A Reuters post today, China Jails 180 Falun Gong Members for SARS Rumors, touches on the fascinating and frustrating intersection of the SARS epidemic and apocalyptic religion:
BEIJING (Reuters) - China has detained 180 members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual group for spreading rumors and recruiting new followers amid the SARS epidemic, state radio said on Thursday. The practitioners were all arrested in the northern province of Hebei, it reported. Police officials were not immediately available for comment. "They spread doomsday theories in a bid to cause panic in society and claimed that the SARS outbreak in China was a warning to those who persecute and hate the Falun Dafa," it said, using another name for the group. "They also spread falsehoods that people who practice Falun Gong will not contract SARS in order to try to spread the cult and recruit more followers," it said.Chinese authorities are unlikely to be monitoring and reporting on the particulars of the "rumors" spread by Falun Gong members, since they consider Falun Gong superstitious as well as dangerous, but the form taken by the members' "doomsday theories" would be of intense interest to scholars of apocalyptic movements such as the members of the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University -- of which I am one -- both for their own intrinsic interest, but also because such things are leading indicators for the ways in which apocalyptic belief can configure political dissent and on occasion trigger violence.