By: Zuhur al-Yemeni

Since the Houthi sectarian death gang came out from the caves, it has been carrying a strange ideology on Yemeni society, claiming the authorization and the divine right and God's mandate for it in His land, and the people have nothing but listening and obedience.

Since its appearance, the militia has practiced violence, the use of weapons and the language of force in dealing with its doctrinal and intellectual opponents. It has also worked hard to summon history, the ancient past and repeat over and over historical grievances, in conflicts in which Yemenis have no interest.

One of the most important things that contributed to deepening the sectarian and doctrinal categorization practiced by these militias, was their targeting of mosques belonging to those who ideologically disagree with them (Ahl al-Sunnah), in addition to hadith houses and centers for teaching the Holy Qur’an.

 

Blow up mosques:

The targeting of mosques by militias is not the result of the moment, but rather a systematic action since 2013, when they blew up Dar al-Hadith in the Dammaj area of Saada Governorate and drove students out of it.

In previous statements, the Yemeni Minister of Endowments, Dr. Ahmed Attiah, confirmed that the first act carried out by the Houthi group in Dammaj in the Saada Governorate was to blow up mosques, and that was the first act it carried out against the houses of God, and this continued in succession, and he said that their goal was "purely religious."

And a statistic of the mosques and the Holy Qur’an houses that were blown up by the Houthi militants in Amran Governorate, months after they seized it, have shown that they were 16 mosques and houses of the Holy Qur’an, which are the Arrahman Mosque in Audhar, Al-Farouq Mosque in Danan, Dar Al-Hadith Mosque in Khaiwan, Al-Hassan Bin Ali Mosque in Bani Surim, Al-Aqili Mosque in Bani Aqil, Arrahma Mosque in Huth, Wahhas Mosque in Huth, Hamza Center for the Memorization of the Holy Qur’an in Huth, Al-Tayseer Foundation for the Support and Memorization of the Holy Qur’an, Al-Siddiq Mosque in Al-Khamri, Dar Al-Ahmar Mosque for the Memorization of the Holy Qur’an, Al-Rahma Mosque in Khamer, Al-Ghoula Mosque in Naqeel Al-Ghoula and Bilal Bin Rabah Mosque in Raida, and they bombed a mosque with mortar shells in the Al-Manzar village affiliated with Al-Hawak District, south of the city of Hodeidah.

And another statistic that was issued after the coup stated that the mosques and Quran memorization houses that were blown up by the Houthi militants in the Hashid tribe amounted to about 20 mosques and Quran houses belonging to their opponents and those who disagree with them ideologically, in addition to the bombing of 5 mosques and Quran memorization houses in Hamdan District in Sana’a and Al-Jawf Governorates, in addition to the bombing of the Dar al-Hadith mosque in Kitaf in Saada and Dar Aahim Kushar in Hajjah. 3000 versions of the Noble Qur’an were burned, and hundreds of versions of the Qur’an were seen that were in each room and facility of the house torn to the ground.

The doctrine of the Houthis in destroying mosques:

In all the areas they occupied, the Houthis worked to occupy mosques and not to neutralize or respect them and respect the doctrinal plurality in Yemen, and they stuck and painted their slogans on the walls of mosques from the inside and outside, forgetting that these mosques are the houses of God that should be purified and venerated and not be a shelter for cursing and incitement on hate.

Yemeni observers assert that the motives and reasons for these heinous acts are clear through the Houthis' destruction of mosques and schools in the areas they occupy, where their goals are to obliterate everything related to teaching the Qur'an and Sunnah on the Sunni way and erase everything related to that.

These observers point out that the Houthi culture is Shiite par excellence, as they are imitating the Safavid movement in Iran that arose in the tenth century AH, where they obliterated everything related to the Sunna in an unparalleled campaign to liquidate the Sunnis and force them to be Shiites.

They explain that the Houthis, and the fanatical Shiites before them, realize that such schools are the ones that teach religious science and make the enlightened generations, and therefore it will not be easy for the Houthis to lead these enlightened ones, in addition to that the Houthis prefer that the environment surrounding them to be an ignorant environment that is subject to the movement and does not resist it, and therefore their focus on the military side of this movement overshadowed the educational intellectual side.

