By: Qadri Ahmed Haidar
1- Al-Ra’adi.. Simplicity in a man
Through my personal acquaintance of him, and my follow-up of his biography, specifically the thoughts, visions and books he wrote, all of which confirmed the presence of the intellectual spirit at a high level inside him. Even his political activity, from the beginning of his early relationship with the poet Mohammad Mahmoud Al-Zubairi, to a basic degree and the clear influence by him, and Mr. / Ahmed Mohammad Noman, after that. And I mean his political activity while he was a student in the heart of the “Al Ahrar Movement” (the Yemeni Union in Cairo), in spite of his limited political activity after the revolution, to his administrative acumen in the various positions he occupied. I can say that most of his self-formation is the personality of the intellectual, and the unique (seeker) for knowledge, in addition to his distinguished role as a proficient manager, in which he combined strictness and flexibility.
My assessment is that, the political practice is the weakest aspect of his personality, because the practice of politics in a society and a political reality that is backward and in conflict with each other, and is still practicing politics with a mentality and traditional and violent tools, and in a reality like Yemen emerging from the bottle of the Imamate and in post-revolutionary conditions, and armed aggression against the Revolution and the Republic (the war) where politics and its practicing required other skills than a man possessed of self-valued qualities that do not accept less than purity in political action (practice).
In addition to all of this, his peaceful and pacifist nature is not inclined to violence and is closest to the language of dialogue and peace, and therefore he found himself engaged in difficult political situations that do not resemble him in the name of “peace”, to attend the “Taif” conference, in Saudi Arabia in 1965, as he was truly a man of nobility and peace, so he was involved in that in an attempt towards achieving peace but the conditions were totally unfavorable to the attainment of reconciliation.
Mr. Mohammad Al-Ra'adi is one of the most beautiful and noble symbols of the students of the "Forty Mission", most of whom became among the founders of the new and modern state, after the revolution of September 26, 1962; Students who were divided between educational, cultural, political and administrative concerns, but Mr. Al-Ra'adi was one of the few who deservedly combined the image of the intellectual and the administrative man of the state.
Moreover, Mohammad Al-Ra'adi, the teacher and struggler, reminds you of his thought and his daily life behavior in the image of the intellectual who carries the flag of saying as a preparation for action, thinks a lot before he speaks, and takes a long time while writing. This is what I heard from him, the word has a high and sacred place in his mind, hence the source of the moral cultural responsibility that controls him as he writes. Therefore, he writes and speaks little, and may be inclined to remain silent when speech is meaningless.
He gives without limits but deprived of publicity, he does not like to publicize his name and role, hence his reluctance from the manifestations of media stardom that some people are fond of, and therefore he always affirms in thought and behavior his hatred of the lights, and his love of living simple as he once wrote, and so it was.
Although he is a great intellectual, cultural, political and patriotic science, with all the meaning of the word, it does not appear on the page of political propagandas. Because he is not a fan of media celebrity. He is the friend and direct personal colleague of dozens of senior leadership figures, such as: Mohsen Al-Ainy, Hassan Makki, Abdullah Al-Kurshmi, Yahya Hammoud Jugma'an... etc. However, his self-shadow is more present and extended than many fans of media celebrity.
Instead, he was simple in dealing with life issues, and his special needs are very simple; Therefore, he does not accept the conditions and restrictions that were imposed on him which he does not like or and do not represent him, and limit his freedom and the will to self-actualization within him.
He was clean of hand, pure of spirit; Hence, he stayed out of the limelight as he wanted and loved, and he never sought positions, rather it come to him. Additionally, he was truly such a star in the sky of supreme national values, a star that you only see flying in the sky of meaning and value where it ought to be. The stardom of power and money was absent with many of his colleagues, his peers, and his students, and he remained an immortal figure in the sky of value and meaning.
That is Mohammad bin Ahmed Al-Ra'adi, the human being with simplicity and eternity of idea, value and sense.
