This is the introduction to a new series inspired by the speeches of the founder of the Ansar Allah movement in Yemen, Shaheed Sayyed Hussain Badr al-Din al-Houthi (ra), written anonymously by a Lebanese academic. Follow Basira Press for further installments of this series.
Part One, a Preface
In the wake of the events of 11 September 2001, and the George W. Bush administration’s slogan “You are either with us, or against us,” most countries around the world rushed to appease Washington in its alleged war on terror, which was in reality nothing more than the Americanization and Israelization of the world, particularly in West Asia.
At the time, the Persian Gulf states, led by the regime of ousted Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, took the initiative, visiting Washington with the aim of subjugating Yemen to serve the American-“Israeli” project. Ali Abdullah Saleh met with President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld, and CIA and FBI officials.
However, some Arab and Islamic leaders questioned American intentions, including the founder of the Yemeni Ansar Allah movement, Martyr Sayyed Hussain Badr al-Din al-Houthi (ra). Geographical circumstances dictated that the Sayyed Hussain al-Houthi set out from Saada, a border area between two countries with a long-standing historical conflict: Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
Shaheed Sayyed Hussain Badr al-Din al-Houthi (ra) would raise awareness, mobilize the people, and show them the looming danger.
Sayyed Hussain al-Houthi was diligent in offering advice to both the Saudi and Yemeni regimes, as he was concerned with the nation’s issues and was free from the sectarian disputes and political conflicts that distracted society from taking effective action.
Through his nearly 100 lectures, which this series will endeavour to discuss, Shaheed Sayyed Hussain Badr al-Din al-Houthi (ra) transcended the narrowness of sects to embrace the comprehensiveness of the Qur’an. He called upon the nation to embrace a faithful identity as a unifying identity, and to unite the nation around the Qur’an’s approach and guidance.
His Qur’anic project was inspired by authentic Muhammadan Islam and did not introduce a new, heretical religion like Wahhabism, liberalism, and others. He called upon people to return to our great Qur’an, which is the only solution to all the nation’s problems and the oppression, humiliation, and defeat it suffers from.
Shaheed Sayyed Hussain Badr al-Din al-Houthi (ra) was keen to push his followers to take a decisive stance against colonial policy, but the police-like regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh refused to say “no” to America, and did not allow Sayyed Hussain al-Houthi (ra) to organize peaceful demonstrations against the brazen American interventions, demanding that he surrender unconditionally.
His Qur’anic project was a terrifying nightmare for Washington, which expressed its concern about the lectures that he was giving in the remote corners of Yemen, while it was not worried about many of the nation’s useless scholars to whom the verse “like a donkey carrying books on its back” (62:5) applies.
Six days after his return from Washington, on 13 June 2004, the deposed Ali Abdullah Saleh sent a military force to violently suppress Sayyed Hussain Badr al-Din al-Houthi’s movement. They encountered courageous resistance from the people of the Saada region, where Shaheed Sayyed Hussain al-Houthi lived, leading to the outbreak of the first war.
The first war waged against the Ansar Allah movement lasted three months, during which the regime mobilized various heavily armed military sectors. During the siege of Sayyed Hussain in his village of Maran, Saada, Ali Abdullah Saleh called on him to stop his Qur’an march and his outcry against America and “Israel,” claiming, “We are under pressure from America.” Sayyed Hussain al-Houthi (ra) responded, “But we are under pressure from Allah [to cry against them].”
With the third anniversary of the September 11 attacks approaching and Ali Abdullah Saleh’s failure to win the battle, the American enemy intervened directly to resolve the battle and eliminate Sayyed Hussain (ra) and a group of the movement’s leaders on 10 September 2004 (coinciding with the twenty-sixth of the Hijri month of Rajab).
Sayyed Hussain Badr al-Din al-Houthi’s honorable corpse was hidden until 5 June 2013. His funeral was a historic event, heralding a strategic shift in the general mentality of Yemeni society, representing a popular referendum on the validity of his Qur’anic project.
On the same day, the commander of US Central Command, John Abizaid, thanked Ali Abdullah Saleh for his success in killing Sayyid Hussain Badr al-Din al-Houthi, congratulating him on what he called a victory: “I congratulate you and your forces on your victory over the Houthi rebels. The US Central Command looks forward to continued joint cooperation between us, as you help bring stability to the region, with the highest appreciation and respect.”
Secret documents reveal the direct American role in the war against the martyred leader of the Ansar Allah movement through reconnaissance and surveillance aircraft that participated in the first war against Sayyed Hussain Badr al-Din al-Houthi (ra). This continued and intensified during the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth wars against Saada.
At that time, the ousted regime believed that eliminating Sayyed Hussain (ra) and his leaders would mean eliminating the resistance doctrine he had founded.
By the end of the sixth war in February 2010, in which Riyadh also became involved, Ali Abdullah Saleh had failed to achieve any notable accomplishments other than the killing of innocents and the arrest of more than 5,000 supporters of Sayyed Hussain Badr al-Din al-Houthi (ra).
Riyadh continued its attempts to inflame the internal situation in Yemen, particularly by turning people against Ansar Allah.
With the imposition of the so-called Gulf Initiative at the end of 2011, the Saudi regime believed it had Yemen under its control, but the growth of the Ansar Allah movement, leading up to the historic September 21 Revolution, confirmed that Yemen had slipped out of control.
On the day the Saudi king’s death was announced in January 2015, fugitive President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and his government suddenly announced their resignation, revealing that something was being plotted as Saudi Arabia quickly announced, from its embassy in Washington, on March 26, the aggression dubbed Operation Decisive Storm with American, Gulf, and Arab support.
The Yemenis’ unwavering stance was one of resistance; what Riyadh did with its aggression merely added fuel to the fire. It mobilized the Yemeni people, proving the truth of what Shaheed Sayyed Hussain al-Houthi had warned against early on when he called for not believing the American lie of “fighting terrorism.”
The aggression continued for nearly a decade without being able to subdue the Ansar Allah movement. The essence of the Yemeni revolution, under its leadership, is to confront American hegemony, restore Yemen’s sovereignty and independence, and support the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian resistance to liberate all of Palestine.
God willing, in the coming parts of this series, we will review all of Sayyed Hussain al-Houthi’s positions on the conflict with the “Israeli” and American enemies, based on his Qur’anic viewpoint.
