Reflections:”SHAQNAH 2004″: What goes around comes around [Archives:2004/752/Opinion]

By Yahya Al-Olfi
[email protected]
Local and foreign media have been referring wrongly to Saadah insurgents as Zaidis. In fact this is a very big fallacy for they are in reality and simply Extremist Shiite Hadoists or Sayyids not Zaidis at all.
They of course claim to be Zaidis because Zaidism is a very moderate Shiite sect and serves as a good mask for them because the normal northern Yemeni citizens feel uneasy when it comes to their extremist racist beliefs. Hadaoists or Sayyids believe in TOQIAH which allows them to deceive, allege and wear many faces in order to attain their ends and thus one sees nowadays that some of them are siding with the president and others are against him.
The same thing applies on their exploitation of Zaidism to hide their true ugly malignant racist intentions towards Yemen and its people. TOQIAH was in fact copied out from Judaism and just as in the other Shiite sects and is referred to by Muslim scholars as the Israelite imitations, in Arabic simply termed as “AL-ISRAELIAAT”.
True Zaidis do not believe in the Hadaoist traditions and attributions and have slight differences with their Sunni brethern ( see this column at Edition 746 of Yemen Times for further historic insight).
Hadaoism is solely embraced by the Sayyids of Northern Yemen while Zaidism is embraced solely by the Northern Yemeni Highlands' tribesmen. Referring to the insurgents as Zaidis is a grave fallacy unfortunately propagated by the local opposition newspapers whose attitude regarding Sa'adah events confirmed the president's accusation in that they are merely opposing for opposition's sake and are not being insightful or objective at all.
The truth of the matter is that real Zaidis in the northern regions of Yemen are siding with the government in its efforts to quell the Hadaoist extremists and are helping to check their excessive extremism.
The Yemeni opposition's shallow reporting and ridiculous articles published about this event attest to this fact. A few days ago a Hadaoist Newspaper attacked a government official because according to the said newspaper the said official threatened to deport the Persians/Sayyids/Hadaoists/Hashemites back to their homeland wherefrom they came 1200 years back, while in fact they came prior to Islam and those referred to by the said newspaper are called the “Tabarnists” who came from Tabaristan at the Northern part of today's Iran and their leader was Al-Hadi Yahya Bin Alhussein the founder of the Hadaoist sect of Islam and was responsible for huge massacres in Saadah where he crushed his opponents via merciless religious fanatic force and his arrival to Yemen was in answer to an invitation extended to him by the Yemeni Persians' Organization not by Arab tribesmen as wrongly alleged (vide “History of Sana'a City” for Ahmed Abdullah Al-Razi Al-Sanaani).
Hence, let us see the attitude of Zaidism and Hadoism regarding Muslim leadership. The true Zaidi Sect has now no religious figures at all and is being manipulated by Yemeni Hadaoists who are originally vehement followers of extremist Hadaoism which was founded by the so-called “Al-Hadi Yahya Bin Alhussein” who found in Yemen a fertile haven because Persians were in control. Under the guise of Zaidism people claiming prophetic descent harbor different beliefs and the normal Yemeni popular memory still refers to them as Persian descendants claiming to be Zaidis just to obtain some tribal muscle. Zaidism is embraced by Non-Sayyid Arabs of the northern highlands who are moderate and do not have an aspiration to power but are obedient followers of their local tribal chieftains.
The confrontation between the republican government forces and the royal Hadaoists or Sayyids together with their deceived ignorant henchmen must serve to differentiate once and for all between Zaidism which is a very moderate sect and extremist Hadaoism which is a totally different sect because both are considerably different from each other, although both are mistakenly seen by many as one dogma because Hadaoists wilily hide behind Zaidism in order to be accepted and this makes it easier for them to disseminate their poisonous ideas. Actually, true Zaidis do not claim power or leadership of the Muslim citizenry.
The Zaidi sect was termed a Shiite sect only because it referred to the preference of a Hashemite compared to a normal citizen with regard to leadership, whilst Hadaoism insists categorically that the leadership of the Muslims must be given exclusively to a qualified Hashemite. Prominent Scholars of Zaidism converted to Sunni Islam when they saw the Imams were intermingling it with the Hadaoist version (like the prominent Al-Showkani and Ibn Al-Amir Al-Sanani).
This is why Al-Houthi the self-proclaimed Imam attacks pure Zaidism. It is worth mentioning that Most Muslims whether in Yemen or abroad are Sunni Muslims apart from disparate Shiite minorities here and there and who are in their turn subdivided into more than eleven sects. In fact many Shiite sects have become obsolete vide Al-Hoor Al-Aeen by Nashwan the Himyarite.
An Arab proverb says ” A Bad Thing Might Lead to a Good Thing”. What happened in Sadah reminds us vividly about an ongoing YEMENI CHRONIC DISEASE which must be remedied sooner rather than later because as the British say what goes around comes around. It should be remembered that Yemen prior to Islam was under Persian occupation.