The relationship between the cultural and the political in his thinking and his life behavior comes to support the status and position of the intellectual (the cultural), at the expense of the politician, and in this sense he reminds us of Al Zubairy the poet, who was dominated by the image of the intellectual, and the Sufi who unites with the same purity and ideal values. Where the spirituality of the intellectual and the Sufi overshadows the image of the seasoned politician, the mysterious manipulator, and Mr. Muhammad Al-Ra'adi have a lot of Sufi spirituality in life and culture, and you can see that from a fleeting meeting and chatting with him.
I have visited him more than three decades ago to his house in the company of his friend, the poet/Esmail Al-Wareeth (may God have mercy on him), and I also visited him when he was vice president of the “Yemeni Studies and Research Center”, in his office, without any previous personal acquaintance, and I found him simple, kindhearted, he greets you with his smile as if he knows you for a long time. Despite his simplicity, his lack of words, the elegance of his character and the warmth of his soul, you feel his prestige and the majesty of the position of the great man in him, and the most beautiful thing is that he initiates a conversation with you to break the ice of lack of familiarity, just to assure you that he knows you.
My impression from my first visit was that, I was in front of a highly educated, disciplined and tolerant administrator, who sought excuses for those around him, without forgetting to remind you that you made a mistake, through modern (civilized) administrative behavior, which combines accuracy of work with rigor and flexibility.
The most important characteristic that you see and feel with your first personal meeting with him is his graciousness, and the elegance of the modern (civilized) man; In his daily behavior, there is a visible politeness that declares itself, without pretense or obedience, and in his mind and soul there is a hatred for sectarianism and racism. His civilized courteous behavior talks about him without saying a word that he is against fanaticism, violence and extremism, hence his speech and his tendency towards peace, and also the love of everyone who knew him and his lack of enmity, even those who disagreed with him in some details of his political journey, did not keep anything for him in their souls any personal enmity, because they know his sincerity in everything he says and does. In addition, his general life behavior imposes on you an atmosphere of intimacy and overwhelming love, so much forgiving so that he makes you believe that there is no point for you to continue disagreeing with him.
He is truly a civilian man, from the peaceful Sana’a, historically affected by the violence of the “five tribes.” Therefore, dialogue and peace had a deep meaning in his conscience, thinking, and life behavior. Consequently, he found in the poet Mohammad Mahmoud Al Zubairi his role and ideal model, but at the level of awareness and thought that are more civilized and modern and engagement with the issues of contemporary life, i.e. thought that is completely liberated from partisanship, sectarianism and tribalism.
Moreover, if we know that the leader and martyr / Mohi Al ddeen Al-Ansi is his maternal uncle, then the self-image of the meaning of his name and identity is complete: that he grew up in an environment encouraging and motivating both resistance and peace. And when he realized that the peace he believed in, dreamed of, and sought for was not what was required for himself, but rather to impose the option of surrender, and betrayal of the revolution and the republic, he announced his withdrawal gradually, quietly, and without announcing that “peace,” which was nothing but a title for surrender, which was his position later, from the 1965 Taif Conference. It is the courage of a true man of peace, and not one of those who exploit the slogan of "peace", on all occasions, or without occasion, for personal gains unrelated to the cause of social and national peace. That is Mr. Muhammad Al-Ra'adi, the intellectual and democratic fighter.
His exit as a teenager (adolescent) from a medieval cave and his visit to the most prestigious countries in the world (Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, France, Britain), his studies, his diplomatic work and his intellectual, cultural and social struggle, in all those stages and locations, shaped and made of him and in him that loving intellectual, cultural and civil synthesis to the other, far from violence and racism in its various forms. Even his personal life, when he decided to marry, he married a Lebanese woman from a decent family and lived with her his entire life, along with his three daughters. Thus here, the so of Sana’a’s civilization was united with the Lebanese civilization, because that is a choice that was controlled by the mind of love, just as it was ruled by the civil point of view that was liberated from the remnants of the backward past.
2- Al-Ra’di, the intellectual and the thinker
He accustomed himself to escaping from the troubles of politics and power, to the bosom of vast knowledge (intellect and culture), which he mentioned in his introduction to his translation of the book “From Copenhagen to Sanaa,” written by Torkel Hansen, which he began translating from English in 1966, and finished in 1968.
