Foundation and origins:
The first contemporary presence of Yemeni Salafism dates from the late 1970s, when the Yemeni sheikh and hadith scholar Muqbil bin Hadi al-Wadi‘i returned to Yemen from Saudi Arabia. A sheikh from Saada governorate, he had been a Zaydi – Zaydism being one of the moderate Shia schools – before breaking with it and turning to the Sunni school, specifically Salafism. After studying the sharia sciences in Saudi Arabia, he returned to Yemen and founded, in his village of Dammaj in Saada governorate, a religious school teaching the sharia and religious sciences: the Qur’an, hadith, Arabic, jurisprudence and so on. The centre became well known from the early 1980s, attracting many Yemenis, Arabs and Westerners in search of knowledge. Sheikh al-Wadi‘i’s current then spread throughout Yemen, with Salafi schools in several regions and governorates. From the early to the mid-1980s, this current was a scholarly, school-based movement, not organised in a party or organisation; it focused on spreading the sharia sciences, did not accept entering politics, and held that as long as the ruler was a Muslim he was the legitimate guardian of the Muslims and must be obeyed.
Division and fragmentation:
Disagreements between Sheikh al-Wadi‘i and his students had existed for a long time on many issues, but they remained private and did not crystallise into splits and groups until 1988, when Sheikh Muqbil announced his disagreement with some of his students over the legitimacy of administrative and political organisation. He issued several fatwas condemning those who disagreed with him as partisans, innovators and misguided. The formal break with Sheikh al-Wadi‘i’s group came in 1990, when a number of his senior followers and supporters founded a charitable relief association called the Al-Hikma al-Yamaniya Charitable Society. Others followed by founding another association, the Al-Ihsan Charitable Society, and so the division continued until Yemeni Salafism came to comprise several groups.
Yemeni Salafi schools and factions:
This current comprises several schools, the most prominent being the following. The first current is the school of Sheikh Muqbil al-Wadi‘i (may God have mercy on him), who died in 2001 and was succeeded in teaching and in running the centre and its followers by his student Yahya al-Hajuri, until the Shia Houthis of Saada governorate besieged the centre in the village of Dammaj and shelled it with heavy weapons in 2011 and 2013. Hundreds of children, women and young people – students and villagers alike – were killed or wounded; all were then displaced at the end of 2013 and the centre was closed. The school still has followers in other parts of Yemen.
The second current is that of the Al-Hikma Society, which broke away from al-Wadi‘i’s current; among its leading figures are Sheikh Mohammed al-Mahdi, Sheikh Aqil al-Maqtari and Sheikh Abdullah al-Humairi. This current worked through its official front, the Al-Hikma Society, in charitable and humanitarian work. Although it allows entry into political action, it did not engage in it for the past twenty years; but last year its members announced their intention to found a party, the Peace and Development Party, which was officially approved and recognised on 17 February 2014.
The third current is that of Al-Ihsan; its leading figures include Sheikh Mohammed bin Musa al-Amiri, Abdulmajid al-Raimi and Abdulwahhab al-Humaiqani. This current does not differ from that of the Al-Hikma Society, apart from some disagreements that can safely be described as organisational and intellectual, such as its position on founding parties: for the past two decades the Al-Ihsan current held them to be illegitimate. Paradoxically, however, after the Arab Spring revolutions it founded a party, the Yemeni Rashad Union Party, in June 2012.
A further current is that of Sheikh Abu al-Hasan al-Sulaimani al-Maribi, an Egyptian Salafi scholar who has lived in Yemen since the 1980s. He was a supporter of Sheikh al-Wadi‘i, but after al-Wadi‘i’s death he fell out with his successor, Sheikh Yahya al-Hajuri, and went his own way with his group, which is based in Marib governorate. They have not engaged in political action, although they are open to the Rashad party and the Peace and Development Party.
The fourth current comprises all the Salafi religious schools that each follow their own sheikh. They do not differ from al-Wadi‘i’s school but went their separate ways after his death. They include the school of Sheikh Mohammed al-Imam in the town of Ma‘bar in Dhamar governorate and that of Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulwahhab al-Wassabi in Hodeidah governorate, as well as hundreds of other Salafi centres and associations spread across Yemen, each working on its own, whether teaching in mosques or doing relief work.
Yemeni Salafis and political action:
Yemen’s Salafis, in all their factions, were reluctant to join or found parties, on the grounds that parties are part of democracy, which they saw as contrary to Islam and to rule by the sharia. But a shift occurred in the Al-Hikma and Al-Ihsan currents after the Arab Spring revolutions: the first Salafi party in Yemen, the Rashad party, was founded in 2012, followed recently by the Al-Hikma group’s announcement, at the beginning of this year, of the founding of its Peace and Development Party. To date there are no other such parties.
The political and intellectual approach of the two parties: naturally, each party has its own political objectives that differ from the other’s, but they share several points, including:
- the permissibility of engaging in political action under the umbrella of the Yemeni state;
- the adoption of peaceful political action as a means of change and of coming to power;
- acceptance of a policy of coexistence with all the other components of the Yemeni people, in all their diversity of colours and ideas, and rejection of violence and of its expression in practice.
It is worth noting that when the Rashad party was being founded two years ago, several figures of the Al-Hikma current took part in the preparations alongside Rashad’s founders; but administrative disagreements and mutual accusations arose, after which the Al-Hikma figures withdrew from the Rashad party. They would later found the Peace and Development Party.
