In June 2005 religious authorities reported that there were 22 "deviant" religious groups with around 2,820 followers in Malaysia.

Ibn Khaldoun - "astray people", "Shia are the source of all deviant groups in Islam history".

They feel, in a world that tends to cultivate an oversimplified and idealized image of normality, members of an abnormal, deviant group.

A spokesman for the ministry said the gunmen were affiliated with a "deviant group," meaning Al Qaeda.

The government referred to the ring as a "deviant group," the phrase often used to describe the ideology of Al Qaeda.

"Orthodox psychiatric opinion has generally viewed conversion to deviant groups as a function of longstanding conflicts within individuals," he said in a 1982 interview.

"Deprogramming, brainwashing and the medicalization of deviant religious groups" Social Problems 29 pp 283-97.

This still leaves the problem of which particular deviant group to join, and of how typical that group is of all such groups.

The Government opposes what it considers deviant interpretations of Islam, maintaining that the "deviant" groups' extreme views endanger national security.

Traditionalists complained that student funds shouldn't be used for such a "deviant" group.