It is clear that his familiarity and deep connection with Al-Zubairy, and Al-Nu`man after that, in addition to his close friendship with his scholarship companion Mohsen al-Ayni, left an impact on the logic of his thinking, to the extent that he was compatible with them in the general position on the issue of the vision for peace, to which they clung to the spirit and mentality of the romantic revolutionary who dreams of peace, with all the spontaneity of the honesty that is within him/them.
His first contact with innovation and modernization was with his arrival and experience of the lights of civilization in Aden, and from there to the wider space of the lights of freedom in Lebanon, and the lights of revolutionary national liberation in Egypt, until his move to the "City of Light", Paris, and to Britain.
Throughout this journey, his thought was crystallizing and his free civil mind was taking shape, hence the beginning of the manifestation of the question of liberation and renaissance in his mind gradually, until he reached the beginning of the sixties of the last century. And because the renaissance begins with knowledge in its broad and deep meaning, awareness of the idea, and familiarity of the other and acceptance of it, but - the renaissance - is not complete except with the question of self-criticism, which is the weakest aspect in our behavior and in our vision of all of us - as Arabs and Muslims. The conflicting political scene in the sixties of the last century took everyone to varying degrees, until everyone found themselves in the midst of a conflict that did not seem to have a good end.
My personal assessment, and I may be wrong, is that the division in the heart of the republican ranks, and its total siding with the party of the remnants of the Liberians, and with the tribal sheikh (the first opposition tribal conferences), kept him away from devoting himself to the cognitive, intellectual and cultural concern - albeit slightly - the cognitive concern in which he found himself. With his book translation, a book he tried to translate in a thoughtful and deep language, which made reading the book easy and likable, a translation he began and immersed himself in from the beginning of the second half of the sixties, between 1966 and 1968, which may reveal the beginning of the moment of his escape from politics, to knowledge, thought and history, and to dealing with the big questions, even though a general discourse that is not regulated by a clear and organized intellectual pattern.
However, it reveals the beginning of serious epistemological/intellectual concerns, with epistemological, existential, and life questions, about the renaissance, for example. He identified the renaissance as he saw it and was formed for him, thus: “The renaissance is nothing but developing the country’s capabilities, reforming its conditions, fighting the bad aspects of these circumstances, and strengthening the aspects of strength and goodness in it. Other nations cannot import our renaissance from abroad, as we import goods.” Otherwise, it would be easy.
And the renaissance that we are asking for - as he says - is not just a transfer of some modern material means of living, it is a ample building of the Yemeni person in all aspects.
“The mandate of the Yemeni vanguard at this stage is to exert all their efforts to put scientific studies on top of the reality of their country, and from this reality they must set scientific goals and plans to build Yemen’s future renaissance, as a basis for gathering the republican forces united in one framework to achieve one goal (.. .). We are not against constructive ideas and theories, whatever they may be, we must always be with thought, but against those who do not submit their thought and theories to serve the urgent interests of their country at this stage of its history, and be a reason for obstructing its efforts and provoking destructive conflicts among its people. (Al-Ra'adi, “From Copenhagen to Sana’a” book, version (3), 2001, p. 10).
It was the spirit of the thinker and the intellectual that threw him or pushed him into the adventure of translation, at a time when the country was turbulent with violent tensions and conflicts, internal and external with the Imamate, reactionary and colonialism. Hence, it was this intellectual and cultural spirit that directed the logic of his thinking in this beautiful discourse direction. Whoever follows this path of reading and writing indicates that he got rid of many remnants of the past, and most importantly, that the concern for politics with its small implications, and the concern for power and wealth are his last interests, and that was a decisive factor in developing the spirit of the thinker and intellectual in his conscience and mind.
In the context of this saying that I mentioned about Al-Ra'adi, and there are things that I did not mention from what he wrote in the introduction to his translation, two diverse things appear; the first: his passion for knowledge, thought and culture; And the second is: his political bias with one party against another in the heart of the political struggle that existed in the core of the Republican ranks, the conflict that was raging on two fronts: the front of resistance to monarchy, backward and colonialism, and the front of the political battle over republican power.
