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Shôkô Asahara  

Definition

  • Shôkô Asahara is the founder of the Japanese movement Aum Shinrikyô, responsible for the use of chemical weapons on the Tokyo subway in 1995. He is significant also as an example of a prophetic millennial religious leader whose visions gave rise to apocalyptic teachings and to mass violence committed by his disciples.Partially blind at birth, Asahara was sent to a boarding school for the blind while young, an alienating experience that influenced his later estrangement from his family. [Source: Encyclopedia of Global Religion; Asahara, Shôkô (b. 1955)]

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https://concepts.sagepub.com/social-science/concept/Shôkô_Asahara

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