After a fierce war between the republicans (September Army) and some symbols of the royalists, backed by some of the tribes of the north of the north and the sheikhdom figures, and the Saudi support, mercenaries and experts from around the world, which lasted for nearly seven years, the reconciliation that the Nasserist regime sought and the tribal regime sought after the coup of 5th of November 1967, the forces of modernity in society were struck whereas national leaders who broke the siege of Sanaa were imprisoned and assassinated.
After that, the royalist leaders of the past, and behind them Saudi Arabia, sought to spread the Wahhabi sect among the new youth in the depth of the tribe. It was started by Judge Yahya Lutf Al-Faseel who presented his brother-in-law and friend Sheikh Hussein Ali Al-Salahi with the idea of establishing a scientific institute in Miswar Khawlan / Sana’a. Sheikh Hussein Ali Al-Salahi expressed his willingness to establish the institute and support it. After the idea was brewed, Judge Yahya Lutf Al-Faseel met with Judge Abdul Rahman Al-Eryani, the President of the Republican Council - at that time - and presented the idea to him and he agreed to it, and the establishment of the Scientific Institute began in Miswar Khawlan in 1972. Qassim Ibrahim Al-Bahr along with fifty students from Rima, headed by the brother Muhammad Saghir Al Muzlem came to khowlan to support the establishment of the institute.
Moreover, the fifty students were the seeds of that institute and in charge of encouraging the tribal student of khawlan to join the institute. As a result, the many students joined and the classes were began by a group of teachers who volunteered, including Mr. Abdullah Qashouh, and from Aden, Mr. Mahmoud Sheikhan, Mr. Ali Abdul-Ilah Muhammad, and Mr. Abdullah Ali al-Hamzi , and Professor Hussein Ahmed Al-Ansi. They came from Sana'a, and the institute's activities have been launched. Additionally, students from the neighborhood areas and elsewhere were welcomed to it. Due to the good performance of the teachers and the financial support provided, the institute succeeded.
The first Islamic institute was operating under formal supervision of the Ministry of Education, through regular field visits, and the study at the institute remained voluntary at the expense of Sheikh Hussein Al-Salahi, and with the assistance of the Yemeni Scientific Association (one of the fronts of the Muslim Brotherhood’s activity), which was headed by Sheikh Abdul Majeed Al-Zindani, along with a police officer, Ahmed Muhammad Al-Akwa’ , Secretary-General of the Assembly who was an officer working with the Ministry of Interior.
However, Professor Abdel-Bari Taher mentioned to me that there is an institute founded by a sheikh who returned from Saudi Arabia from the “Al-Jabr” family. He founded a scientific institute in the Al-Lahiya district, and when I asked Professor Ali Ibrahim Al-Aqili, his response was: “The Al-Jubeiriya Institute was established in the Al-Lahiyah District.”
The experience was encouraging, as Lieutenant Colonel Ibrahim Mohammad al-Hamdi, after the coup of June 13, 1974, and as a supplement to the reconciliation process between the tribal people and the royalists, issued three decrees from the Leadership Council, establishing three leadership and educational components, and they served as incubators for the Muslim Brotherhood Party in the Arab Republic of Yemen in 1974, and the management of the three components was entrusted to leaders in the Muslim Brotherhood or close connected personalities:
The Guidance and Counseling Office, was entrusted to Professor Abdul Majeed Al-Zindani who was granted the same rank of a Minister
The General Educational Authority, entrusted to the beloved class journalist, a close ally to the Brotherhood. (His name is Ahmad Abd al-Rahman al-Mahboob, and he was a Holy Qura'an reciter who participated in the 1948 movement, and al-Safi is a nickname as in Sana’a there is a nickname for each name, such as: Muhammad: Al-Azi, Ahmad: Al-Safi, Abdullah: Al-Fakhri…)
The General Authority of Scientific Institutes, whose presidency was entrusted to Judge Yahya Lutf Al-Faseel, and mr Hammoud Hashem Al-Darhi was appointed as deputy chairman.
These entities represented a parallel government with regard to religious education, away from the oversight of the ministries concerned with educational and cultural affairs. Scientific institutes have been allocated a huge budget, which is not subject to the oversight of the Ministry of Finance and other regulatory bodies.
Educational expertise was brought in through the international organization of the Muslim Brotherhood, and teachers from a number of Arab countries, led by Egypt, Sudan and Syria. In this regard, Sudanese professor Muhammad Ahmed Al-Amin Muhairiba gives his testimony about the period following the establishment of scientific institutes by saying:
“In the early eighties, the Yemeni Brotherhood, I believe, used the international organization to prosper the migration of the Muslims Brotherhood in Sudan to Yemen, and to work as teachers for the scientific institutes in Yemen even if they have no official degrees, and I was witness to that. Consequently, Muslims Brotherhood imposed their administrative control over scientific institutes, along with the Egyptian Brotherhood.” And Muhammad Ahmed Al-Amin Al-Muhairiba, studied at the Faculty of Science-Chemistry, Sana’a University, and worked as a teacher during the nineties, and before that, his father was a teacher with the Ministry of Education in northern Yemen.