In my estimation, it has not impeded or hampered all of our political and national experience, in the context of the revolutionary process, as it undoubtedly hindered the crystallization and maturity of its national renaissance thought which applies to everyone to varying degrees. The reason, in my valuation, is that the sorting and alignments between the conflicting parties and tendencies in the heart of the Republican ranks were not taking place on a political, social, economic, or class basis, but rather were controlled by subjective and partisan conflicts, due to the backwardness in the socio-economic structure of society.
Sorting and alignments are determined and formed on the basis of personal/subjective biases (ideological partisanship), and according to what was happening in the reality of the ongoing conflict in the structure of the Arab/Arab (Syrian-Egyptian) conflict which is not sufficient to constitute an objective political sorting process governed by factual and historical interest.
Therefore, those intertwined, confused, and raging alignments were, and consequently secondary oppositions advanced in the heart of the republican / republican conflict, over the main objective contradictions in the heart of that struggle; Some of the symbols of civilization and modernity found themselves lined up in the heart and next to the symbols of the tribal sheikh, and so on...
And from the movement and process of changes and shifts sorting and alignments between individuals and groups in the various conflicting political phases, these were the clashes, confusions and fluctuations adopted by the positions of many figures, and even groups: the clash of the objective, the historical interests with the subjective / personal, and the clash of the political ideology, with the social and class, away from realistic interests of the people (objective developmental needs).
In my judgement, it is one of the problems of politics and conflict at the heart of the September 26, 1962 revolution. Man, in the final analysis, is affected by his environment and society, while his social and political awareness is formed in a lively and controversial relationship with what is going on in society (social reality), hence the wrong political alignments occurred on both sides, and the biases of some with positions that do not resemble them.
And through my familiarity of Mr. / Mohammad Al-Ra'adi over his long biography until his passing away, I can only say that he possesses this sincere intellectual and cultural discourse, and this deep national intellectual and spiritual language that is liberated from the residues of the past. I do not imagine that you can place him or count him on the positions of the tribal / military sheikh, as he is alone in the heart of that struggle - with other noble names - he is the only name, he is unique, on the path of Yemeni patriotism, he unites in harmony and complement with his other companions working in the direction of establishing political and national renaissance on the basis of a state of citizenship and equal rights for all, a civil and democratic state.
He is civil and democratic in word and deed, modern in his position on women and democracy, and in his attitude on politics and power, to his position on sectarianism and tribalism until his demand for equal citizenship and involvement of all. “He who possesses freedom and will must succeed in making modernity, and whoever possesses stylishness must be able to successfully explore the depths of the spiritual and cultural heritage with rationality that those who fail to make progress and prosperity lose” (from his speech at the National Center for Documentation in cooperation with French Embassy - Sana'a 7/10/2004 from the book "One Yemen, Flashes of My Homeland, Articles and Critical Writings", p. 196).
An idea and a vision that can only be issued by a man of civilization, modernity and enlightenment, against the past culture, whether it comes under the cover of political, religious, or tribal social tyranny. a civil culture, the establishment of which he began with his philosophy and project in translating the book “From Copenhagen to Sana’a”, and an intellectual moment and cultural process that continued to move forward until his death.
Returning to the introduction to his translation, we find him writing in a critical spirit, as the following: “The country at this stage in its lifespan has an interest, which may differ from the interests of some individuals and some groups, and we must discover this interest through science and study; i. This speech was fifty-five years ago - the writer - "so that we can distinguish it from other special interests whose existence at this stage impedes the people's march towards achieving their hopes, and working to define the interests of the people, and clarifying them saves the efforts of all the people of Yemen. It also alleviates the factors of division and hatred in Yemeni society, which were created by the pre-revolution and post-revolution periods until November 1967."
However, if we let things go as they are, Yemen's true interest must be lost in the midst of intellectual chaos, or what we can call a "tornado of ideas" that the unconscious work to create by working with opinions and solutions they read in books for countries whose circumstances are different from ours. The only result of their work will be the division of the educated elite among the Yemenis - who are few - and giving an opportunity for Yemen to be ravaged by opportunism, sectarian and partisan fanaticism, and secessionist calls, and the result is the adventurers’ control of the country’s affairs, the removal of benevolent men of opinion, the advent of one military coup after another, and the loss of the country in the darkness of conspiracy, hatred and chaos.
