Endowment Minister: “Arab religious scholars to train Yemeni mosque preachers” [Archives:2003/674/Local News]

Sana'a, 4 Oct.-The Endowments and Guidance Minister, Mr. Hamoud Abbad has confirmed that his ministry has sought the help of 36 religious scholars from al-Azhar Ashareef to take part in religious training courses to train and qualify Yemeni mosque preachers.
“News that has been recently circulated, claiming that the ministry is seeking to replace Yemeni mosque preachers by Arab mosque preachers is groundless. More than 80.000 mosques are in the Yemen republic,” the minister declared.
The minister has confirmed that the ministry will hold the coming week a training course for about 200 religious learning seekers in the field of preaching with participation of eminent religious scholars from al-Azhar and others from Yemen.
A number of foreign news agencies and newspapers reported last week that Yemen had resorted to Arab mosque preachers instead of the local ones as a result of using the mosque's platforms as means for inciting and instigating people to violence.
“The ministry is to make contracts with the first batch of those scholars totaling 36 preachers.
This tendency towards bringing Arab religious scholars represents a positive aspect towards reforming and getting rid of extremists who have taken the mosque's platforms places for instigation,” Yahya Annajar the Endowments and Guidance Deputy Minister remarked.
Official resources said that religious scholars are currently being assigned to large mosques, which are under control of some partisan religious scholars.
Around 6000 out of 80.000 mosques are supervised by the endowments ministry in all the Yemeni governorates. The Friday religious sermons are performed in 28.000 mosques.
Mr. Annajar added that some religious preachers haven't realized yet the real mosque message and as a result they pose a threat to the nation's solidarity and its coming generations.
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