In public, they ran a successful global business. In private, police allege they abused hundreds of children

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (CNN) — Millions dined in their restaurants worldwide, getting a taste of Malaysia supplied by a sprawling conglomerate that claimed to embrace Islamic values by caring for thousands of disadvantaged children they said were orphans in homes across the country.

But the leaders of Global Ikhwan Services and Business Holdings (GISBH) are now fighting allegations they ran a cult-like organization that forced followers to work and have many children, some allegedly conceived through rape, to populate orphanages and raise donations that funded their lavish lifestyles.

When Malaysian police raided two dozen homes run by the company in mid-September, they rescued over 600 children and have since detained hundreds of people, charging some with crimes including child trafficking, sexual abuse and organized crime. GISBH lawyer Rosli Kamaruddin says the group’s leaders plan to fight the charges.

In a monthslong investigation CNN spoke to more than a dozen people including former members, their lawyers, and religious scholars to understand how for decades Global Ikhwan, and the alleged abuse they perpetrated, remained Malaysia’s best-kept secret.

Former followers told CNN they had no contact with the outside world or access to cellphones and received their only news via an in-house television channel that promoted the teachings of Al Arqam, an Islamic cult that was banned by the Malaysian government in the mid-90s for “deviant” beliefs that strayed far from orthodox teachings.

This is the story of the cult’s apparent revival – complete with its own prison islands and “holy water” infused with the leaders’ hair and bathwater that former members say was sprayed on goods produced in their factories and on meals served to diners at their restaurants.

CNN has reached out to GISBH for comment on the allegations within this story but is yet to receive a response.

A nation in shock

Royal Malaysia Police launched a series of raids in September on dozens of care homes operated by GISBH, and over several weeks rescued hundreds of children they say were the offspring of company employees.

In one press briefing, Police Inspector General Razarudin Husain told reporters children were groomed, malnourished and subject to “child labor, exploitation.” Health screenings conducted on 392 children found all had suffered physical or emotional abuse.

“They themselves were abused by their caretakers. Then they were forced to sodomize other children,” Husain told another press briefing.

As the raids unraveled, GISBH restaurants, grocery stores and laundromats were closed, blinds drawn, logos stripped off the walls and social media accounts shut down. Some of the groups’ members fled back to their hometowns across Malaysia and were awaiting instructions from the group’s leaders as to what to do next, their families said.

In raids on houses affiliated with GISBH leadership, police found dozens of books and photographs associated with Ashaari Muhammad, the founder of Al Arqam. Some had been buried in a riverbed, their pages caked in mud.

Al Arqam was an Islamic group – led by Ashaari, known as “Abuya” or Father to his followers – that believed in building a self-sufficient Islamic community with Malaysia at the center of the Muslim world.

It was banned by the Malaysian government in 1994 for “deviant” teachings, a decision that at the time was questioned by international rights groups as a potential breach of religious freedom. Ashaari subsequently spent 10 years under house arrest and died in 2010.

GISBH’s promotional material says the company was founded by Ashaari “with the aim to develop the Islamic way of life in all aspects of life such as education, arts and culture, animal farming.” Before the raids, GISBH had about 100 care homes housing many of the 3,000 “youths” the group claimed to be their “employees,” according to former members and information from the company’s website.

One of Ashaari’s daughters, Ummu Atiyah, told CNN the movement had changed since her father’s leadership. “Women are treated with all kinds of abuse … and all the money only goes to the leaders’ comfort” she said. “They have jet skis, motorhomes, vehicles that were not there when my father led the movement.”

Those arrested include GISBH CEO Nasiruddin Mohd Ali who admitted in a video statement that “one or two cases of sodomy” occurred, but he rejected all other allegations made against the group as slander.

“I am not trying to blame the law. Indeed, we have done some wrong in the eyes of the law […] Indeed, there were one or two cases of sodomy, but why lump them all together?” he said.

Nasiruddin, alongside other GISBH leadership, has since been charged with belonging to an organized crime group and is currently awaiting trial. Among those also charged is Mohammad Adib At-Tarmimi, the son of Ashaari.

The highly publicized case shocked the nation. While most Malaysians had heard about Abuya and Al Arqam back in the 90s, few knew about their connection to GISBH and the alleged abuses that went on inside the company. But it came as no surprise to anyone who had ever worked for GISBH.

Scabies, stitches and secrets

Farid, who recently left GISBH, was 27 when he joined the group in 2010 after years of struggling with drug addiction. “I give my soul, I give myself to them because they want to fix me,” said Farid, who asked to use a pseudonym to protect his family.