Until he says – "and we are not against constructive ideas and theories, whatever they are, we must always be with thought, but we are only against those whose thought and theories are not subject to serving the urgent interests of thier country at this stage in its history and is a reason for obstructing its efforts and provoking destructive conflicts among its people. (introduction of the translation page 11). It is clear from this lengthy paragraph, which I extracted from the introduction to his translation, that he defends his opinion and his political approach, in which he is convinced, against different visions. Rather, he wrote what he likes to say within a discourse that includes some thought, and the culture of dialogue with other views, even if he does not explain the meaning and identity of those other visions. The important thing is that his method and tool in presenting his idea (his political opinion) is free from jerky political rhetoric.
He writes this while he is still in a state of criticism of the leadership of the first Republic regime of September 1967-62, (President Al-Sallal and his political wing). However, you will notice in the course of reading that he includes in his criticism even the coup of November 5, 1967, just as in the context of the sequence of his presentation of his ideas in this introduction, which he took as an opportunity to say some of what he wanted to say, that he feared the succession of coups, or as he put it: “the coming of a military coup after the other and the loss of the country in the darkness of conspiracy, hatred and chaos"; It is clear here that his criticism is twofold: criticism of the self and the other, criticism implicitly affecting all parties, although to unequal degrees.
Everyone, especially the "elite", was living in a "vortex of conflicting ideas", including our hero. What I want to say is that his speech is dominated by a theoretical, intellectual, cultural features, rather than a sharply fanatical political character, and this may be due to his personal thinking and his self-peaceful nature faraway from violence in speech and behavior, which made him not indulge in politics and power struggles for self-interest reasons. Because he is not a fan of power, aggregating wealth, and buying real estate, nor is he a fan of living in the midst of the noise of the media lights. He wrote in his book “One Yemen, Flashes of My Homeland,” saying: “I hate lights and I love to live simple” (p. 9).
In my estimation, his translation of the book "From Copenhagen to Sana'a", and the introduction he wrote to that translation, is the beginning of his transitional journey that transcended the ossified historical, doctrinal, sectarian and tribal heritage, to the thresholds of a new world of thought and vision. It is a beginning that relieves him of the burdens of cultural and social loads, and political biases, in which you read his last political bias, which paved the way for his transition to broader and deeper spaces of thinking and vision, a transition he would have qualified for and deservedly, a long time ago, had it not been for his clash with the political condition at the heart of the conflict that was ongoing in the heart of the Republican ranks. Nevertheless, I see the translation and the introduction as the beginning of the transition to a qualitatively new stage in thought and politics.
It was the spirit of the thinker and the intellectual that threw him or pushed him into the adventure of translation, and at a time when the country was turbulent with violent tensions and conflicts, internal and external with the Imamate, backwardness and colonialism, and it was this intellectual and cultural spirit that directed the logic of his philosophy in this beautiful dialogue direction.
Whoever follows this path of reading and writing indicates that he has got rid of many past deposits, and most importantly, the concern for politics with its small implications, and the concern for power and wealth are the last of his interests. And that was a decisive factor in developing the spirit of the thinker and the intellectual in his conscience, the intellectual who feels the moral responsibility towards the issues of his people before the political ones.
It is this intellectual and cultural spirit that led him later to write his book "Al-Qat Al-Salwa and Al-balowa". It is not for nothing that he devotes himself to writing an entire book on Qat, which is one of the most important and evidenced signs of the development of his political awareness, the dimensions of his sociological thought, and his awareness and rational about the issues of society and the people. The book is a search for the entrances, ways and methods of human development through the tragic reality in which he lives, and not through abstract anecdotal theorizing about revolution and change. It is evidence of the sensitivity of the national intellectual's awareness of the live and direct issues of his society.
With his research on Qat, the emancipatory cultural and social meaning is complete and consistent in his mind and thinking. He did not vilify Qat and referred only to its harms and threats to society and human health, economically and psychologically. Rather, he went on to present a study that is closer to a sociological, spiritually critical reading of Qat and its disadvantages for the present and the future.
