The profiles of the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States remind scholar Hiromi Shimada of senior Aum Shinrikyo members.

The 48-year-old expert in religious studies explained it cannot be overlooked that many of those who carried out the attacks in the U.S. were highly educated, just like top Aum figures involved in the cult's heinous crimes in the early to mid-1990s.

"Those elite intellectuals committed atrocious crimes because of what they thought were their religious beliefs," the former professor at Japan Women's University in Tokyo said. "This symbolizes the troubles brought by the rapid development of global capitalism in recent decades."