And the Houthi movement was nothing but an inheritor of such a destructive thought from the founding fathers who tried to destroy all Islamic landmarks in the past.

The researcher specializing in the affairs of the Zaidi movements, Ibrahim Abdul Rahman Al-Eulufi, explained that the Houthi believes that the mosques belonging to his opponents are nothing but harmful mosques and have no sanctity. It was mentioned in the book Al-Muhadhdhab in the Fatwas of Imam Abdullah bin Hamzah as follows: “And the mosques of al-Mutrafiah, al-Batiniyya, Al-Mushabbiha and Al-Jabryia, have no ruling or sanctity, because they were founded on the edge of a bank about to collapse, and they are the mosques of harm. And the Al-Mushabbiha and Al-Jabryia are Sunnis and the mosques of harm are the mosques of the infidels, according to the researcher.”

In his research on this subject, the researcher confirmed that it mentioned in the book “Al-Muntazi' Al-Mukhtar Min Al-Ghayth Al-Midrar Al-Mufattih Likamaeem Al-Azhar fi Fiqh Al-Aeema Al-Athar (meaning, The chosen extract from the glutinous rain that opens up the masks of the Al-Azhar in the jurisprudence of the pure imams),” by the scholar Abdullah bin Miftah, “Abu Talib said: The Waqf (endowment) is not valid for Al-Mushabbiha and Al-Jabryia mosques, and the Imam Abdullah bin Hamza said that the mosques of the Al-Mushabbiha, Al-Jabryyia and al-Mutrafiah have no ruling or sanctity, and he destroyed many of them.” This book is the foundation in Hadawi Fiqh, and it tells of Imam Abdullah bin Hamza’s destruction of many Sunni mosques, according to the research.

 

Performing the Scream or Burning the Mosque:

Why do the Houthis show hostility toward life? Why are they shouting out loud calling for death and not life, for destruction and not for reconstruction, for fighting and not for coexistence, for racial discrimination and not for equality?!

This is how many Yemenis wonder because no political party in Yemen has ever raised its slogan inside mosques.

The Khomeinist Scream is a slogan that has become filling the mosques in the areas controlled by the Houthis, and that Scream has become as if it is a call to their cause because they have no issue and no goal, so they work to impose it in their councils and in their wars, and even in their regular meetings and discussions, even in the mosques, they believed in the Scream more than their faith in God Almighty.

What victory of Islam are they talking about while at the same time they are burning Muslim mosques because of the people’s refusal to repeat their alleged Scream, where the militias set fire to a mosque in Jahran District in Dhamar Governorate after the people refused to perform the sectarian Scream.

According to the statements of the residents of the village, during Friday prayers, when one of the militia leaders came to pray in the mosque, his followers asked the worshipers to leave the prayer and perform the Scream, but the citizens refused what the militias requested, so the followers of this leader, called "Abu Ahmed Shamlan", burned the mosque.

Criminalization of targeting places of worship in international law:

It is not only local customs or laws that criminalized the targeting of mosques, places of worship, hospitals, and archaeological and cultural sites with bombings and various wars, but rather international law also criminalized such targeting.

Article 27 (4) of Annex IV of the 1907 Hague Agreement stipulated that the military forces, in the event of a siege, must take all means not to prejudice buildings intended for temples, arts, sciences, charitable works and historical monuments, and Article 22 of the same Agreement prohibited “committing any hostile acts directed against historical monuments, works of art and places of worship which constitute the cultural or spiritual heritage of peoples.”

And Article 56 of the 1954 Hague Agreement stipulated criminalizing “the reservation or sabotage of installations dedicated to worship and historical buildings. Likewise, Article 53 of Additional Protocol I and Article 16 of Additional Protocol II to the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, stipulating “the prohibition of committing any hostile acts directed against historical monuments or works of art and places of worship that constitute the cultural and spiritual heritage of the people.”

 

Closure of 467 schools for memorizing the Qur’an:

The Houthi rebellion is working to change the awareness of people in the areas under its control, through a systematic method, to create a Yemeni generation that believes in the school of the Rule of the Faqih, to be a fuel for the conflict in Yemen.