He did not stop at abstract criticism, but rather took the initiative to provide a vision about that, and at the end of his book on "Qat, Al-Salwa and Al-Balwa", Mohammad Al-Ra'adi says: "Unfortunately, we - the Yemenis - have not yet been able to consider Qat as a real problem. Our talk about it is still shrouded in ambiguity and contradiction, although there are preliminary scientific studies confirming its health harms. Although its social and economic harms are clear and obvious, some of us suffer from it, and perhaps many families suffer from it, but we did not start serious work to stand up to this enemy which challenged us in a terrible and murderous silence. Qat, which has a victim every day and every day a tragedy, we are supposed to have made strides of serious and organized measures to compact it, not in the field of educating the masses of the people about its harmful effects, but also in terms of rationing its use, which leads to a reduction in the cultivation and consumption rates of Qat. (p. 92).
This sociological quote, which I recounted from his book, tells us clearly first: that we are facing the features of a social and political thinker who is deeply connected to the issues of the community; Secondly: We are in front of an organic intellectual who does not raise the slogan of the "revolutionary political sentence" to our faces in what he writes, to prove that he is patriotic or progressive. Rather, he presents a speech of profound intellectual and political enlightenment, holding on to one of the most important dimensions of the many-faced Yemeni problem, given that Qat is the most miserable and deadly killer of the individual and society.
With his cultural and social experience, he realized where the social problem lies. It is the spirituality of the intellectual which is deeply connected to the concerns of his people and his country, without pretense of rhetoric; And third: He realized the destructive and dangerous impacts of the Qat plant on the society and people in the contemporary Yemen, after Qat turned from a scourge into an illusion of consolation. So he started with himself, which he settled on a serious and decisive stance against Qat consumption. Thus, he occupied himself in books, cultural seminars, hiking and meetings with friends who were far from the Qat sessions that turn from a scourge into an illusion of comfort! In his text, we read a sober and profound political criticism of the official authorities, as they encourage the phenomenon of Qat consumption, by allowing expanding its cultivation at the expense of productive and Cash and food crops that essential for human and economic development. Fourth: It is a critical message of the negative role of the media in spreading social awareness of the dangers that Qat leaves on the life of the individual, the family, society and the state at large.
Further, he is one of the most important and prominent figures of enlightenment in contemporary Yemen, despite the scarcity of his written contributions. Nonetheless, few of his articles said a lot about enlightenment, civilization, and social reform. How could he not, when he was the excellent student on the guidance of the struggling approach of Al-Zubairi and al-Nu`man, who took from them the most beautiful of features of the enlightened mind, the sincere patriotism, the love of knowledge and science, altruism, the cleanliness of the hand and the purity of the soul. So the nobility of the Sufi converged and united in his depths in asceticism that exceeds the need, and the dignity of the intellectual with values.
The truest expression and embodiment of the qualitative transitional state in the behavior and thinking of Mr. Mohammad Al-Ra'adi (his critical thought), and in his self-formation and knowledge, is this creative critical text that I thought I can present some quotes, and it is a text that combines self-criticism, condemnation of reality, and criticism of politics and history:
"When we look closely at the conditions of Yemeni society today, the features of the stage that our country is going through seem to us to be - as it seems – a phase of unresponsive state towards thousands of challenges and remnants, which have accumulated over time, events that decimate the Yemeni people, and all that we did on September 26, 1962 - Thus, without mentioning that it was a revolution - the author - is that we removed those who were preventing us from these remnants, and those who were the reason for their existence in their proliferation. Our work was like beating the drums hard in the face of these remnants, so they woke up from their slumber all at once - and this saying reminds me of Abdullah Al-Bardouni's poem in which he says: "The rebels who awakened the wolves and fell asleep" - and prepared to fight us and set their ranks and began to kill us one after the other, so it killed and displaced and destroyed the morals and good habits of the people (...). It was not enough for these remnants that they used their old weapons against the people, so they resorted to importing from abroad, so they imported some of the drawbacks of modern civilization (...) These remnants also caused the dispersion of the Yemeni people and struck their national unity: this is northern and this is southern, this is tribal and this is civil, this is Zaydi and this is Shafi’i. It also used modern methods in its attempts to eliminate the rest of the unity of the people; this is progressive and this is reactionary, this is communist, this is Baathist and this is nationalist. Thus, the youth found themselves in a vortex of imaginary conflicts, woven around them by the conflict remnants that succeeded in distracting them from confronting and eliminating it” (Introduction to the Translation (p. 16).
