her cult – “Perjalanan Mimpi Yang Terakhir” (PMYT) – that revolved around the idea of Sabah being ground zero of the next World War 3… which seems like a really odd location for a global conflict to break out. Why was she so sure of that, anyway? Well…

Sitta Annur claimed to have “direct contact with Allah”

So, Masitah Ab Jalar a.k.a. Sitta Annur who was staying in Shah Alam (we’re not sure where she lives now) had a dream of wandering the Padang Mahsyar. It’s basically a place where everyone goes after the apocalypse to be judged according to Islamic belief, and that’s where Sittah claimed that Allah showed her visions of the end times and how people would suffer in the afterlife.

She said in her videos that she believed her dreams to be a premonition of the next World War that would begin in Sabah, and urged people watching her videos to get their hands on whatever firearms they could. That’s not all. She called upon her audience to participate in a real life game of “Where’s Waldo?” where they were supposed to go on a search for Imam Mahdi – a figure in Islam who is said to appear at the end of times to rid the world of evil and injustice – so that he could lead them in the upcoming battle.

Before you pooh-pooh the whole dream thing, it’s a legit concept in Islam – according to researchers from the King Saud University, the Qur’an describes the Prophet Abraham receiving instructions from God in a dream to sacrifice his son. Ibn Khaldun, a renowned Muslim scholar (whom you might remember reading about in your Sejarah textbook), considered dream interpretation as a science. On the other hand, it is also believed that Satan can try to enter one’s dreams to try to deceive the person. Wherever you stand on the subject, we can probably all agree that Sitta Annur took it a little too far when she interpreted her dream as a literal call to arms.

That said, what she did was kind of amazing considering that…

She spread her teachings entirely online

The self-proclaimed “Chosen One” (no relation to Harry Potter) managed to amass about 3,000 followers – that’s right – just by using various social media platforms like Facebook, Youtube and 22 Telegram groups. Sittah Annur’s followers never got to meet her in person. You’d think that the people who subscribe to Sittah’s bizzare ideas come from uneducated backgrounds, but that couldn’t be further from the truth: professionals like doctors, engineers and educators had a sip of her Kool-Aid and liked the taste of it.

We couldn’t find any trace of PMYT’s posts or videos anywhere online… except on YouTube. There’s over 20 hours’ worth of PMYT content on the the S’ttah An Nur PMYT channel that also features assortment of other weird videos with a sprinkling of Zionist conspiracy theories.

For a cult leader who’s operated entirely online, she’s received a mindblowing RM84,721.42 in donations from her followers which was discovered when…

PDRM raided her house in Shah Alam

Following six police reports across five police stations, the cops busted down her door in September last year, confiscating five smartphones, a bank card, receipts for a bank transactions amounting to RM84,721.42 and a white telekung believed to have been used in one of Sittah Annur’s Facebook Live streams. Upon arrest, she denied having started any cult or group that went against the teachings of Islam, rejecting accusations of her teachings threatening the safety of the country. She was released after four days of remand.

Later that month, the now ex-cult leader did a 180° when she announced her repentance (Istitabah) at the Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz Shah Mosque:

I have repented and will practice Islam according to verified sources. I am now asking for anyone who had heard about and believed what I said about my dream to stop doing so immediately and come back to true Islam.

No criminal charges were levied against her, but the Director of Jabatan Agama Islam Selangor (JAIS), Mohd Shahzihan Ahmad, said that the agency would keep an eye on Sittah Annur, and if she went back to her old ways, she could be charged under sections 7 and 8(b) Enakmen Jenayah Syariah (Selangor) 1995 for spreading false doctrine and claiming that she had knowledge that was “outside of human understanding”.

The question remains: why did so many choose to believe in Sittah Annur and her dream bah?

Cults prey on people’s vulnerabilities

It’s normal for human beings to have feelings of fear and anxiety, of uncertainty arising from changes in societal events, of not fitting in with their peers. Cults have been known to take advantage of these vulnerabilities – it’s not hard to see yourself being in a group of like-minded individuals led by a charismatic figure offering answers to all your problems. Dr. Steven Hassan, a member of the Program in Psychiatry and the Law at Harvard Medical School, had this to say about how cults do their recruiting:

If in a vulnerable state, you may fall for one of the many recruitment strategies. Some take place in person, where you may meet someone at work, through a friend or from a community. Or you may find yourself recruited online from social media posts, websites, YouTube videos, discussion forums, dating apps, movies or video games.

Remember the doctors, engineers, and teachers we mentioned earlier who were pulled into the madness of PMYT? Cults can give people a shared sense of purpose and sense of belonging that appeals to us on a very human level; whether we’re a doctor, a data scientist or a penjual nasi lemak by the roadside. Professionals and intellectuals aren’t immune to the allure of cults for one simple reason: they’re human with weaknesses that you and I share.

While we might laugh at the seemingly ridiculous notion of people believing in World War 3 kicking off in Sabah, it’s also a good time to think about if what we believe in will bring harm to ourselves and others or not. So yeah, just be critical of what you’re hearing and seeing on social media, cuz even the smartest people can fall under the influence of cults.