![]() The place where Muhammad's she-camel had stopped was an open courtyard with some palm trees growing over it, and it belonged to two orphan brothers named Sahl and Suhayl. The next task was to build a mosque in Medina like the one built in Quba. ![]() The immigrants, forty-five in number, were called “Muhajirun.’ Islam effaced the age-long enmity between the tribes of Aws and Khazraj and they were given the honourific designation of “Ansars’ (helpers or supporters). The name of the city was then changed to “Medinat al-Nabi’, the City of the Prophet. No wonder they gave the Prophet a tumultuous welcome at Yathrib. Islam had already taken roots in Yathrib thus before the Prophet arrived there on the invitation of the people of Aws and Khazraj. Unlike the Meccans, the Yathribites had no vested interest standing in the way of their accepting the new religion. The disciples who had preceded the Prophet were spreading the message of Islam throughout Yathrib. The deputation (of three to five hundred referred to above) which they had sent to Mecca had returned entirely satisfied. Some of their people had come into contact with the Prophet at Mecca and had been deeply impressed by Him. They had heard from the Jews that a Prophet was to come. ![]() It’s no wonder we’re so enraptured by the story of the FLDS and its criminal leader.Living in contact with the Jews, the Aws and the Khazraj tribes were not foreign to the idea of the unity of God. But the details of his crimes – the recordings of his rape of a 12-year-old, the kidnapping of young children, forced labour – as told in Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey are astounding. That Jeffs is now in prison serving life plus 20 years is some comfort. Meanwhile, Warren Jeffs, a man wanted for two counts of rape as an accomplice, went on the run. Their mothers, loyal to Warren, launched a PR campaign, claiming the state had taken their children away from them for no reason and peddled the idea to the press that child protection services were targeting them because they didn’t agree with their religious beliefs. When the authorities caught wind of what was happening within the FLDS, they launched an investigation which led to the removal of all the children. Some of them were just young girls – one interviewee in the film, Ruby Jessops, was married off to a man at just 14. What makes Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey so compelling is its interviews with those women, victims of circumstance forced into marrying older men under the guise of religion. Rulon Jeffs’ wives at his funeral (Photo: Netflix) Under Warren, the FLDS’s already patriarchal society turned even darker and more disturbing. Young girls were taken from their parents without warning (and sometimes even without their knowledge) to be married to older men, hoping to get into Warren’s – and therefore God’s – good graces. Got a young daughter to marry off to one of the Church’s prominent men? Welcome to the inner fold. Women started to become currency in the FLDS community. As the restrictions became harsher, Warren’s wives (he has at least 69) got younger and younger. The rules, unsurprisingly, bore most heavily down on the women – long underwear had to be worn as all times, they had to wear their hair in certain ways and no-one, under any circumstances, could wear red.īut that’s not enough to warrant a Netflix docuseries. In time, Warren started to increase restrictions on his followers, slowly turning the FLDS from a fundamentalist Mormon sect to what the average person would recognise as a cult. Rulon was succeeded by his son, Warren Jeffs, who also decided he was the Prophet and able to speak the word of God directly to his FLDS followers. ![]() While Rulon’s marriage to twentysomething-year-old women – and fathering their children – is incredibly difficult for viewers to accept as remotely acceptable, it’s nothing compared to what the FLDS would be expected to defend after his death. That’s enough to tempt even the most casual true crime fans to the story. While being married to more than one person is out of the ordinary, many of the people interviewed seemed genuinely happy to be living under FLDS rules in the 80s and 90s.īack then, the so-called Church was led by Rulon T Jeffs, a self-appointed Prophet who led the group until his death in 2002 at age 93 – he had 65 wives and 65 children. Keep Sweet starts off quite, well, sweet. To God, it apparently doesn’t matter that polygamy is illegal across the United States (though as of 2020 it’s no longer a felony crime in Utah, where the group is based) The main teaching of the group is that the more wives a man has, the more pleased God will be and more likely he is to let them into heaven.
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