The self-appointed moral guardians of Yemen

An alliance of Yemeni religious scholars and tribal leaders has decided to watch and   safeguard the morals and values of the society through holding annual meetings rather than permanent committees, which were strongly criticized before being established.

Under the slogan “It’s the guards of virtue who will protect the ship from drowning,” the clerics and tribesmen – the self-appointed guardians of virtue – decided to hold a yearly conference, called “The meeting of promoting virtue and combating vice.”   They backed down from a previous proposal submitted to President Ali Abdullah Saleh last May, for establishing virtue committees (religious police) and for monitoring the activities of individuals  and institutions by banning any vice-related activity such as selling alcoholic drinks, night clubs, hotels, restaurants, or massage centers.

The clerics and tribesmen retracted from establishing their committees of promoting virtue and combating vice after strong criticisms from journalists, writers and politicians, who viewed the job of such committees as the responsibility of the state.       

No single woman attended the one-day meeting held on Tuesday July 15 by the tribesmen and the Sunni religious scholars.  The meeting was chaired by the tribal leader, Sadeq Abdullah al-Ahmar – sheikh of Yemen’s most influential tribe, the Hashed – and cleric Abdul Majeed al-Zandani, who is accused by the United States of supporting terrorism.

Most of the nearly two thousands male attendees were students of Al-Eyman University, a religious university run and owned by al-Zandani. The rest of the attendees were Salafi clerics and tribesmen. No prominent politicians from the Islamist party Islah attended the meeting except Sheikh al-Zandani, who has his own Salafi current inside the party. The politicians of Islah refused the demand of establishing committees for virtue, saying that it was only a political trick from the president Saleh to divide the Islah party, the largest opposition party on the one hand, and divide the opposition alliance which includes the Islah Islamists, Socialists and Nasserites on the other.

"Talking about committees for virtue has political reasons behind, aiming to mix the cards and confuse political life in an official attempt to divert the attention from its helplessness and corruption of the government, and thus holding others responsible for its faults including weakening the effectiveness of the official bodies and working outside the constitution and law," said the alliance of the three parties in a statement issued three days before the meeting of the clerics and tribesmen.

The clerics and tribesmen demanded the government to take its responsibility for protecting the virtue by closing hotels, night clubs and tourists' places and the non-Islamic banks, which deal with “reba” (interest), and the shops that sell alcoholic drinks and hotels that show pornographic movies.

In Yemen, alcoholic drinks are sold secretly except in the few five-star hotels where it is sold openly to mostly foreign customers. In the capital Sana'a, there are no public night clubs except in the three five-star hotels. But in the southern coastal city of Aden, there are about ten public night clubs. 

In the capital Sana'a, two restaurants serving wine and one massage centre were closed by the prosecution one hour after the meeting of the tribesmen and clerics on Tuesday July 15.

"It is not the orders of the committee for virtue, it is the orders of the prosecution," said the policemen who closed the restaurants to reporters who were banned from taking photos.  

The organizers of the meeting, which had no specific program distributed to the attendees, especially those who came from outside Sana'a, a book containing all the articles written by journalists against the committee of virtue since early last May, when the proposal was submitted. The book is entitled The Committee of Virtue and Writings of Destruction and Ruins. 

“The daring of journalists reaches to the extent of ridiculing the Sha’ria law and religion,” one of the speakers yelled while the book was distributed.

At the end of meeting, the clerics and tribesmen formed a follow up committee chaired by Sheikh al-Zandani with the tribal leader Sadeq al-Ahmar as his deputy.  The participating clerics and tribesmen demanded that the name of their chairman Abdul Majeed al-Zandani be dropped from the US and UN terror list.

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