This is shown through the sectarian programs and activities that the Houthi implements in the memorization schools that he seized, as an unbridled desire to perpetuate the myth and expand its circle, in return for reducing the circle of light of knowledge.

Since the coup against the authority, the militias have, by force of arms, taken control of the centers for memorizing the Holy Qur’an, where they resorted, in a number of governorates - especially Sana’a -, to storm a number of centers and schools for memorizing the Holy Qur’an, expelled their students, memorization teachers and the rest of their sheiks, and confiscated their contents and prevented these centers and schools from resuming their activities, and many of them were dedicated to perpetuating the discourse of death, hatred and foreign ideas on Yemenis, and turned some of them into places for their militias and places for seating, smoking and dancing.

And according to a recent statistic of the Ministry of Endowment in the legitimate government, the Houthi militia seized 467 schools for memorizing the Qur’an, while transforming 387 of them into military barracks.

Summer vacation is an occasion to occupy the memorization schools:

At the height of its tendency to establish summer centers to spread deviant and extremist ideas and incite young people to violence and terrorism, the Houthi militia tended to take parallel measures to ensure attracting the largest number of young people and children and push them to join its places, which it calls summer centers, by seizing memorization schools.

Only in the last month of Ramadan, the Houthi coup militia closed the rest of the Quran houses for girls' education in the districts of Sanhan and Bilad al-Rus.

It also arrested the people in charge of those centers and expelled their students enrolled in the centers for memorizing the Holy Qur’an, with the aim of forcing citizens to send their children to Houthi summer centers in the order they return imbued with ideas alien to Yemen.

And through these actions, the Houthi militia seeks to avoid the state of societal reluctance to leave its summer centers, which it establishes to attract Yemeni youth and children to change their beliefs and identity, and behind this attract the largest number of young people and push them to the battlefronts.

 

Memorization schools are dens for the mobilization of new fighters:

The storming of the role of the Holy Qur’an by the Houthi militia comes as part of an organized campaign to transform it into sectarian platforms and perpetuate the process of racial categorization within Yemeni society, which has witnessed decades of harmony since the revolution of September 26, 1962, which distanced the Yemeni people from backward thought, and all that the militia does is that it is mainly aiming at replacing the extremist Iranian approach with moderation approach.

In addition, these practices are consistent with the state of polarization, mobilization and recruitment practiced by the Houthi militia to support the fighting fronts.

In the past months, the militias launched a campaign that affected dozens of centers and schools for memorizing the Holy Qur’an in separate areas and neighborhoods of Sana’a and its countryside. And this campaign resulted in the closure of about 8 centers and other 12 memorizing schools in the scope of Sana'a countryside. Military patrols and armored vehicles surrounded 3 Quran memorization centers in the capital, Sana’a, in the Al-Sunnah Mosque in the Sa'wan region, the Al-Fath Center in the Al-Maqaleh region, and the Al-Bashaer Center in the Jider region, under the pretext that they operate away from the supervision and instructions of the putschists and that they were not officially approved by them.

And in Ibb Governorate, the Houthis raided the Dar al-Hadith mosque and banned all courses of science, hadith and memorization.

Militia fighters had previously occupied in late 2019 a house for teaching the Holy Quran in the village of Thi Ishraq in the Al-Sayyani district and looted two large buses for transporting students, in addition to stealing more than 30 sewing machines belonging to the house.

At the time, local residents said that the house occupied by the militias had graduated hundreds of Quran memorizers, and had a prominent role in providing women with craft and manual skills, wherein which skills were taught to rehabilitate women in addition to embroidery, sewing, engraving and other skills that women and dozens of families benefited skills to improve their monthly income.

Teachers in the memorization centers targeted by the militias revealed that the Houthi supervisors informed the teachers, days before the closure, that there were directives from their leader, Abdul Malik, to prevent teaching and stop all centers and schools that they described as violating.

The sources stated that the supervisors stipulated that the management and teachers of the centers be allowed to continue teaching in exchange for the inclusion of booklets of Hussein al-Houthi, and other educational programs and courses within the daily classes, in addition to teaching male and female students all that is required of them through the relevant Houthi leaders and bodies.