From Marib to Taiz… Yemeni Brotherhood seize mosques to promote their agenda
With the aim of using mosques as platforms for incitement campaigns against anyone who opposes them or does not adhere to their suspicious agendas, the Brotherhood organization in Yemen has displaced the majority of non-affiliated clerics from mosques where they serve as preachers or imams in provinces under their control.
This comes as part of their agenda to monopolize mosques and spread extremist ideology, especially in Marib and Taiz, which are under the organization’s influence, resembling what the Houthi militias are doing in northern Yemen, especially in Sana’a.
The Brotherhood recently launched extensive campaigns to remove preachers and mosque imams who are not affiliated with them, as happened last November when armed individuals affiliated with the Reform Party stormed the Tawfiq Mosque in the center of Taiz city and attacked the preacher and imam of the mosque affiliated with the Salafist movement.
They also forcibly imposed preachers and imams and deliberately displaced clerics from other currents, especially the Salafist movement, as happened at the Bukhari Mosque after preacher “Fuad Al-Jamal” was banned from delivering sermons, according to the same source.
The Reform Party exploits the provinces of Marib and Taiz, which are under its control, not only in imposing preachers and imams, but also in turning mosque pulpits into platforms to polarize society and spread sectarianism and extremism.
The Brotherhood‘s sectarian campaigns, often carried out through mosque preachers loyal to them, target all aspects of life in Marib and Taiz communities, suppressing festivities and civil activities.
Prominent extremist clerics have emerged in Taiz, leading figures of the Brotherhood, including the extremist preacher Abdullah Ahmed Al-Adini and his son Abdul Salam, along with Ali Al-Qadi, Al-Zubairi Al-Khazraji, Nabil Al-Qadi, and others.
Among these incitement campaigns led by Brotherhood Reform Party leaders in Taiz, exploiting mosque pulpits, is a campaign against the third largest educational university in Yemen, based on its approval of a master’s program in women’s development and empowerment.
The campaign threatened to dismiss more than 30,000 male and female students enrolled in Taiz University, founded in 1993, away from education due to the severe demonization the university is facing.
Preserving mosque pulpits and promoting the true teachings of religion is a matter of religious and national security, while meddling in mosques and violating their sanctity and holiness is one of the crimes that require urgent intervention by the Presidential Council in Yemen to prevent sectarianism from spreading.