He was in an arranged marriage with the daughter of a senior member and quickly had two daughters. When their older daughter turned two, she was sent to live in a charity home, like most GISBH children.

At first glance, some of the welfare homes bear no association to GISBH. Some carried the GISBH logo, but others appeared to be normal houses with yards strewn with toys on quiet suburban streets. Facebook pages run by the homes show small children said to be orphans in religious garb, singing and praying, imploring followers to donate or give zakat to buy food, clothes or school supplies. Zakat is a form of religious alms-giving and one of the five mandatory pillars of Islam.

But the children were not orphans. In most cases their parents were GISBH workers, like Farid, though some hadn’t seen their kids in years. Instead, they were raised by caretakers who in some cases were only a few years older than them, according to former members and law enforcement.

The days were spent studying Islam and praying, not just to Allah but to Nasiruddin, the chief executive of GISBH and other leaders of the company, Farid, who briefly worked at a boys’ care home in the 2010s, told CNN. The kids were told, “Your mother is nothing, your father is nothing, there is only your leader – Nasiruddin,” he said. “At night the children sleep with tears [in their eyes].”

Over time many of the children came to believe they actually were orphans, he added, while authorities said some couldn’t identify their parents.

Farid says his daughter quickly changed after moving into a welfare home. “My daughter was a cheerful girl, always smiling, always laughing but when she went there, she was very sad, she had no self-confidence,” he said.

When he visited his daughter, he said she looked malnourished, her hands covered in scabies – an infection caused by mites that burrow their way under the skin and lay eggs there. The condition was seen in many children who were rescued from the care homes, according to images shared with CNN.

Amir, another former GISBH worker, told CNN that before he left the group in 2021, he tried to visit his four-year-old son at the care home as often as possible.

Amir, who asked to use a pseudonym to protect his family, said caretakers told him the boy was often crying and wetting his pants. One time he visited, his son had stitches on his chin and forehead.

Amir said a caretaker had admitted throwing the boy in anger after he wet himself. The boy also told his father he was locked in a dog kennel as punishment.

“They asked me to keep the matter a secret,” Amir said, but he said almost everyone at the group knew about other instances of abuse that went on in the care homes. If their child hadn’t been hurt, they knew somebody whose kid had been, he said.

Total control

The group’s headquarters was a sprawling compound complete with horse stables in the town of Rawang, a 30-minute drive from the capital Kuala Lumpur. One local resident recalled that the arrival of the Al Arqam-linked community in the early 2000s drew attention from locals, but there was an “unspoken boundary” between the group and the rest of the town’s residents.

Life inside the community was tightly controlled.

Former followers told CNN they had no contact with the outside world or access to cellphones. An in-house production company made news-like programming about their leaders that was broadcast on their own television channel called Ikhwan TV. Programming included prayers, cartoons and live coverage from motorsport and equestrian events organized by the group, according to former members.

“GISBH embodies the criteria of a cult – absolute loyalty to leaders, charismatic leader at the core of the movement; exclusive membership and severe penalty for leaving, members’ loss of personal autonomy,” said Dr Azmil Tayeb, a political scientist and associate professor at Universiti Sains Malaysia, who specializes in Islamic political and social movements.

Men and women, even married couples, lived in gender-segregated dorms and were not allowed to meet without the leaders’ approval, former members said.

Even if you saw your wife in the courtyard you couldn’t speak to her, Farid recalled. Instead, married couples had to apply for what were essentially conjugal visits, scheduled appointments where couples were expected to have sex, several former members said. Viagra was provided and in some cases group leaders demanded to know the details the next morning, said Farid.

“I saw myself as a sex slave, I didn’t see myself as a wife,” said Zoey, a former member from Singapore, who left the group in 2021 and asked to use a pseudonym to protect her young children. “The role as a woman in GISB is only for you to give birth.”

Zoey’s family joined GISBH when she was a teenager, and she struggled to adapt to the restrictive culture of the group. At the age of 17, she was deemed “uncontrollable” by the leadership and married to a man 10 years her senior. Within weeks of being married, her husband became physically and sexually abusive towards her, she said. He regularly raped her, she said.

Zoey said she tried to go on birth control pills but when her husband found out, she was beaten again and forced to stop. Her complaints to the group elders went unheard, she said. Instead, she was told to obey her husband as “he is your heaven.”

Zoey fled the marriage and now cares for their nine children in Singapore – the eldest nearly the age she was when she was forced to marry.