The Persian ruler was none other than the notoriously wily famous Bathan. The same Bathan was ordered by Chosroe the Persian Emperor at the time to arrest prophet Mohammed and send him to Persia i.e. Iran so as to punish him due to a message sent by prophet Mohammed to Chosroe ordering him to discard Zoroastrianism a religion embraced by ancient Iranians during the 6th Century BC .
Bathan the Persian Occupation ruler of Yemen sent an army to arrest prophet Mohammed and according to Arab Historians, the Persians were persuaded to embrace Islam. Thus, prophet Mohammed sanctioned his new Persian convertees as rightful rulers of Yemen. Yemenis earlier were either Christian or Jewish and it is because of their disputes Ethiopians came to help the Christians only to be evicted by the Persians who came for their own interests under the guise of liberating Yemen from black Ethiopians. Yemenis seeing that the Persian occupation forces have discarded Zoroastrianism and are now following an Arab prophet thought it over and gradually decided to convert to Islam mainly after the start of Islamic lucrative forays against Byzantine and Persian held territories. In order to get rid of Persian pressure and oppression at home the majority of Yemeni tribes left Yemen to invade Iraq, Persia , Northern Africa etc. and thus instead of being ruled by foreigners they became themselves rulers of Persia proper.
The question here, is who were left behind? The simple answer is, Arab weaklings, Yemenized Ethiopians, enslaved defeated Ethiopian soldiers and the Persian nobles, rulers and soldiers (Savaris) who arrived in Yemen a few decades before the advent of Islam.
It must be remembered that Persians prior to their invasion of Yemen at the invitation of Ben Dhi Yazin, a Yemeni Jewish Noble had their preconditions and one of those conditions insolently provided that there ought to be no marriage held between a Yemenite man and a Persian woman whilst Persian men were allowed to marry Yemeni women if they so wished.
This was in fact meant to maintain their Persian blue blood from mixing with the indigenous population and most importantly to keep wealth amongst them, a thing ironically practiced until this day.
Persians were proud of being who they were until the Barmakides were overthrown in Baghdad by the Muslim Caliph Harun Alrasheed. Harun Alrasheed knew that Persians had the upper hand in Yemen. Hence he decided to send one of his lieutenants as a governor of Yemen.
The new governor was a Yemenite named Maan Bin Zayidah Al-Shaibani who is still extremely hated by Yemeni Hadoists or Sayyids until this very day. This governor having participated in crushing Persian power in Baghdad was so happy to crush Persian power in Yemen, which he did by depriving the Persian Nobility of Yemen from their wealth.
The Normal Yemeni Persian citizenry fearing for their livelihoods changed their lineage from Persian to Arab Blue Blood i.e. Hashemites. Those whose belongings were usurped by Ma'an had to use their linguistic skills in order to praise people whereby they gained their daily bread and were termed by Yemenis as Dhu Sha'an (i.e. people who were very important and now are no more), the word was later modified to Dooshaan just as the word Akhdam is used to refer to enslaved defeated Ethiopian Nilotic and Omiotic soldiers.
Yemeni Persians turned Hashemites seized power many times and their last tenure was ceased due to the revolution, which broke out on September 26th, 1962 . The September 26th revolution put an end to the dangerous subjugation and oppression of the Yemeni people, to the extent that Yemenites were on their way to become extinct if it was not for the courageous martyrs who sacrificed their lives in order set Yemen free from their terrible yoke, and whose ideals we should emulate.
Becoming Hashemites the Yemeni Persians embraced the sermons and teachings of the Shiites and modified their own version, which guarantees them the right to power and wealth as well as bringing the common Yemeni people into subjection. Normal Yemenis had to bow and kiss the knees of the Hadaoists whenever they passed by or descended off camel and horsebacks in a pathetic humiliating forced respect.
Following the revolution Persians/Sayyids/Hadaoists/Hashemites returned gradually to official positions and were a bit kept under check by the subsequent Republican rulers. Unfortunately, president Ali Abdullah Saleh due to his known flexibility allowed them to practice their rites and assume sensitive positions unbarred (including PSO and other sensitive organs) and thus they have exploited the situation by usurping public money and defaming the republic and the revolution and are still the most consistently coherent antiestablishment power in the country because of their being based on a theological Big Lie.
They fervently believe that they are godly sent and are above all. Current rulers should teach them true history in order to cease their continued damage against themselves and the whole nation because if they are left as they are now they are like a maniac damaging himself and the others. It is the hope that there is still left a chance to teach them who they are and what they ought to be.
The bell has rung and the danger is apparent and we have to decide whether we would like to be slaves again or not. Our government should appoint exclusively non-Sayyid Zaidis as Muftis of Zaidism not Hadaoist Sayyids disguising as Zaidis while real and true Zaidism is 100% innocent from them so as to ensure real impartiality.
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