Moreover, the opening of institutes was coincided with the closure of the Yemeni Scientific Society, one of the fronts of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab Republic of Yemen, which was established in 1968.
Nonetheless, the Muslim Brotherhood was not satisfied with the expansion of its political activity achieved through the scientific institutes, although it has began with the establishment of 15 institutes and reached to 500 scientific institutes in 1982, which represented the height of their political and armed activity in the face of the National Democratic Front, and the number of institutes reached 1200 institutes before the unification of education system in 2001, and the number of the scientific institute students reached to approximately 600,000 students.
Thus was the Islamic Front in the Arab Republic of Yemen, the first product of the marriage of authoritarian power with the Muslim Brotherhood. After the victories of the National Democratic Front over the tribal army in the areas of tribal influence, the heavy presence of authority figures in the central regions in particular, and the declaration of many directorates of the republic as “liberated areas”, the Muslim Brotherhood was baptized in 1979, and through the officer in the Ministry of Interior, Ahmed Muhammad Al-Akwa, to call and meet with the then President of the Republic, Ali Abdullah Saleh, and confirm their ability to counter the communist tide (they mean the National Front), despite the fact that the National Front was an alliance of all national forces in northern Yemen.
The work of the jihad is based only on an advocacy lever, and generations of students of scientific institutes have been prepared for jihad.
In fact, this was an extension of what followed the coup of November 5, 1967, and the catastrophic events of August 1968, which aimed to exclude the forces of the left and civil society organizations, to remove the glare of victory in the seventy-day siege of Sana'a, which was the product of a popular alliance represented in the public resistance, the September army and the leadership of the junior officers who withstand in Sana’a. Therefore, as an arrangement for reconciliation with the royal forces, confrontations took place between the authorities and the officers and soldiers who were expelled from the army and security, and the Yemeni Revolutionary Resistance Organization and the Revolutionary People’s Army Organization were established, whereas in 1976, the National Democratic Front was established.
The relative victory of the Islamic Front, led by Abd al-Salam Khaled Karman, in the Sharaab district of Taiz governorate, over the forces of the National Democratic Front had a positive effect on the authority, which prompted it to conclude a “Catholic” alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood, represented in the enrollment of many of Muslim brothers in military colleges, the army and the Central Agency for National Security (the Intelligence Service), opening training camps and providing them with weapons and military equipment, and opening more scientific institutes in conflicting areas and on the border with democratic Yemen (south). The jihadi work is based only on a call to prayer, and preparing the generations of students of scientific institutes for jihad.
This background may give a clear idea of the emergence of jihadist organizations in the length and all over Yemeni governorates. In this context, PhD. Dr. Hammoud Al-Awdi, Professor of Sociology at Sana’a University said:
“The fragmentation of the educational process between different political and religious parties, led to the division of the Yemeni conscience of the minds of the current generation, and their distribution to various ideological, sectarian, partisan and political affiliations.”
Professor Hammoud also believes that the scientific institutes were the most prominent manifestations through which the fragmentation of the concept of the educational process was embodied. However, attempts have been made to abolish scientific institutes, after the relative cessation of military actions between the army and the Islamic Front on the one hand, and the National Front on the other hand.
A republican decree was issued to form the “Supreme Curricula Council” in 1983, and the Minister of Education, Dr. Hussain Abdullah Al-Omari, issue a decree for the unification of educational curricula. However, it resulted with the dismissal of the education minister, and the head of the General Authority of Scientific Institutes, Sheikh Yahya Lutf Al-Faseel. After the unification, the Education Unification Law No. 45 of 1993 was issued, which did not find it's way for implementation.
In his book “Education in the Arab Republic of Yemen,” Dr. Ali Hood Baabad, mentioned about the establishment of the scientific institutes, saying that they were existed before the revolution (September 26, 1962), and that their number was about 15 institutes. It is an illogical information, as the lessons in mosques did not have any names but they were like schools of religious sciences attributed to mosques, and to the sheikhs and judges who teach in those circles.
The institutes were a political activity, with evidence that the number of scientific institutes increased after the cessation of confrontations with the National Front in 1982. Professor Ahmed Al-Sharabi says:
“There is no doubt that this huge inflation of institutes was basically a clear political activity, to the extent that a member of the Islah party’s parliamentary bloc declared that in times of war and hardship, only the armed forces and scientific institutes stand.” Thus, he (the Islahi MP) gives the scientific institutes a military role, like the militias.
Prior to the events of September 11, 2001 in the United States of America, Prime Minister Abdul Qadir Bajammal presented his program to the government, and the program included the unification of education, curriculum, management and application. After the vote on the program in the House of Representatives, following the withdrawal of the Yemeni Al-Islah bloc, the Council of Ministers met on May 8, 2001, and issued a number of decisions, the most important of which was the decision to activate the law on the unification of education.
Accordingly, the file of scientific institutes was closed, after the graduation of hundreds of thousands of preachers, imams of mosques and teachers, who were redistributed to government schools, as directors, mentors and teachers of those schools.
For more information, please refer to the book “The Islamic Movement and the Political System in Yemen”, by the author Nasir Muhammad Ali Al-Taweel.