Other female members CNN spoke to echoed Zoey’s experience of abuse and sexual violence. Many of them said they were forcibly married as teenagers, others gifted to men as rewards for business successes.

‘Superbikes for Islam’

In 2022, the group claimed to have more than 5,000 employees working in restaurants, bakeries, factories and supermarkets and other businesses in 20 countries including Australia, the UK, France, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, where they also ran a resort, according to their website and news reports.

Farid and Amir both recall working from dusk until dawn in Ikhwan factories producing noodles, chili sauce, and other condiments 365 days a year. Like most GISBH employees, they said they were never paid for their work but were provided food and board. Sometimes their colleagues were children, they said. Photos shared with CNN show prepubescent children packaging noodles and operating factory machinery. The minimum age for full-time work in Malaysia is 15.

The company’s unsettling practices allegedly extended to the food factories where workers sprayed so-called holy water on products sold to the public, according to several former members.

“Holy water” or “Air Berkat” was a concoction made by mixing the leaders’ saliva, body hair and bathwater. Members of the group believed that each part of their leaders’ bodies contained “berkat” or spiritual-magical properties.

“I made chili paste, chili sauce and noodles, so I sprayed it [holy water] over them,” one former member told CNN. These products were then sold to the public in GISBH-owned supermarkets and used in their restaurants across the country, the former members said.

The group’s overseas assets were among some of their most prized, despite them never turning profits, according to financial records analyzed by CNN. One former member told CNN that the overseas assets were a way for the group to gain “popularity” and build influence. Most former members CNN spoke to had at some point lived and worked abroad, living in company dorms, some while they were only teenagers. These locations also served as informal meeting places for the company to build relationships with government officials, Tayeb, the political scientist, explained.

“They’ve always been well connected; we are not talking about an isolated cult in the middle of the jungle,” said Tayeb.

GISBH’s connections reached the highest level of Malaysia’s elites. In April 2023, the executive chairman of the group and several other senior leaders met with Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim at his private office.

At the meeting, the prime minister “promised to help all efforts of GISBH in the name of the Muslim economy,” according to an article posted on Ikhwan News, the group’s own media publication. Following the raids in September, Anwar urged police and religious authorities to investigate and take appropriate action to address misconduct at the company.

While some employees worked 16-hour shifts in factories, restaurants and resorts, GISBH leadership spent their time jetting around the world, meeting the highest rungs of Malaysian leadership and attending sporting events, with Nasiruddin taking a special interest in horseback riding and motorsports.

Followers were told not to question the leaders’ lavish spending for it was all done in the name of Islam, one former member said. “They say we buy superbikes for Islam,” said the former member, who wished to remain anonymous.

Anyone who asked questions or dissented was sent to “quarantine,” faraway camps where members spent months living in jungle huts with no water or electricity, repenting their sins, said several former members, recalling their experience.

As one former member put it: “You ask today, tomorrow they send you to the quarantine island.”

Nearly every single former GISBH member CNN spoke to had at one point been sent to quarantine. Zoey said she spent nearly half a year in quarantine while pregnant with her second child, where she was forbidden from speaking to anyone and denied medical checkups.

Amir said he spent 10 months in quarantine on Tioman Island, a nature reserve popular with tourists off the main coast of Malaysia. He said he was sent there as punishment for trying to escape after learning about his son’s abuse.

Nowhere to go

Since the raids in September, most of the children have returned to the care of their parents, but over 100 children are yet to be claimed by their families, authorities said.

A lawyer representing several former members told CNN that in some cases children refuse to go home with parents who left the group because they’d been taught to fear them.

“My children don’t love or respect me anymore. They have been brainwashed,” the lawyer recalled one of his clients telling him.

The years of indoctrination will take some time to undo. After attending reeducation programs, the GISBH children will eventually be introduced to mainstream schools, according to Malaysia’s education ministry. There, they will for the first time become a part of Malaysian society.

For the adults not facing charges, the future is unclear. Those who grew up inside the group have few life skills to fall back on, and many of the men have multiple wives and many children they now need to support.

Former members told CNN a sense of security came with living within GISBH. Their lives were at times lonely and limited, but one day they hoped to reap the rewards of their devotion.

“They say if you are in the group, you are on the highway to Heaven,” Farid said. Outside, Zoey said, former members “have nowhere to go.”

On January 9 GISBH posted a message on their Facebook page after months of silence.

“Some people are created to be a test to other people,” it read. “So be patient with all this.”

The-CNN-Wire
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