ABSTRACT
New religious Mahdist movements are known to have effectively increased their activities, especially where Western exploitation is intense and people have lost hope in their future. The most basic features of Mahdi movements is the attitude of giving hope to the discouraged segments of society for the future, preparing for a happier tomorrow now, supporting the religious group with all available means, ensuring that better days will come in the near future, and maintaining the feeling of being unique through personal belonging. Mahdi movements provide the opportunity to find a more comfortable foundation. In this context, the Malaysian-based Dar al-Arqam religious group is a Sufi- based movement that started out by meeting the various social service needs of its members and wanted to undertake political roles in the country after growing in power. In this context, the subject of this study is a sociological analysis of the Dar al-Arqam religious group as a new religious movement. This study aims to analyze this religious group in the context of new religious movements through the group’s identity, self-perception, organization, and institutions, as well as some of their religious practices and ideas that are visible in the social arena. The study was conducted using the indirect observation technique from a macro perspective. This study states the religious Mahdi groups (Dar al-Arqam) that show the characteristics of new religious movements carried the spiritual power they gained by expressing the deprivation of people in various material fields such as politics and commerce, and this put the group in a difficult position after a certain time in front of the public and the government.
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