Lecture | Leiden Yemeni Studies Lecture Series
Redefining the community: The Huthi movement’s attempts to foster a sense of national belonging in Yemen
- Alexander Weissenburger (Austrian Academy of Sciences)
- Date
- Monday 24 February 2025
- Time
- Series
- Leiden Yemeni Studies Lecture Series
- Location
- Online via Zoom (register below)
One of the key tenets of Zaydism, at least in its orthodox form, has always been the notion that the qualities allegedly running in the line of the prophet – the ahl al-bayt – entitled them to political leadership. After the advent of the republican system in 1962 had put an end to the Zaydi imamate, the real-political manifestation of this idea, it was revived in practical as well as ideological terms by the Huthi movement after taking power in 2015.
Without claiming the imamate themselves, the upper echelons of the movement are dominated by ahl al-bayt and Huthi ideology makes ample recourse to the classical doctrinal justifications of their leadership. In genealogical terms, however, this means that the theoretical legitimacy of Huthi rule rests on the fact that much of the movement’s leadership claims to be distinct and, to a certain degree, better than the majority of the Yemeni population. Additionally, the movement now also rules over a considerable number of Shafi’i Sunnis, who do not ascribe to the Zaydi doctrine of ahl al-bayt leadership.
The paper highlights the Huthis attempts to forge a new form of Yemeni nationalism, which on the one hand seeks to bridge the doctrinal differences between Zaydis and Shafi’is as well as the genealogical differentiation between ahl al-bayt and “real” South Arabians on the other. Based on the analysis of textual and audio-visual primary sources, the paper trace the movement’s attempts at legitimizing its rule by presenting itself as manifestation of the Yemeni people’s alleged longing for divine justice and love for the ahl al-bayt, which was, as the movement claims, inherent in the Yemeni nation and independent of its denomination.
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About the speaker
Alexander Weissenburger is associated researcher at the Institute for Social Anthropology at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and senior researcher. He studies Islamic Studies at the University of Vienna and Security Studies at the University of St Andrews. His doctoral thesis analyses the ideology of the Huthi movement in Yemen. He taught Arabic grammar and security studies at the Institute for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Vienna and is co-editor of the journal Nouvelles Chroniques du manuscrit au Yémen. He is also the co-editor of the collective volume Yemen at a Crossroads: What remains of Arabia Felix?, published by the Defence Academy of the Austrian Armed Forces in 2024.
The Leiden Yemeni Studies Lecture Series is supported by the Horizon-2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions project EMStaD YEMEN.
An overview of all events in this series can be found on the series page.