Bizarre Beliefs, Dangerous Practices, Disappearing Followers...INSIDE AN INTERNET CULT

INFLUENCER RASHAD JAMAL TEACHES SPIRITUALITY AND EMPOWERMENT. BUT FAMILIES OF HIS BELIEVERS FEAR THEY MAY NEVER SEE THEIR LOVED ONES AGAIN

- LIAM QUINN

Looking back, Cartisha Morgan says she first noticed her daughter Ma’Kayla’s spiritual transformation when the hardworking 24-year-old single mother, who was living at home with her 2-year-old toddler, gave her a candle for her birthday. “I don’t do candles or crystals,” says Morgan, 49, a St. Louis public schools administrative assistant. Nor did her daughter—until then. Soon Ma’Kayla, who said she was overwhelmed by motherhood, began seeing a psychic and dressing in bohemian clothes. She spent more time on her own and, in the fall of 2022, moved out with her daughter Malaiyah into a rented house in suburban Berkeley, Mo.

Morgan says she was happy for her newly independent daughter, until a few months later, when a group of new friends moved in with Ma’Kayla. They made Morgan feel unwelcome when she visited her granddaughter, she says, and last year Morgan was stunned to learn from Ma’Kayla’s employer that her daughter had stopped showing up for her high-paying job at a financial services firm. When Morgan went to check on her, she says, she was met by a man carrying a gun who refused to let her inside. Speaking to her mom briefly through a window, “Ma’Kayla said her friends were her family now and that I wasn’t anymore,” she recalls. “I haven’t seen her or Malaiyah since then.”