The aforementioned text, despite its generality in some issues, and in the general direction of the discourse, provides an objective, intellectual, political, historical, and critical diagnosis of the reality of the “deep state” in the direction of impeding our progress and our movement forward. It also indicates a state of confusion, turmoil, and a lack of vision on all sides - to varying degrees - and specifically on the forces of civilization, modernity, republicanism, and liberation, who found themselves caught between the two pincers of corruption, and political and religious tyranny. They found themselves consumed by secondary contradictions in the clear struggle between them, leaving the arena and the field for the forces of the imamate, and their heirs in thought and politics (in the tribal / military sheikh), who focused all their concern on changing the imam with the sheikh, preserving and defending the old system of government as it is. Because they - the traditional powers / symbols of the deep state - are aware of their historical interests than the modern powers, who found themselves in confrontation with each other. The aforementioned text by Mr. Muhammad Al-Raadi expresses this clearly, and he is one of the most important symbols of civilization and modernity, but he found himself facing those who say to him and everyone at a crucial moment: “You have no choice but the “Islamic State”, or the return to the imamate or subordination to the outside.”
An in-depth deconstructive reading of Mr. Al-Ra'adi's text may open before us multiple illustrative analysis of the reality, readings that this article cannot accommodate, which is considered as a tribute to Mr. Muhammad Al-Ra'adi on the anniversary of his passing.
Further, he is one of the most important and prominent figures of enlightenment in contemporary Yemen, despite the scarcity of his written contributions. Nonetheless, few of his articles said a lot about enlightenment, civilization, and social reform. How could he not, when he was the excellent student on the guidance of the struggling approach of Al-Zubairi and al-Nu`man, who took from them the most beautiful of features of the enlightened mind, the sincere patriotism, the love of knowledge and science, altruism, the cleanliness of the hand and the purity of the soul. So the nobility of the Sufi converged and united in his depths in asceticism that exceeds the need, and the dignity of the intellectual with values. Furthermore, Mohammad Al-Ra'adi was one of the rare cultural, political, administrative and civil figures. His believe matches his action, and this is what you realize in his daily behavior, which is characterized by giving without borders, and the moral values and ideals that he embodied in his life with everyone: from his family to his relationship with society; Hence his spiritual balance, moral integrity, and political and national purity. He was a human being in all the meaning of the word, who lived his life in length and width, disciplined to the rhythm of the path of righteousness and lofty ideals, from the beginning of saying to the end of action.
His question, or one of his questions in the mid-1960s, was: "When will the first Yemeni university be established?" Even his early call for a specialized Ministry of Grievances that should be established, to be part of the Council of Ministers, with branches, agencies and institutions in all over the country. It is an issue linked to the idea of social justice, and an issue linked to the idea of social justice, i.e. to the spirituality of the idea of justice among the Mu'tazila, as the idea of justice is embedded in his mind and behavior. So no wondering about this demand of a person who hates injustice - even his saying - "When will we fight for our freedom without terrorism?"
These many and deep questions, which he raised in his short introduction to the aforementioned translated book, reflect the spirit and meaning of economy in speech, as usual, questions posed by that child and the great human being, the human / child, who grew up deprived of modern education, until the "Mission of the Forty" was. His question stemmed from the depth of his heart and from the reality that still bears the traces of the defunct legacy, because the military coups that Mr. Mohammad Al-Ra'adi warned of are still haunting us. He left us while he was dreaming of peace, and seeing with his own eyes the crimes associated with frequent coups from the sixties of the last century until today, absurd coups that move against the will of our dream / his dream, of reform and bring about the desired change.
May his soul rest in peace and tranquility, and may his memory as an organic intellectual have mercy and eternity.
